What is Coercive Control? With Dr. Christine Cocchiola | Season 2; Ep 17

you defined trauma. Bond Bingo, that's right, there was enough good that I could forget the bad and it's surprising how little good there is. a person needs in one of these relationships to forget the bad, yes, I mean, I feel like it almost gets worse over time. Mother's Day is always interrupted in some way, there was never just one chance to have a wonderful, peaceful day, vacation, you know? What time do we have to be with your parents? And then it would always be me waiting for him to be ready to go to an event. Let's say we socialized with friends.

There was always some problem with that, or it wasn't the right weekend and one time I had a party at my house and he knew about it and he came home and I was getting the house ready. He was running back and forth getting you to know the yard ready it was kind of like an outside party inside trying his best to get everything ready he said, you know, I don't really remember saying it was okay to have this party and I can't believe that you have something left He left as the guests arrived and then returned around 9:00 p.m. he showed up and pretended everything was fine.

I felt like I was constantly being punished by living in it. I didn't see it as a punishment, but now I see it as a punishment. I lived in a life where there was a lot to handle because I had to, it was always eggshells all the time. This is someone who had the right not to communicate with their spouse or partner when they get home at 3:00 am and then their worry was worry and then being cheated on, that's abusive, um, all this, things like the The party leaves in a kind of petulant tantrum and then returns as if nothing had happened, it's like it's page three of the vulnerable narcissistic person's manual. there that is exactly the type of game we would see that type of bad mood I will not stay I did not say that you could have this party and then show up however he

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led himself in those hours returning as if nothing had happened Nothing happened, also part of the gaslighting, so this was hard and then you had kids,

what

happened then, so

what

I realized when we had kids, I realized that I was replaced very quickly, so I went from being his all his Queen to being Now the children replaced me and uh, it was a beautiful thing.

I'm going to try to tell another mother that your husband is giving your kids too much attention and he doesn't want to spend time with you. What does another mother say? You're lucky to be so lucky, he's so good with kids and the reality is that we weren't doing anything together anymore. In fact, they started to fill a bigger void for him and I was just there for maintenance. I was the one who took them everywhere. I did everything. school meetings I went to all of these things alone because he was too busy to do any of these tasks.

I think that's why I'm grateful because he created this space where my children and I always had this connection because little did I know. and when my children were nine and ten years old he was beginning to indoctrinate them against me. I mean, I would make dinner and say in front of the kids, did you cook this? This is disgusting. I'm not eating this in front of the kids. interesting for the so called devoted father, you would think he would want to go to school meetings, he would want to be that devoted father and learn about school and all that, what I'm hearing is that children were a better source of narcissistic supplies.

I think in our relationship I ended up working at least a full-time job all the time and a part-time job, if not more, I was the one contributing more to the family income. family finances, so when I worked nights he was home with the kids and enjoying them and he was the fun dad, he wasn't the person who created the structure, but he got them to bed on time and he loved it the attention they received. He adored him, so he cared about the children. You have a job and a half. How did he view your career and your achievements?

So it's interesting that you asked that because he really downplayed what I did. My daughter at one point mentioned wanting to. be a social worker and he was like, oh, you never want to do that, that's not a good job, right in front of me, those are the kinds of minimizing conversations that would happen in our house, so, yeah, I was just meant to go to work. and not necessarily talk about it. I was creating programming in the early 90's on child sexual abuse training for the state of Connecticut and he was not at all interested, he didn't care what I was doing, if you were the primary breadwinner, he also works full time.

He is actually a school counselor and has been doing it for years, but I was the one who contributed the most to the family finances and was the reason we were able to go on vacation. I was the reason we were able to buy that. car so it was financial abuse but different people don't think about financial abuse like my brother often said I was the cash cow well it's interesting I see where you're going with that when we think about finances. Abuse, we think of a narcissistic person or a

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ling person who has all the money and then financially isolates that person, takes away his credit cards and monitors his spending so that he doesn't have any discretionary income.

In his particular case, he was really exploitative, yes. even though I was working more and saving more I was never allowed to get my hair professionally done or a manicure done and then while the marriage was going on I hear topics like gaslighting as the kids get older it's actually now sharing with them things that would really put a wedge in your relationship with them if other things had happened that would shed light on how toxic and unhealthy the infidelity was and I thought that was just one time the problem with the infidelity. which was with someone we were friends with who worked at our kids' school and then he said we would get better and go to therapy and it was always this thing when we talked about going to therapy it was like well I can't go every week, he would commit to do it every two weeks or he would be late or he would say I didn't tell him about the date, there was always that kind of manipulation and I was running around saying here I show you, let me show you, you know, let me show you, I told you about this date and that's why I'm here waiting for you and I have to say that was always interesting because I felt like therapists really weren't always interesting.

Picking up on the fact that he was abusive and that the relationship really probably couldn't get healthy, so when he had this affair, we would have to go to school and see this woman and she was a theater person, so my The kids were in the theater and in a very small school system, by the way, a very intimate community and he looked at it and it was like a year later and I was like, What's going on? Why does he say he's going? therapy didn't always show up and then there started to be this connecting the dots and then we had an event at a school for school and I ended up going with friends in the car instead of going with him because I was really frustrated with how he had behaved and when I got home he had locked me out of the house.

I had to decide what to do at that point because he could call the police but I didn't want to call it domestic abuse. I didn't want to get my husband in trouble. Not know what to do. I didn't want to call my father. It was one in the morning, so I ended up calling the police and just saying I couldn't get in. from my house and the police knocked on the door and when he opened the door he told the police officer that he was drunk that he had been using medication mixing drugs and alcohol and that they could search my car because there were open bottles in the car it was now a BYOB and we brought house a bottle of wine in the back of the car, so this is an example of things that were happening that were not shocking enough for me and then when I left and I went to see the police officer and I said: I think that you should leave tonight and go to your parents' house and I went to my parents' house the next day, I picked up my children and it was that night when I came and when he begged me to come home intermittently accusing me of kidnapping my children I love you you are my soulmate we will go to therapy when I decided to go home on Monday and I went to my night class to teach that is the day my children started telling me that I was the cheater my daughter remembers the exact day I was the cheater I um I'm the one with mental health issues I'm not trustworthy she was nine my son was 10 and I didn't leave him until she was 17 and 19 and she told me when she was 17.

So for nine years, eight or nine years, he indoctrinated them without my knowledge. I knew something was wrong at home. I think that when he realized it I couldn't forgive him. because of the infidelity and he knew he was pushing me away, that's when he needed to exert more control, he started doing it in other, more insidious ways, including

coercive

ly harming my children. I'm going to use the word

coercive

ly control my children. What did that do? My daughter didn't really connect with me. She started to really change around age 12. This started when she was nine, so imagine it's happening. 9 10 11 at 12 years old, you know, puberty. all those things just became where she started, you know, I don't have to listen to you, you can't tell me what to do, some of this you could say, okay, wait, this is typical teenager, like tough teenager stuff, but When What really became apparent to me was he was coming home from work and I remember I'm a cookie maker.

He would make cookies for the family and make them as if in an attempt to make him happy. I made homemade biscotti with pistachios and him. I walked in the door, the Biscotti's on the counter, I told him I made you some biscotti and he said he walked past me, walked right up to her and told my daughter how is the most beautiful woman in the world, so this is deeply, deeply, deeply inappropriate. I mean there is no other there is no other word for that it is deeply inappropriate it is triangulated and it was really meant to create the power struggle it sounds like an incredible event you can feel its potency how did all of this come together these three years of indoctrination How did all this affect your relationship with your daughter?

She was defiant and distraught. She was filled with anxiety. She always asked me what I was doing wrong. Either I was doing something wrong with it or I heard it over the course of those eight years. I started to feel like it was three people against one and a lot of times it was in the form of mockery, it was like, oh you can't take a joke or of course the lowest level of humor is mockery so there was just I couldn't listen. my own music at home. I couldn't actually turn on the music and dance in my own house.

I couldn't choose a TV show in my own home. I was really starting to see clearly. what was going on and recognizing that the longer I stayed I was afraid of losing my daughter completely, yes, yes, because she was aligned and my son was in college at the time and so I tried it and I stayed in home. but in a spare room and then when I did that, that's when the emails started showing up. Around 3,000 threatening and harassing emails over the course of 13 months on and off. Fortunately, I knew enough by then from listening to people like you not to respond. but there were about 10 a month where you are my soulmate, please don't leave us, please don't leave our family, and then the other 200 and some strange emails where you are not worthy of being loved, no one will know who you are. your children will never love you and he knew that if he talked to me about my children that would be the most heartbreaking thing.

Of course, I had shared with him my concerns about my daughter and why we weren't close and what was wrong with our relationship and now I know he used that against me to hurt me, the sheer amount of confusion, because you didn't know I was talking wrong. of you with your children, you didn't know this, so it had to have been one of the most confusing and destabilizing experiences the day my daughter told me that she was 17 years old and had been arrested because when I tried to leave the house he would cut the electricity like that. that I couldn't get out.

The lead couldn't get the car out of the garage. I went to her job part-time at my sister's house as a dog sitter and I hated that she had anything to do with my sister. One day he cut off the electricity in the garage so she couldn't go to work at my sister's house. house and she's texting me and help me I call the police I don't know what to do I call the police um uh and the police come and they arrest him for disorderly conduct he had actually physically pushed her and thrown her into I floored her um because she wanted to leave to go to work so the next day we were in the car and I told her when this started and that's when she told me the day you went to work when I was nine and we had I went to Nana's house and dad over the weekend and dad said you were the cheater so she told me the exact day and time it happened and that was the day she literally couldn't believe what she had been doing the whole weekend time. of those years here I was thinking that he was a decent human being a good father a good father at all that's almost a decade for almost 10 years he was essentially filling the heads of hischildren with lies is such a cruel form of abuse and you had no idea this was happening, how did your daughter treat you during all of this?

How do you think she felt about you during this almost 10 year period? I would say the word is contempt, there was just contempt and I didn't do it. I know why and I often asked what's wrong, why are you so upset, but how could she even know if it was being done to her so insidiously? No, how could she really know? It was fun and you know, let her do basically whatever she wanted for all the moms out there. I'm hearing right, our kids are so damaged by these abusers that it's never their fault, they are psychologically traumatized, they basically turn against the only parent who will love them unconditionally.

When I think about who was hurt the most in all of this, he is a vulnerable little boy. Yes, it absolutely was and it really sounds like a lot of what you're talking about is triangulation, it's two or three people in a family system that come after again and again, children are eminently recruitable, just if someone sets out to do something how cruel, it's very, very doable, a child's tendency is to trust his parents, his first place to go is not like, oh, they're trying to trick me and tell me this, he's sharing these things with them, you don't , so you must be telling the truth because you are not telling them anything, they take it back for the better part of 10 years, in essence you became the scapegoat in this family system, it's what happens in all systems narcissistic family members and he was also a lot of fun and he wasn't the one working.

I think all the time we underestimate how much power a parent has to fill a child's head with that kind of narrative and it is patently false to say that you were unfaithful in a relationship that you were not unfaithful in and allow that lie to stand for not Absolutely not. and there was this belief system that you know mom has a bad temper or when she went out to mow the lawn when she was angry, that was considered a bad temper, she would leave the house and say, I'm going to mow the lawn. the grass right now and that was considered bad mood to tell them one more really insidious thing.

I found out after leaving him that he had a gun in the house for two years without me knowing that the kids had gone out into the backyard. He had some land and they had gone out into the backyard and finished shooting. They were told not to tell mom about the gun because mom. I'm not sure I trust that she knew there was a gun in the house after I left him. In fact, I went in. I went to the house to get some things out of my closet and he knew I was going and when I walked into the bedroom on my desk there were bullets on the desk and uh yeah to me it felt like a sign I felt like he was trying to threaten .

To me, it's that manipulative, that horrible, and you know you also made a comment earlier, Christine, that I want to put a finer point on the teasing and the jokes at your expense, which is also a form of intended gaslighting. to unravel another person and deception, I mean, it's all here, truth, infidelity, deceit, manipulation, triangulation, it's complete and utter cruelty, gaslighting every time you turn around, what was that moment of penny drop on your marriage when you thought, oh my gosh, am I living what I'm teaching in these programs? about coercive control, the vernacular of coercive control didn't come out until after I quit, but I was teaching about the wheel of power and control and the wheel of post-separation abuse every semester in my social work classes and I had a moment where I was looking at Him and I was like, oh my God, is this counter-parenting going on in my house?

Am I being diminished? Is this financial abuse because I can't go get my hair done even though I'm at work? whoever was working overtime had at the time the Duluth Power and Control Wheel is a visual tool used by domestic violence specialists to explain the types of behaviors abusers use to maintain power and control and the tactics used to keep someone in an internal relationship. The wheel has subtle behaviors like threatening to take her own life and humiliating her, while the outer ring represents physical and sexual violence, but I have to say that he was so good at being nice again that the intermittent reinforcement was so obvious, so incredible in the moment when that he thought I had one foot out the door he was focused he was going to therapy even if it was only every two weeks he was making dinner he was coming home with flowers there was just this you know, come here, let's watch TV with the kids you know versus versus the day before let your mother wash the dishes come here and sit with me in other words, there was a decline in me the night before because we didn't help each other with cleaning the table and all that and then the next day he came here and sat with us, so there was a back and forth the whole time.

I couldn't really see clearly at all, so there was that moment when I finally did. go out and and and go up to the guest room um what was happening was that they turned off the water in the house after he went to work, so I couldn't shower and I couldn't do laundry, the coffee beans were gone from the coffee maker I asked for more coffee beans, they disappeared um and then they locked me out of the garage for a whole year when I was in that spare room before I finally applied because I said I wanted to apply but I was worried I mean. uh, not having the coffee means, um, you know him buying new sheets for the master bedroom when we had sheets and now I know, of course, that he had been involved with another woman for at least eight years or more and that she was going to come to my house. when I was leaving for the weekend to go to my parents' house so I wouldn't have to be around him, so there's so many things here, there's so many things here, right, but some of these patterns are turning off the water, turning off the electricity. removing the coffee beans this is textbook coercive control is manipulation was basically I'll show you who's boss you're not taking a shower you're not making coffee you're not leaving this house I was controlling these types of mechanisms this This is what coercive control looks like , that's the examples you give, so in your face, there are two other important things you're talking about, first of all, three thousand emails in a year, that's 10 a day.

It seems like a lot of them are bad and from time to time. There were some who were good and welcoming and that was their behavior. Everything you're talking about, Christine, is all trauma. Bond, right, that's why people get stuck. You use the term intermittent reinforcement and for everyone listening to this, if you've ever done this. You played a slot machine, you know what intermittent reinforcement is, you sit there and keep putting money into something with the idea that it will pay you from time to time and maybe one day, if you're lucky, you'll hit the jackpot on that one. slot machine. machine rewards program this intermittent reinforcement is what we call the stickiest reinforcement program it's the hardest to break it's when someone gives you those little bits of good sprinkled with lots of bad you just keep pulling the handle of the slot machine and there is the origin of trauma Bond is the tendency to go back and forth blaming himself maybe everything will be fine after today justify justify having the same arguments going around on the merry-go-round over and over again not being able to articulate what is happening This It's Bond trauma.

I don't think we can describe it enough times so that people can fully understand what's going on in these relationships and, most of all, not feel silly because when you have kids, you have a family, you have a home, and you have a life, you're going to fight to keep it together and that's what that fight can be kept in place with these little bits of hey, why don't you watch TV with us? So I wanted to jump to a point where there is A very specific part of your story that I want to highlight is: can you tell me what happened after you went out to dinner with an old friend?

So I went out to dinner with a friend from high school who had contacted me and everything was fine. transparent in my Facebook messages. I didn't know my ex had access to that, this was when we were together, but when he came home from a school trip, he supposedly went to look at his photos from the trip and went to my Facebook and saw the messages and in those messages I clearly say happy to go out for a cocktail with you but I'm not interested I'm married I would never cheat on my husband I'm totally platonic and he said absolutely fine So I went out for a drink with this friend and then when my ex came home from this trip and he saw, he basically left me a message at work and said, "I'm going to slit your throat, okay, and yeah, and I and." I went to the police and the police of course made me leave the house with my children and he had thrown all my personal items out of the house when I went in to get some of my items the police were helping me put them away.

I went back to get some personal items to take to my parents' house and when I walked in there, there was actually an altar in my master closet where he had placed my jewelry box with candles, pictures and our wedding ring and a note. for this person to go out for a drink with that was basically a note from me imploring my love for this person and how much I loved this person that was what I saw in my closet just in my closet everything else came out and on the patio or be pushed back to the bathroom I mean, yeah, that's what I ended up with.

That's terrifying in every way. The sanctuary is more obsession. What's interesting is the same obsession you saw when a 16-year-old girl appears in this. and then you come home and see this thing that almost feels like a horror movie, coming home and seeing Christine emotionally what was happening to you. I think there's this, I don't know what it is, but it's a problem to really believe that someone could be that evil. I stayed with him after that, he begged me. We went to therapy. I stayed with him for about four more years. So what is it?.

I tell my story because I don't want the victims to feel ashamed, yes, but reality. The thing is, I feel a little bit like, what the hell did he have to do to get me out of office? As we all know, post-separation abuse escalates and we know that about course control, 90 of the victims, of course. of control have an intensification of that course of control when they leave I think in general I want to believe the best in people. I didn't want to believe that he was a horrible person or that he could be a horrible husband or a horrible father, but he I really don't think anyone would disagree with you if we were very clinical about this and analyzed what was happening here this was a person who was incapable of not being for him a relationship was completely about control it was about domination it was about power, it was about validation and it was about rights, that's what a relationship was to him, that's all, without However, he's also very, very sensitive and that thin-skinned quality becomes really reactive when there's any perception here, this is a guy who's cheating. with you with someone in your little community, there's no problem for him, but he perceives you as doing one thing and it's this completely dysregulated reaction again, that's that sensitive nature of this.

I think every time someone has an experience like this it's this evil, what is this? It's really these Dynamics and they just don't work in a human relationship. They just don't work. It's that easy. We don't even have to do it. We don't have to completely dismiss the person who says whatever. It's you, you can't have a relationship with another human being, it's because you don't have the apparatus for it, because relationships aren't about power and control, they're supposed to be about collaboration and respect, which is what I want you to do. But do it because we've been floating around this term a lot.

I just want to make sure everyone is clear. Could you define Christine coercive control? Yes, then coercive control. I think a simple way to define it is to say when a person has power. over another person in a relationship and is a pattern in which one person has power over another in a relationship the goal of the person who is the coercive controller is to diminish the autonomy of another person their agency the tactics I use are psychological abuse such as manipulation, intimidation, isolation, legal abuse Financial abuse could certainly be sexual abuse and use of children as weapons.

You can correct me if I'm wrong, Dr. Romney, but since these people only feel good in life if they have control, they need to have power over others in order to feel good. sure in itself such coercive control I see it as the basis of all oppression when we think about judicial systems when we think about criminal justice systems when we think about racism, gender, all of these things, but in an intimate relationship, if someone If he treated me this way outside my home, that person would have immediately been seen as someone harmful to society, however, because it happened in my home over and over again, the therapists diminished it.

Thepolice slowed him down. A judge, you know, basically reprimanded me for getting my car title back because my ex had my car tracked, the reality is it's an oppression that we see happening in all systems and our most vulnerable. My area of ​​interest is the impact on children because Child Protective Services doesn't really look beyond a physical incident, a violent incident pattern, or maybe a sexual abuse of a child, but the reality is that all of these Abuse is based on power and control and is a psychological manipulation that is very harmful to the developing brain.

So I was an adult when this happened to me, I was a relatively well-adjusted human being. Imagine children when this happens to them, how harmful this is, that no system recognizes it. I don't even have words at the level of, I guess it's anger, sadness, whatever. you name it, because systems don't recognize how harmful this is to children until we begin to recognize that coercive control is imposed on everyone in the family system. Thank you for also elevating coercive control to a broader understanding.Dynamics in a society because I have always simply understood coercive control as the use of threat, fear and isolation to control another person in a relationship and rob them of any autonomy in that relationship, they basically can't leave what was really dire about what However, what you happened was that your coercive control was combined with these good days and that's when it's most toxic because you do, in a way, keep the skin in the game.

You really connected coercive control to post-separation abuse. Could you share it with us? How you define or how you conceptualize post-separation abuse, of course, I think it's very important that the language matters correctly and I think we have to consider the course of control as the general term, so under coercive control is abuse. after separation. -separation abuse is not a separation, it is under a course of control that is inflicted in various ways and the reality is that it occurs before the separation and it certainly happens after the separation and, in fact, it is often intensified when a victim leaves, she is more at risk of harm and so are her children because it's about how do I continue to maintain control and if I can't have control over you in my house, I'm going to find another way to have control and so for your listeners anyone Who thinks they're being tracked?

You are being tracked because the reality is that that is a form of control and it is very easy to do today, so this post-separation abuse is actually an additional imposition of coercive control, but by creating it in a space. where it's no longer just in our house and I would say you know a little bit apart when my kids came home because of greed they all came home and had to go between my little apartment and the beautiful house we had built down the road. a few miles away and I couldn't stand them coming here and then what I did was hide the keys, turn off the electricity in the garage because I didn't want them to spend time with me, that's post-separation abuse, that's another Imposing control I coerce children to harm me and so really the end goal is to harm me, but who are you harming in the meantime?

Of course, to the children. I really like what you're saying here about coercive control, which is an umbrella I want. share with you the impact that you have had on my work because I have been someone who has been guilty of using that term high conflict high conflict divorce relationship high conflict and I absolutely thank you for changing my use of that language and I was I actually gave a talk over the weekend to a large group of therapists and told everyone that we are going to take our hats off to Dr. Cocciola. He framed it so beautifully when he said that when we call it high conflict, we are kind of pathologizing.

The other individual who is not actually behaving in a confrontational or abusive way at all is being abused and putting the entire relationship under that framework is pathology, it's almost as if we can feel better about this by saying that they are both a mess. and you said no this is post separation abuse to recognize directionality so I think language does matter so calling it post separation abuse and not using the term high conflict is actually a very important distinction but Christine, what I keep hearing is that we don't, people don't want to consider emotional abuse, even therapists listen if the police don't want to understand it, I get it, they don't receive training like therapists judge, this wasn't trained as therapists, but people who were. trained as therapists and, in theory, in trauma, who are not willing to see emotional abuse in a relationship for what it is and in fact there are some actual therapists who point the finger at others saying to be careful about using of the word toxic, so shame a client who has lost all sense of agency autonomy and control in their lives and punished them for these dynamics in their relationship.

This work is so important. The work you are doing is so important. In fact, you mentioned that Covid helped your relationship between you and your children. How did he do it? work and how they are doing now, thank you, thank you, covid was so terrible for so many people, but for me he made my children come home. I was able to do what I realized, Dr. Romney, that I couldn't be his mother in this. He was no longer at home. I had to be a therapist. I literally had to create a space where even if there was putdown or there was a sarcastic comment, I mean, I would have someone come home and say dad called you a sociopath again or you know.

Sure you never cheated on dad because he says you always cheated on him, so I learned to respond to them in a calm way and in tune with them and I would basically acknowledge what they were hearing, but it would also be like I'm sorry you heard that that's not true. and be very clear about what is true and what is not, but don't get defensive and that was very difficult as a trauma victim. By the way, here I was literally reeling from being financially decimated. He had taken everything. from me, including home, and now I'm trying to ensure that my children had a safe place to come home to, so what ended up happening is that he didn't want them around me so much that he began to coercively control them during the covid and finally, I started to see it clearly, unfortunately we never had access to many of our personal items at home.

My children, I mean his time. My children. Tank engines. My daughters. Barbies. All these precious things I had packed and labeled. He took everything he had. He had eight cameras in the house eight cameras in the house while I lived there at the end and he kept them on when the kids lived there because he said your mom could break in and steal things. I don't trust your mom. so my kids lived in a house where when I said to my son, can you go into your sister's room with a black trash bag and grab everything you can?

My son received a call from his father. Drop the bag, we have to really look through the lens of children and understand that their experiences are just like ours expect our child to say I don't want to talk to daddy again I'm never going to have a relationship with this person or he should expecting him to do it at his vulnerable young age is a big ask because they are kids and we couldn't do it. I was with this man for how long, so luckily my kids are doing well now and they're growing up, and I think it's post-traumatic growth right, it's about this idea of ​​being able to grow through trauma we're okay mom, We're okay is what I hear and in my heart it's really hard for me to believe that they're okay, but I have to. and continue to help them grow, the worst thing that can happen to a parent is to have a child who lives down the road that you don't have a relationship with and who has turned against you, which is why I am grateful that my children I started to see clearly and I truly believe it's because they always had a strong attachment to me when they were little and I always tell my protective moms that your child will always have that attachment to you and the goal is to rekindle it or encourage growth as much as you can because he he's working all the time to harm him and he's working very hard to harm him and what he's doing is working very hard as well to constantly protect his fragile ego and maintain control, and I think that What's devastating as a co-parent of someone like that is recognize that your other parent would be so willing to sacrifice you, sacrifice your mental health, sacrifice your sense of well-being in the name of their fragile Egos and never seek help. because if the rejection that I will always receive is like well, that is a broken person, I really think because that broken person is going through the world very well, they are able to organize extramarital affairs and musical concerts and go to work, so it seems functional to me and if a person is that functional they can pick up a damn phone and call a therapist, but no, no, no, no, lest the fragile person do the work, let's destroy everyone else in our path, that's right how they do it and it is absolutely not right because you know this from doing the work that you do I know this from doing the work that I do this stays with the children who grow up with this is your children and you are seeing it in your children I certainly observe it in them so um you I know sometimes the responses to trauma, as you know, are being a perfectionist, working too hard, trying too hard or maybe one of the things that we know happens with children and this is specifically what I studied in my doctoral work is that when they have been hurt. and they are not exposed to our Witnesses either, they are true victims in these circumstances, but when they have been hurt they have significant anxiety, they become dysregulated very easily, they certainly can engage in other adverse experiences, but you know for a fact that that is anxiety. very evident and you know that I have to assume part of that responsibility that I had right in that house.

I was anxious in that house and then the good news is that now they don't see me as anxious. The good news is that I have been able to. show them that they too can grow and change from this experience and you know, we have conversations, they know that they do know who their father is, now they see it clearly and understand what happened to them, you know, my daughter likes to be a little more um less likes to talk about it maybe less my son is more open to having conversations but he's the one who also keeps accepting text messages from his dad because he says it helps remind him that he's not stable and my daughter totally has.

Dr. Christine, who is black, said her son continues to receive these text messages so he can actually see them and that is not an unusual pattern for people who may have distanced themselves from an antagonistic, narcissistic or abusive relationship and stay in touch. because continuous toxic messages are actually a tool to see how unhealthy everything is and a reminder not to go back to that. I have met many people who say that while they no longer like seeing these messages, they help them recognize why they had to walk away from someone they love. I want to go back to something you said because I want to double down on that point: kids are experiencing this and not just witnessing it.

The children are not passive observers here, they are having a very real experience, but I will also call. Well, part of this was my fault. I was so anxious in this marriage. What other feeling was there? You know what I'm saying. I can't think of any other feeling one would have. You know, a real emotional experience when someone is abusing, controlling, and essentially, like you said, subjugating you relationally, but anxiety and you know, I know again, we see this over and over again, what were your options if you saw this? before? Christine again. I'll do it again.

I will quote. Dr. Jennifer Fried, if you saw this before, it was catastrophic and it could very well have been a call to action to have to leave and there is a part of you that did not want those children to grow up with him without you. You came into the house and you dealt with something that a lot of people struggle with and that is that we're going to stay in this and they're going to see me endure this and you can only pretend for so long, right? They're going to see your anxiety. especially because you didn't fully understand what you were dealing with, or if you saw it right, you came out of that betrayal blindness, as the fry would call it, and you saw it clearly, it would be catastrophic when you left, they were all a little older and they were both dating out the door, that's something we really need to focus on and you also said something about having to be a therapist almost more than a mother, with them you have the grace of being trained as a therapist. the vast majority of people who are going through this, whether it be pre-separation abuse, post-separation abuse, the whole realm of coercive control, or any form of narcissistic abusive relationship, are not trained as therapists, they are having an experience Really, they are having traumatic responses and may not necessarily always be able to suppress all of those emotions and bepresent with your children as your own worlds fall apart.

It's pretty remarkable that you've been able to get into that therapy headspace, especially during Covid, and create that space for your kids. Yes, thanks. I actually created a program and it's literally trying to help protective parents. To act, really, to do the things that I did, so it's about how to create the space in your home to respond to your child when he behaves in a certain way. that way you're not necessarily responding like a mom or reacting like a mom, but you're responding more in a more attuned way because you're absolutely right. I'm fortunate to have the skill set.

What I saw happen was that I was working, they were starting to see me as a safe person, not the crazy untrustworthy mother they had been told I was, they were starting to feel safer here and that was my saving grace to be honest with you, how can we find this program you? I've created for parents, yes it's on my website, it's a coercive control consultancy and I actually just started a foundation because I have a lot of mothers who are what happens in domestic abuse, of course, it's financial annihilation. . I just started a foundation so that people like me will have more money for scholarships.

I've been giving away scholarships, but you certainly know the idea that our kids are basically experiencing what we've experienced, yeah, and that's why they're so vulnerable and they need as much support as possible. Absolutely, I would say that for the vast majority of survivors of coercive control and narcissistic childhood abuse what we tend to see is anxiety, anxiety, and inaccurate self-assessment. future. I have another parallel question. I'm just curious. You said your parents were married for 63 years. They were very happy that they liked him. In the beginning, what happened when everything started to fall apart, how did they view the situation and what you were going through?

I think at first, because there were all these incidents along the way, they were willing to forgive him if I just wanted to keep the peace again? Know? But towards the end, when things were really evident and I was living away from home most of the time, living at my mom and dad's house, my mom said something pretty profound to me one time while I was. laying on his lap sobbing I couldn't believe all the horrible things he was saying about me to the kids and in emails and she said the girl I know is so much stronger than this and the girl I know needs to go and that was a moment for me where I was I always tell people if the post separation abuse wouldn't have been so bad if he hadn't become so um and it just became so bad that if it hadn't been so bad I probably still would have. being with him I couldn't agree more and I think the foreshadowing of that was there when you were 16 the same guy who said if you ever leave me I'm going to end my life I'm going to commit suicide that was already giving them that little seed of what would ultimately become this post-separation abuse, that's what's extraordinary and disturbing about a story like this and I think the landscape of post-separation abuse is something that everyone needs to understand because people often look askance at the survivors saying you didn't leave, yeah keep going back, how bad could it have been not understanding that many people are trying to avoid something that would be catastrophic if they left and that kind of negotiation with the Devil is one of the hardest things that people just don't understand.

We are trying to raise awareness here and you are also an expert in this and train and educate people about this everywhere. What are some of the tips you have? For our listeners, if you're experiencing coercive control in a relationship, whether it's pre- or post-separation abuse, I think one of the things that helps is the word that I came up with, I call it Retraumatization Theory and it's this idea that The only way we can truly believe that it is as bad as it is is if we actually write down a list of all the horrible things that have been done to us and look at that list; you may have to look at it daily every time you do it.

I'm thinking about responding to that person or returning or not leaving. I have a client right now who is on the fence thinking about staying and I asked him to write this list, which sounds horrible because having to relive all those experiences again, but honestly it's the only way the brain will get the message the brain doesn't want. hear the bad right, our brain's number one job is to keep us safe our brain doesn't want to think it's that bad and that's how it was for me printing out all the text messages and emails that were so horrible and putting them all in a folder and looking at the folder regularly listening to the video because I started recording listening to the video of the horrible things he was calling me, the other thing that What I would say is that if there is a pattern where someone tries to diminish who you are, if you are with someone who doesn't support you in your work, whatever it is, that's a diminishment of you if you're with someone who doesn't.

I really want you to spend more time with family and friends, that is a diminution of you, who you are and who you are separate from this person because what happens is we get so entangled in that relationship that we no longer see ourselves, ask yourself who are. you, who are you without this person and I would say these are brilliant suggestions and I would even say that what we should do with people as young as high school, high school, college, hell most adults should do this is ask yourself that question before you even do it.

Get into a relationship Who are you? Of what you are? People don't struggle with that. It is funny. What you call retraumatization theory is much more elegant than what I have been doing with my clients for years. I call it the icklist ick like ick I'll say get together with friends do it in support of the circumstances um I've built a lot of ick lists together with a friend and I'll say whoa whoa you're forgetting this you're forgetting this remember. For me, memories are like the cloud on a hard drive shared between many of us, we don't remember this, someone else remembers putting it in one place is very difficult for people because they don't do it in the first place.

It doesn't feel good, it doesn't feel good to go back to that. I always encourage people to do it with a therapist or a coach along with someone who you know has your back and may have even witnessed the relationship. It's absolutely essential because you're absolutely right trauma bond betrayal blindness all these mechanisms tend to take us away from that because it's too destabilizing, it means we have to give up everything we know about the status quo and what we believe is good and safe in the future. world, so I want to ask you one last question: what do you hope people learn from your story?

Coercive control can happen to anyone and even the most astute of us can miss the sign that if I were teaching about it, I have been volunteering as a domestic violence and sexual assault counselor since I was 19 years old. I've been doing this job since I was 19 years old. I don't see the signs and I'm not trying to suggest that I'm better than anyone, but by saying that if I had the information and I missed it, anyone can miss it I want to go back, I mean, we're still talking about missing the signs you were, you're doing it.

Since you are 19 years old, losing the signs, I am a psychologist. losing the cues I think it's very important that we stop talking about losing the cues and talk about understanding the processes because it's not about the strange because losing it makes you responsible for the process of understanding that you're being absorbed by something. where your nervous system is also taking you on a journey that happens almost below the level of Consciousness, it's a completely different game, so you know really, I can't thank you enough for sharing a story that is so vulnerable and that is also so powerful. and it reminds us I want to say I look at you for me you are a partner you are a successful you are intelligent you are intelligent you are beautiful you are we look at you as someone to whom this does not happen and that is the mistake that this can happen to any of us and, therefore So much, coming forward and not just sharing your story, but continuing to educate people, which can't be easy every day, you know, it takes you back to a really difficult place and having raised. two wonderful children, despite this, it is also a Hope Christine story, that people can go through all this, these things shape us and in your case, they still led you back to a wonderful relationship with your children and You just held on tight, so I think that's also a very important thing for people who are in the middle of the storm to hear your story.

Thank you very much for inviting me. I appreciate the ability to have this platform to talk about it. It has been an absolute pleasure. here are my takeaways from my conversation with Dr. Christine first, we desperately want formulas who is most at risk people from families with narcissistic parents people with a history of trauma the answer is actually everyone Dr. Christine had parents who were happily married ​​for 63 years and she grew up in a stable home and a culture of kindness and forgiveness, subjugation in a narcissistic relationship is the idea that a person is overcome by the narcissistic, antagonistic or abusive person and in this process their identity and meaning of themselves are lost.

Once that happens, the tendency to blame is magnified. Dr. Christine also said that she was afraid of disappointing someone, meaning that instead of seeing her boyfriend's behavior as intrusive and excessive, she wouldn't back down for fear of disappointing him, which worked in her family but was dangerous in this one. relationship. In my next comment, Dr. Christine brings up a form of cheating we often don't think about: being told you're overreacting because you're actually worried about someone who, in her case, was cheating on her when her partner didn't return. home and she expressed her concern. and she contacted emergency services, her partner would tell her that she was exaggerating this process of presenting another person as overly emotional or dramatic when she expresses genuine concern.

It is a manipulative game of hiding deception and presenting the concerned person as if they have a problem. Our conversation also revealed another often overlooked pattern of gaslighting, which is teasing that can involve one parent often making fun of the other parent and framing it as a joke and even encouraging children to join. If there is rejection, the teasing parent will tell the other parent that he or she is too sensitive and can't take a joke and this is all very confusing for children who may even feel pressured to pile on the teasing and at the same time feel guilty about my next conclusion during post-separation abuse.

One pattern we can observe is that children share inappropriate, false or hurtful information with them, this is called triangulation and is emotional abuse, this can look like ganging up on a parent who faces barriers when trying to see their other parent or be rewarded for sharing cruel words or actions towards another. All of this can be an extraordinarily helpless and painful feeling for a parent caught in this situation. She notes that it is crucial for parents who are trying to help children through these crises to be deeply attuned, create a sense of security, not become defensive, but answer children's questions honestly.

It is also very important, as difficult as it may be, to never put down the other parent, even when that other parent may be putting you down. This is not easy and even more difficult if you do not have access to therapy or other resources, but it is essential that Dr. Christine's relationship had many patterns that we see in traumatic relationships: a push and pull, being treated with contempt, and then asking you to join everyone for a movie night, feeling loved, and then being abused, which creates confusion, justification, and encourages falsehoods. I hope you talked about this as something we call intermittent reinforcement, which is a very useful way of thinking. in this.

It's a lot like a slot machine, most of the time it takes your money, but sometimes it pays out and you keep playing in the hopes of getting a giant payout. The alternation between losses, small gains and the hope of a big gain captures the trauma bond and perhaps is a way to understand these cycles for yourself and put an end to some of the blame because when we are in these cycles, the hope and the permanence are for My next conclusion is to be expected, interestingly, what Dr. Christine calls Retraumatization Theory. I much less eloquently call it an icklist, but we're both coming to the same conclusion.

Everything we know about trauma bonding. Cognitive dissonance. Treachery. Blindness and euphoric memory. Everything points to the probability that you will forget about the bad things that happen in a relationship. Writing them down is unpleasant but it is also cathartic.do it only with friends or family who witnessed it or with your therapist this list can be a splash of psychological cold water in your face to help you avoid locking yourself in again and repeating the same cycles again and finally this interview was about the experience of one person in their marriage, but these patterns of coercive family control can and do happen in a variety of situations involving other parents of children, independent of the parents.

Gender not only happens to mothers, it also happens to fathers and fathers of any gender.