Is This Coercive Control? Reflection Article + Downloadable Worksheet

The first time I saw a therapist, I had been married for ten years. She asked the usual background questions - about my family, my childhood, my son. I spoke warmly about my parents and siblings, lit up when I mentioned my little boy, and then quickly brushed past my husband.

“We’ve been married ten years,” I told her, “but there’s nothing really to discuss there. He doesn’t want me talking about him, and everything’s fine anyway.”

She smiled gently, made a few notes, and moved on. Looking back now, I know she already saw the red flag that I couldn’t.

It was another year before I mentioned him again. By then, the world was in lockdown, and I was barely holding myself together.

“He’s just a bit controlling and demanding sometimes,” I told her cautiously. “He can be quite difficult.” It was the biggest understatement of my life, but at the time, it was the only language I had.

That’s how abuse works. It distorts your perspective so that what is actually alarming is softened into something manageable. “Difficult.” “Controlling.” “Demanding.” These words feel safer than “abuse,” because abuse is too big to face when you’re still inside it.

What followed was a slow unraveling. Session by session, my therapist helped me piece together what I had been living through: the constant criticism and insults, the financial control, the threats and intimidation, the endless rules that shifted depending on his mood, the “consequences” for non-compliance.

And then one day, she used the word “abuse”. I remember the shock and disbelief. It felt impossible, and yet once that word was spoken, something inside me shifted. Naming it was the beginning of the fog lifting.

Once I began to see it clearly, the impact was overwhelming. It took another six months of therapy before I could admit to myself that I had to leave. And it took a full year after I left before I was finally able to name my experience for what it truly was: coercive control.

In what follows, I’ll explore why naming it matters, how to recognise the difference between non-abusive controlling behaviour and coercive control, and why survivors often can’t see it until much later. You’ll also find a downloadable worksheet I created to guide your own reflection.