Unmasking Coercive Control: The Hidden Abuse

Music.

To change your relationship with food. The podcast hosted by me, Kyla Holley. With many years experience as an eating disorder and bariatric therapist, I know exactly what it takes to help you break free from your diet history and develop a more healthy relationship with food. Please follow this podcast to make sure you don't miss a thing. Just a quick word before we start. I'm very excited to tell you that we are a nominee in the Women in Podcasting Awards.

Awards I would be so grateful if you could just take five minutes to just cast a vote for us we're under the psychology section but I will put a link in the episode notes today that will take you straight through it it's just five minutes it costs you nothing to do and it would make a huge difference to the show it would enable us to get more guests on to spend more money advertising to to make the content better. So please, five minutes of your time. I'd be so grateful.

Thanks so much. Let's get on with the show today.

Today, I would like to tackle a very serious subject, and the subject is coercive control. This is actually a form of domestic violence, although many people don't recognize it as such. I've got a lot of people that come to see me that might say something like, oh no, no, he's never touched me, he's never been violent, without recognising that all the aspects of coercive control actually fall under the category of domestic violence. You will notice me referring to he and she.

Unfortunately, coercive control is, for the most part, something that's inflicted on females by males. But of of course, when I say that, I also have to recognize that there are so many different types of relationships and that this could happen in any form in any relationship. So when I refer to male and female and I refer to it being the male inflicting this on the female, I'm only referring to the most common presentation that we see.

So what is coercive control? And this is a sort of non-violent domestic abuse. And I'm going to run through all the different categories that somebody might try and influence or exert control over somebody else's life. And then I'm going to look at the relationship to food, because at this point, you're probably thinking, well, hold on, this is the wrong podcast. But controlling food, controlling environment can also be part of coercive control.

So there's lots of different categories that this might appear under. One is using forms of intimidation. So making somebody feel afraid by using things like certain looks, certain actions, certain gestures, perhaps smashing things, so not getting violent with that person as such, but smashing crockery or a vase or something like that, something to make a very big dramatic noise and instill fear into the other person.

Destroying someone's property, perhaps displaying things like weapons, knives, guns, that sort of thing, without actually inflicting any physical violence on that person, but creating this atmosphere and this awareness of the fact that physical violence could be on the horizon. So it's basically fear creating.

Also using emotional abuse. Things like putting somebody down, making them feel bad about themselves, name calling, making them think that they're going a bit crazy and playing those mind games. It's sometimes referred to as gaslighting.

Humiliating someone and trying to make them feel guilty about something that they've done or something that they're thinking of doing a lot of times this comes up is almost making people feel sorry for them like if if one person wants to go out the other one will say oh but what about me i'll be here all on my own and it's creating that level of emotional sort of manipulation manipulation to try and make that person do what you want them to do, but in a very sort of subtle way.

And this is why quite often people don't see it for what it is. Now, one of the early aspects of coercive control is to isolate somebody. So if you cut off all their networks, all their friends, all their support systems, they're much easier to manipulate if they've got nowhere else to go. So isolating someone is often the first stage.

So trying to control who somebody sees, who they talk to, even down to what they read, where they go, what they wear, limiting their outside involvement and sometimes using jealousy to justify actions. Or what I said just now about saying, oh, please don't go out and leave me on my own. That idea that leaving the house, leaving that person should somehow be guilt-inducing.

Another thing that can happen is that the perpetrator actually minimizes the effect of what's happening makes light of it says things like oh come on don't take this too seriously i'm only doing this for you those sort of things that kind of minimize what's actually happening or saying that it's all in someone's imagination now that didn't happen you're you're making that up or you're making a big deal about it and shifting responsibility for that abusive behavior

you know that see what you made me do type situation and saying actually that somebody caused it to happen you know you made me do this it's your fault you bring out the worst in me I've heard that said by someone in this situation that had that said to her. The other thing that can happen is children get used in this situation, using the children to make someone feel guilty about something or using threats of having children taken away.

You won't see the children unless you do something or the children will be affected in a negative way if you don't do something. So using the children as leverage, I suppose.

Also economic abuse. So So preventing that person perhaps from getting a job, making them actually ask for money and receive an allowance rather than having access to their own money, maybe taking that person's money if they do have a job, saying, give the money to me, I will deal with all the finances, and not letting that person have access to financial knowledge. What's going on in the household? hold? How much are bills? What's being done with investments?

Perhaps that person's being asked to sign bits of paper and they don't really know what they're signing and they're committing themselves legally to things that they don't really understand. Also making threats. So not actually inflicting any physical harm, but threatening to do so. So that could be threatening to hurt somebody or threatening to hurt yourself if that person leaves.

So that hanging the threat of suicide over their head or saying that you're going to have to report them to welfare or saying that you should drop charges or making that person do illegal things, you know, all these sort of coercion and threats. And the last kind of category would be using male privilege. So So sort of fulfilling those typical gender roles, treating somebody as if they have certain jobs in the house that need to be done because of their gender.

So in other words, treating that person a bit like a servant and saying that you should make all the decisions because they're not capable of making those decisions. Acting like the master of the house and being the one to define those gender roles. Whose job is it to do what? And being the one to actually make that decision around that. So these are all things that could be going on in a relationship. And quite often, they're done quite subtly. They're sort of stealth moves.

And if they're done often enough, and if they're introduced slowly, it's almost like that person doesn't even realize what's going on until sometimes they're in the middle of it. And quite often, because these little moves are introduced over a period of time, And sometimes if the relationship has been longstanding and has started at an early age, then the victim in this situation actually starts to see the whole environment as being normal.

It's just that new normality that they get used to because it's been that way for so long. So let's think about the effects that this could have on the relationship with food. And that might be somebody, if somebody's controlling your budgets and the need for groceries, for instance, somebody limiting the amount that you can spend on food and making it so that you have to go without. Out or making negative comments about bodies and stopping someone from exercising or forcing someone to exercise.

You can also experience this with people criticizing food choices or criticizing the amount that you might be eating. It's too much, it's too little. Someone exerting control over your relationship with food. In traditional family environments with straight couples, women will still to this day do most of the grocery shopping and most of the food preparation. That acceptance of women having that role makes it often easier for an abuser to mask the behaviors.

Again, telling that person that this is normal behavior, it's normal for a woman to do this, it's normal for a man to be fed the best food in the house and perhaps the biggest portion of food in the house as well. And often these sort of media and societal narratives actually reinforce what's going along in the home and often make the victim unaware that this is unacceptable.

So there are three questions I would like anybody in this situation to consider about yourself. The first one is, do you feel like your body is your own? Do you feel that you you actually have control over how your body looks, how your body functions, how much food you put into your body, what you do with your body? Do you feel in some area of your life that someone else is actually controlling any of those things?

The second question, does your partner actually monitor and control your food intake or your exercise? So is there somebody else saying how much you should eat, how much you should exercise? And we often assume in these situations, it's someone trying to limit the amount of food you eat and encourage you to exercise or force you to exercise.

But that's not always the case. it can sometimes be the other way around, where someone is telling you not to exercise and is telling you to overeat, pushing you to eat more and more and more. And that can be another way that that person exerts their control over your confidence, your environment, and your behavior is by trying to make you as big as possible in order to be able to do that.

The third question is if you somehow fail to meet certain diet or exercise targets, are you scared about your partner's reaction? Are you scared about the consequences of not doing as you're told in those situations?

If you ask yourself those three questions and it starts to occur to you that this might actually be something that's going on in your household, either to you or maybe you recognize something that might be going on for a friend or a colleague or a family member, you then have to decide what to do next.

And this can be very problematic because quite often the person in the situation either doesn't realize that they're in this situation or they will try to minimize it to keep the status quo because they're scared of rocking the boat. They're scared of doing anything anything to get themselves out of this situation. And often on some level, people are led to believe that they deserve this sort of treatment.

And then it can be incredibly difficult to make somebody strong enough to break free from this environment.

Now, there is help out there. I don't pretend to be an expert in this area. This is something that I've just sort of come across in the work that I I do, but I'm not an expert in domestic violence. I'm not an expert in coercive control. And I would really encourage you to seek the help that you need or seek the help that somebody else might need. There are a number of referral services where you can get help right now if you need it.

The first one is 1-800-RESPECT. This is a national helpline within Australia, which is 1-800-737-732. There's also the Women's Crisis Line, which is 1-800-811-811. There's the Men's Referral Service, which is for men who want help to change their own behavior, and that's on 1-300-766-491. There's Lifeline, which is a 24-hour crisis line, which is 131-114. And lastly, I'm going to recommend Relationships Australia, which is 1-300-364-277.

Now those are all referral lines for Australia, but obviously whichever country you're listening in, there will be support available for you in your own country. So please explore options. If anything from today's podcast has concerned you, raised an element of doubt in your mind about your own relationship or someone else's. Please explore more and find out more about coercive control.

Because of the subtle nature of this, it's something which so many people don't realize is abnormal and should be addressed within a relationship. I know there's lots of states in Australia now that have actually made coercive control illegal, and it can carry up to a 14-year prison sentence. So we've got to take this seriously. And if this is affecting you or your relationship with food or your relationship with your family, please take action.

Thank you so much for your company today. I would also love it if you could follow this podcast. It really does mean a lot to me. Also, we have a six-week online change your relationship with food course that you can take, just visit www.acfeb.com and click on the ACFEB and me courses link. There's also a journal and a workbook available on Amazon and you'll find that link in our bio. I really hope you can join me again next week. Music.