100 Words and Phrases To Contextualise
Coercive Control

Authorianism

The enforcement of strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom. This is coercive control in a political system.

Disorganised Attachment

Disorganised attachment is an insecure attachment style that is likely formed as a result of inconsistent or unpredictable parenting. When caregivers respond to the needs of their children and are consistent in how they react to them, the children will most likely have a secure and healthy attachment style.This can be as a result of living with domestic abuse.

Humiliated Fury

Coined in the 70’s by Helen Glock Lewis as a way to describe a particularly male response to feeling deep unacknowledged shame, in a way that they would dispel that shame using anger to replace feeling of shame with power.

Chronic Shame

Negative beliefs about yourself that you are not good enough, worthless or unloveable. It is feeling that you are the problem. .

Growing up being punished, rejected, blamed, or having love withheld can lead to chronic shame, anxiety and depression

Trauma Bond

An attachment that develops from a repeated cycle of love and rejection.

Fearmongering

A tactic of deliberately evoking fear. Someone who intentionally makes you afraid to manipulate you into a fear-based rather than a rational response.

Disorientate

Abusers will deliberately confuse their victim in a number of ways ( sleep deprivation/gaslightingetc) in order to disorient them.

Lovebombing

An emotional manipulation which consists of excessive love and attention and overt extravagant gestures with the aim of making you feel special or sweeping you off the floor in an attempt to manipulate you into a relationship.

Radicalisation

The process of manipulating someone into supporting extreme views.

Brandishment

The act of behaving in an exaggerated and aggressive manner. Common forms of brandishment are brandished anger and jealousy where the abuser is not angry or jealous but wants to be seen as that in order to control the victim.

Excommunication

A tactic of control which threatens banishment as a punishment for non-compliance. Ghosting and the silent treatment are also forms of excommunication.

Loaded
Language

Words that carry additional emotional weight or significance way beyond their literal meaning. Coercive control, because of how it is bespoke to the victim, is full of loaded language.

Deliberate
Misinterpretation

A tactic used to deflect and confuse

Hypnosis

When looking at how abusers manipulate, we can not ignore the use of hypnosis to induce unease and a sense of being disempowered.

Mesmerising

To capture the attention of a person by transfixing them.

Legitimation

legitimation: convincing the partner that the intimate terrorist has the right to control and punish. Legitimation may take the form of an assertion of status as head of household. Or it might be closely tied up with the psychological attacks on self-esteem just discussed above, as in, “You are so incompetent and useless that I have to take control.””

Window of
Tolerance

A concept developed by Dr Dan Siegel to describe how a person can manage and cope with their emotions.

Distortion by
repetition

A manipulation technique used to manipulate a lie into appearing true. The Nazi , Josef Goebbels Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth,

One of the ways truth becomes distorted is by the use of vehement denials etc

Sleight of hand

The act of deception and misdirection.

Aversion to Weakness

We need to address the societal aversion to weakness which may be linked to our desire for status. Being seen as a victim is considered weak.

Sees victims as weak or someone to be pitied. Wants to be seen as strong. Survival of the fittest. Better to be a bully than be bullied.predator versus prey, go for the jugular. An attack dog who goes on the offensive when threatened.Never defend, always attack.

Smoke & Mirrors

Defined as something that seems good but isn’t. Deception, subterfuge, duplicity.

Undue Influence

A legal term whereby a person is induced to act other without free will or without regard to consequences

Inability to own Errors

Some people are unable to admit they are wrong, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. Seen as a sign of a fragile ego and their sense of self which makes them feel weak and disempowered.

Malignant
Normality

Where one person’s thinking shifts from what was previously considered normal is manipulated, especially if there is social reinforcement. In domestic abuse this can come about as a result of gaslighting..

Intermittent
Reinforcement

When attention, praise and love are only given arbitrarily so that the victim becomes anxious of the attention being withheld or withdrawn. This creates doubt and a trauma bond.

Negative
Reinforcement

Where something unpleasant is taken away to reinforce good behaviour.

In Skinner’s experiment, positive reinforcement was rewarding a rat with food pellet when pressing a lever and negative reinforcement was emitting an electric shock when the lever was pressed to teach the rat to not press mthe lever. In domestic abuse, sulking if your partner goes out do you stop going out.

Punishing Negative Emotion

Being ignored or invalidated for getting upset or crying to manipulate you into not getting upset or crying. Desensitising?

Passive
Aggression

Showing anger in a less overt way, Hissing not shouting, eye rolling and heavy sighing, sarcasm..

Premature
Disclosure

Sharing personal or intimate information early on, in an attempt to manipulate the victim into reciprocating

Triangulation

When someone uses a third party to add weight to their argument.

Insinuation

Comments which indirectly make you feel uncomfortable or damage your reputation. Backhanded compliments are a example of an insinuation where you are not sure whether it is a compliment or an insult, to undermine your sense of worth.