Coercive Control

Describe a positive thing a family member has done for you.

Depending on how you look at it, I was blessed with an antisocial, patriarchal father.

Quite young he taught me there is no safe place inside your home. No safe place inside your own head-he policed my thoughts constantly, going through my journals and punishing me for wishing for better. I was raised by a dictator, so quite young I learned to move militant – I began coding my journals with an alphabet I created, memorized, then whose key I destroyed to protect the fidelity of my need to defy and write my thoughts. I have always been a fighter for things that are fair and just, as an autistic individual. My father taught me how to resist and how to be persistent about it, even with the odds against you. Quite young, my father taught me the fundamentals of power and control.

Last week, I came across a post on LinkedIn about a book detailing coercive control – I had heard the term before in a similar context (a post about power and control from the perspective of neurodivergent children who had been subjected to coercive control). This time, the context was bullies in the workplace and the workplace safety act. There’s a reason I wear sunglasses inside. It is strategic and needed. It is a means for me to assess danger without alerting potential bullies of my observations. It obscures that connection to me that people use to disorient and attempt to control me with – the eyes. In coercive control, the eyes are often used as a scare tactic. My father used to glare with pitch black eyes in a way that suggested you were soon deceased. Workplace bullies would use it to intimidate me because they were intimidated by me. The narcissistic glare by another name. In coercive control it’s all about the indirect. Indirect suggestions of danger, power inequality and control, that are often specific to only the individuals involved i.e the bully and the victim. Others can’t see the signs but you can, and that’s how the bullies want it. Gaslighting is a form of coercive control meant to destabilize the victim and make them question their own sanity. The behaviors are usually innocuous on their own but are used to make the victim question reality. It makes them easier to manipulate and control. Hence! My sunglasses. If the eyes are the window into the soul, I don’t need anyone seeing mine. Not with the pain I have suffered already at the hands of energy vampires.

As I learn and read more, the more blessed I feel to have the capacity to understand what is going on around me. So many people are content with being blind. There is nothing fun about coercive control and it can at times be painful to realize what I went through as a kid. But the more I learn about it the more at peace I feel knowing it’s not me – it’s the people insecure with themselves around me. My quiet confidence comes from a place of trauma and immense pain and loss. I can be nothing but grateful to have the capacity to be awake to the world and how it works. Thanks, dad.