You do not always know the moment a relationship starts to make you smaller. There is rarely one scene you can point to. No single blowup that explains it. Instead there is a slow narrowing. Your world gets a little quieter. Your choices get a little fewer. You start editing yourself before you speak, managing someone else’s mood, rehearsing how you will explain the most ordinary things. And if anyone asks, you hear yourself say, “It is fine. We just fight sometimes.” This episode of Making Sense Of... is for the version of you that has wondered, quietly, whether “fine” is really the right word. I want to talk about coercive control. THE THING WE WERE NEVER TAUGHT TO NAME Coercive control is not one bad argument. It is not one jealous moment. It is a pattern. It is the steady, repeated use of pressure, fear, isolation, and manipulation to shrink another person’s freedom until their whole life organizes around avoiding consequences. That is what makes it so hard to see from the inside. Each individual moment can be explained away. He was stressed. She was tired. It was not that bad. But the pattern is the point. Over time your nervous system stops living from choice and starts living from threat management. You are not weak for missing it. You were never handed the map. So let me hand you one. THE POWER AND CONTROL WHEEL Decades ago, advocates in Duluth, Minnesota built a tool called the Power and Control Wheel to make these invisible patterns visible. I use it in this episode because it does something rare. It takes a hundred confusing moments and organizes them into a system you can actually recognize. There are 8 spokes on the wheel. As you read them, notice what your body does. 1. Using coercion and threats Making you afraid of what happens if you do not comply. 2. Using intimidation Communicating danger through looks, gestures, or a sudden change in tone, without a word being said. 3. Using emotional abuse Put downs, name calling, humiliation, and mind games that slowly change how you see yourself. 4. Using isolation Controlling who you see, what you do, and where you go, until your outside relationships feel expensive to keep. 5. Minimizing, denying, and blaming Every conversation about their behavior somehow ends with you carrying the blame. 6. Using children and pets Turning a child’s or an animal’s safety, access, or love into leverage. 7. Using privilege Using status, money, gender, or authority to reduce your choices and your credibility. 8. Using economic abuse Controlling access to money, information, and resources so that leaving feels impossible. One note that matters to me. The original wheel says “using male privilege.” I say “using privilege,” because an abuser does not have to be male, and control can come through money, fame, citizenship, professional standing, or religious authority just as easily. I also add pets alongside children, because anyone who has loved an animal knows they can be used as leverage too. BEYOND THE WHEEL In the episode I also go into the patterns that travel across every spoke. The ruined sleep that keeps you too exhausted to think clearly. The constant creation of chaos. The control that continues after you leave. And the way this kind of prolonged stress can shape symptoms of complex PTSD, because trauma is not only about what happened to you. It is also about what your nervous system learned to expect. WHY IT IS SO HARD TO RECOGNIZE Because it usually does not start with control. It often starts with intensity. Attention that feels like being finally, fully seen. When that intensity later gives way to withdrawal, and then relief, and then hope, we do not become less attached. We become more focused on getting the good moments back. Unpredictable reward is one of the most powerful bonds there is. That is not a character flaw. That is being human. I also spend time in the episode on how these dynamics show up in culture, in the series Maid and Alice, Darling, and in two stories that have been everywhere lately. Brianna LaPaglia has publicly shared her account of a past relationship. The Mica Miller case has raised painful questions about credibility, faith, and who gets believed. I hold both of these carefully. I attribute everything to the person’s own account or to public reporting, allegations are not convictions, and I am not here to diagnose anyone. I am here to show how a framework helps us recognize a pattern. THE QUESTION I WANT YOU TO SIT WITH Has any relationship in your life required you to become smaller, quieter, less connected, or less yourself in order to avoid consequences? And the harder one underneath it: Was the relationship truly peaceful, or had you simply become compliant? Peace and compliance are not the same thing. Peace expands you. Compliance shrinks you. Learning to tell the difference can change everything. RECOGNITION HAS TO COME WITH SAFETY If any of this is landing close to home, please read this part slowly. Recognizing a pattern and acting on it are two different steps, and leaving can be the most dangerous time. You do not have to figure this out alone. If you are in immediate danger, call 911. To talk with someone any time, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is available 24/7 at 1-800-799-7233, or text START to 88788, or visit thehotline.org. If your internet use may be monitored, please consider using a safer device. LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE This post is the map. The full episode is the walk through it, one spoke at a time, with the stories and the nuance that a list cannot hold. You can listen right here on Substack, or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Apple Podcasts: Spotify: WANT TO UNDERSTAND YOUR OWN PATTERNS? So much of how we show up in relationships was shaped long before them. If you want to connect the experiences that formed you with the patterns you carry today, start with my HURRT Assessment. It is free, and it is a gentle place to begin. Take the HURRT Assessment:https://www.flipyourmindset.com/hurrt WHAT IS NEXT The next episode in this series is Making Sense Of... Why We Stay. We are going to retire the question “why didn’t they just leave,” and replace it with a better one. What made staying, or trying to leave, make sense inside the reality that person was actually living? Behavior makes sense when we understand the context. That has always been the heart of this work. Until next time, I will see you on the flip side. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit flipyourmindset.substack.com/subscribe
