When psychological abuse is overlooked, it undermines its serious harm.
Key points
- Coercive control laws to address intimate partner abuse exist in 10 states.
- Addressing coercive control in intimate relationships is an important step toward protecting survivors.
- What is missing is the inclusion of psychological abuse, which can be more harmful and entrapping.
Intimate partner abuse, termed in the legal realm as coercive control, has been recognized by 10 states making coercive control illegal. However, some differences exist with what the coercive control law includes and the coercive controlling experience by an intimate partner. The psychologically abusive aspects of coercive control in an intimate relationship are not recognized in the law and remain unregulated. Yet, this aspect of intimate partner abuse is traumatically damaging and might be the most entrapping aspect of intimate partner abuse.
When a coercive control law identifies behaviors and not tactics of psychological abuse, the serious harm of psychological abuse gets overlooked.
Coercive Control Laws
Coercive control laws identified by WomensLaw (2025) include behaviors such as:
- Isolating someone from family, friends, or support networks.
- Controlling finances, profitable resources, or access to work opportunities.
- Monitoring daily activities, behaviors, or electronic communications.
- Depriving someone of basic needs, sleep, or medical attention.
- Threats of harm to children, relatives, or pets.
These are serious and harmful behaviors intended to dominate and control that grossly undermines a partner’s autonomy. They are also behaviors that are recognizable and measurable, perhaps more likely for someone to reveal evidence that coercive control exists in the relationship. This is tremendous progress in protecting those enduring this aspect of coercive abuse.
Psychological Harm
Psychological abuse of an intimate partner undermines one’s freedom in a very different way than recognized in the new laws of coercive control. Psychological abuse harms with hidden injuries that are not easily seen. Coercive tactics of control impact one’s life dramatically because they target a person’s thoughts, feelings, and perception—how they see things, a sense of self, view of the relationship and connection with the surrounding world. Often these subtle and difficult-to-identify tactics are often not readily seen by the recipient unless they know what they are.
Working with survivors of controlling partners in recovery, I hear over and over two profound losses that are endured—loss of trust in their own perception and judgment, and more encompassing, a loss of self. Many women who are mothers painfully identify from this transformed place, that they are not the mother they want to be. At the outset of recovery, the survivor doesn’t know how this harm occurred but they do sense a deep sadness and grief of what they lost along the way.
Recognizing Coercive Tactics of Psychological Abuse for Recovery
The gradual undermining by a coercive partner of a survivor’s well-being by degradation, gaslighting, blaming, etc. creates a damaging entrapment. The best protection for one’s self is trauma recovery. The first step to dismantle the entrapment is identifying the coercive tactics embedded in their partner’s behaviors. Also, seeing how each coercive tactic holds an intended psychological impact in the service of overpowering the victim.
As survivors unpack their abusive experience, they are dismantling their entrapment and can begin to see their coercive partner realistically. This process of recovery is reconnecting with a sense of self, feeling whole again, and gaining confidence in trusting their own perception. When this is accomplished, and often only then, survivors are able to determine what they need to do going forward.
This post first appeared on Psychology Today.
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