I am always bowled over by the grit and courage of the women who share their story at our Unjudged® events. This was certainly true at our recent session as we stepped, for 60 minutes, into the real life a woman and her experience of 20 years of coercive control over her life.
Coercive control is a form of psychological abuse that seeks to undermine a person’s autonomy and sense of self. It often occurs in intimate relationships, but its impact can extend into professional settings, affecting workplace dynamics and employee well-being. Recognising the signs of coercive control and fostering a supportive environment is a crucial ability for colleagues and employers alike.
Coercive control is a crime, happening more often than you might imagine. There were 43,774 offences of coercive control recorded by the police in England and Wales (excluding Devon and Cornwall) in the year ending March 2023.
How do you know it is Coercive Control?
From the Unjudged story, we learned that coercive control involves a pattern of behaviours designed to instil fear, isolate, and manipulate a person. It can manifest in various ways, including emotional abuse, intimidation, financial control, and surveillance.
It can sometimes be a build-up of small behaviours such as showing displeasure to you through silence or stopping you from seeing a family member. It includes befriending friends and family and persuading them that you are dysfunctional in some way. Or it might be depriving you of basic needs, monitoring your activities and associations and being ever present such as phoning or messaging you frequently during the day. And it can involve taking over financial control and depriving you of autonomy over your spending and access to money.
And as a one-off action, it is easy to think some of these behaviours, whilst not acceptable, might be seen in many relationships at some point. But when they happen day after day, week after week, month after month, it is clear there is psychological abuse.
Because psychological abuse doesn’t leave visible marks, it can be tough to spot. Indeed, your friends and colleagues may have the impression that you are a competent and confident person acting in your own right.
Signs of Coercive Control
As we listened to the story of a coercive control playing out over many, many years we were asked to be on the lookout for some of the signs to watch for:
- Vulnerability: Perhaps through illness, bereavement, a chaotic and unsupportive home life, or the timing of events simply makes someone vulnerable, there is a window of opportunity for an abuser to step into a person’s life.
- Behaviours happen often: You notice patterns of behaviours in the person’s life that you imagine they are not choosing for themselves.
- Isolation: If a coworker seems to be pulling away from friends and family or isn’t joining in on social events like they used to, that could be a red flag. This might also mean they have no-one to discuss their concerns with or to help them leave the abusive relationship should they want to. They feel they have no-where else to go.
- Being Watched: If you notice someone is constantly checking their phone or seems anxious about being away from it, it might mean their partner is keeping tabs on them.
- Behaviour Changes: Sudden shifts in personality—like someone who was once bubbly becoming withdrawn—could signal they’re dealing with coercive control.
- Money Worries: If a colleague talks about feeling stressed about finances or doesn’t seem to have access to their own money, that’s worth noting.
- Avoiding Conflict: People under coercive control might steer clear of voicing their opinions or seem overly compliant. If someone is always agreeing with others just to keep the peace, that could be a sign.
- Frequent Absences: If a coworker often takes time off with vague explanations, it might signal they’re dealing with something serious.
It is not your fault
Probably the biggest takeaway I had from the Unjudged event was to never underestimate the power of accepting the person’s experience, that it happened and is possibly still happening to them.
Affirm and reaffirm to them, “It’s not your fault.” Broxtowe Women’s Project encapsulate how normal it is for people to blame themselves for abuse:
“He monitors your phone, withholds money, terrorises you, isolates you, calls you a mental slag. You will know this behaviour is abusive and wrong, but on some level, you may feel it’s partly your fault that he behaves like this. Your fault that he loses his temper, your fault he’s having an affair, your fault you didn’t try harder. If you’d only been more giving, shown more patience and loved him more, perhaps things would have been different.”
One of the key driving factors in all of this is FEAR. It is the fear, drilled into you by your abuser, that if you don’t comply with what they want, worse things will happen. This not only affects a person’s home and social life, but can track into their work too. It manifests often as people pleasing. An employee will take on additional work, not stand up to criticism, be overly compliant, because they are in fear of what might happen if they don’t. They have been conditioned by their abuser to behave in this way. These are the natural thought processes and behaviours in response to the experience of abuse.
Creating a supportive work environment
Whether you are the HR team, a leader or a colleague we each need to avoid making judgments about that person’s choices. Individuals in coercive relationships often face complex emotional and practical challenges. Our role is to provide a supportive work environment.
This might be to:
- Open Up the Conversation: Create a physical space in your organisation where employees can feel safe to talk about personal issues, and which is equipped with an external phone and a computer, so that they can access help. Regular check-ins or team-building activities can help foster trust.
- Provide Training: Offer training on spotting signs of coercive control and provide resources, like counselling services. Equipping people with knowledge opens up possibilities and choice.
- Set Clear Policies: Have clear policies. Whether on time off to explore options on what to do if you experience abuse outside of work, or policies aimed at workplace behaviours. Everyone should know they can speak out without worrying about repercussions. Sample policies are available to download (see Sharon’s Domestic Abuse Policy at https://domesticabuseeducation.co.uk/sharons-domestic-abuse-policy/)
- Encourage Seeking Help: If a coworker confides in you, gently suggest they reach out for professional help. Offer to help them find resources, counsellors, company policies or support groups.
- Respect Privacy: If someone shares their experience, keep it confidential. It’s important to protect their privacy and not discuss it with others, unless you are given clear permission to do so.
These might seem small actions to take. But having someone and somewhere safe to go could be the most helpful action you can take.
If you have been affected by the issues we have been discussing, we have curated some resources and links to organisations which are ready to provide support and advice. https://becoming.international/domestic-abuse-resources-amp-support/
