Coercive Control Quotes

“I have sometimes said to a client: “If you are so in touch with your feelings from your abusive childhood, then you should know what abuse feels like. You should be able to remember how miserable it was to be cut down to nothing, to be put in fear, to be told that the abuse is your own fault. You should be less likely to abuse a woman, not more so, from having been through it.” Once I make this point, he generally stops mentioning his terrible childhood; he only wants to draw attention to it if it’s an excuse to stay the same, not if it’s a reason to change.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“Abuse is a control tactic. It's aim is to break you and make you submit.”
― M. Wakefield, Are You In An Emotionally Abusive Relationship? (Special Edition for Men): Patterns of narcissistic abuse in the lives of men and boys.

“Beware those who sacrifice your happiness
on the altar of their beliefs.”
― John Mark Green

“The term 'flying monkey' is called 'abuse by proxy.' The flying monkeys do the bidding for a narcissist. The term flying monkey was coined in the movie The Wizard of Oz. The flying monkeys were under the wicked witches spell to gang up on poor Dorothy and her friends.”
― Dana Arcuri CTRC, Toxic Siblings: A Survival Guide to Rise Above Sibling Abuse & Heal Trauma

“The narcissist is a master of manipulation. To maintain the illusion of power over you, they employ the use of third parties to gaslight you, manipulate you, and to bully you. They try to groom your friends, family, children, spouse, or intimate partner from the moment they meet them. Initially, the narcissist is testing them. To see how strong your other relationship bonds are in effort to triangulate them.”
― Dana Arcuri CTRC, Toxic Siblings: A Survival Guide to Rise Above Sibling Abuse & Heal Trauma

“I let him take everything, until there was nothing left for him to take.”
― Eleanor Moran, Too Close For Comfort

“People don't make decisions within these sorts of groups. They try to avoid more torture. Then they are tortured into thinking they made a decision of their own free will.”
― Wendy Hoffman, White Witch in a Black Robe: A True Story About Criminal Mind Control

“And when he refused to tell her he loved her after having sex, she broke all the dishes until her arms bled and the medics took her away. And he sat and blew Arabesques of smoke.”
― Alan Kaufman , Matches: A Novel

“She thinks he represents security. She thinks he might change and be kind to her. She pities him; that enslaves her.”
― Elizabeth Harrower, The Watch Tower

“Adult intimate abuse is a process of seduction and coercion, founded on mind-control, by which an abuser establishes and maintains dominance over the partner. Continued abuse is possible, and maintained, by the abusive person's persistent and effective, lying, denying, and re-directing of blame.”
― Don Hennessy, Steps to Freedom: Escaping Intimate Control

“I interpreted his heartbeat to be some sort of Morse code for his feelings, but maybe I was imagining substance where there was only air.”
― Megan Farison, Dissonance

“Domestic violence – the warning signs
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Common abusive behaviours set out in Power and Control:

• Jealousy and possessiveness.

• Humiliating and insulting you in front of others.

• Sabotaging your relationship with friends and family.

• Sudden changes of mood – charming one minute and abusive the next.

• Monitoring your movements, insisting on time limits when you do things, checking your phone, social networks and spending.

• Controlling what you wear and eat (so subtly, you don’t see it happening).

• Blaming you for the abuse (“I’m not like this with anyone else!” “You make me like this.”)

• Expecting you to have sex when you don’t want to, including when you’re ill or asleep.

• Damaging your treasured possessions.

• Harming or threatening to harm family pets.

• Driving recklessly to frighten you.

• Threatening to kidnap or get custody of the children if you leave.

• Telling you you’re useless and could never cope without him.

• Dominating how you feel – whether that’s happy, afraid or frightened. Having the power to make you constantly change your behaviour to avoid his “displeasure”.”
― The Guardian

“The concern with sibling rivalry is when it turns into sibling abuse. The core root of sibling abuse is the intent to harm and control the other sibling. Instead of it being a periodic incident, the abuse becomes a repeated pattern. This could carry on for months, years, and even decades. Or it could last a lifetime.”
― Dana Arcuri CTRC, Toxic Siblings: A Survival Guide to Rise Above Sibling Abuse & Heal Trauma

“This gives a whole new meaning to ‘family mobbing.’ According to author and survivor, Stephanie A. Sellers, Ph.D, who wrote the book, Daughters Healing from Family Mobbing: Stories and Approaches to Recovery from Shunning, Aggression, and Family Violence, “Family Mobbing is a group act of aggression that targets a family member. It can be typified by a single act of violence or a pattern of abuse over years. Whether isolated or long-term, mobbing enforces the family’s domination and control over another. As family members continue to tyrannize their target, the aggressive group may expand to include friends, neighbors, business associates, and clergy. Family Mobbing encompasses varied acts of aggression that cannot be understood by examining one motivation or cause. The pattern of behavior always isolates one family member and inflicts as much emotional pain as possible. Unlike sibling rivalry, the intention is to establish superiority or to provoke fear and distress. Factors to consider include the motives, the degree of severity, a power of imbalance, victimization element, physical injuries, and trauma.”
― Dana Arcuri CTRC, Toxic Siblings: A Survival Guide to Rise Above Sibling Abuse & Heal Trauma

“Sibling abuse didn’t just happen to you. It didn’t only happen to me. It has happened to millions upon millions of people worldwide. Let that sink in…

According to the website, Hope4Siblings.com, “In America alone, there are over 40 million sibling abuse survivors. Society pays a huge price when sibling abuse is not given attention and goes uncorrected in lives of many adults. The over-learned maladaptive coping skills generated by an abusive sibling can affect adulthood. Because of sibling abuse, victimization occurred again in their childhoods through bullying. Sibling abuse is often directly connected to the formation of adult personality.”
― Dana Arcuri CTRC, Toxic Siblings: A Survival Guide to Rise Above Sibling Abuse & Heal Trauma

“The dysfunctional family relationships are disastrous. Poisonous. There can't be reconciliation. We cannot restore a destructive relationship with abusive siblings when they won't repent. Repentance requires them to turn away from their transgressions and evil schemes. In most cases, toxic siblings won't repent.”
― Dana Arcuri CTRC, Toxic Siblings: A Survival Guide to Rise Above Sibling Abuse & Heal Trauma

“Family mobbing is a strategic process of power and coercive control. What makes mobbing so insidious - and so underreported - is that here, the family is the site of violence, trauma, and shame.”
― Dana Arcuri CTRC, Toxic Siblings: A Survival Guide to Rise Above Sibling Abuse & Heal Trauma

“Sibling triangulation is a heartless form of manipulation in which one person seeks to control a three-person interpersonal situation for their selfish needs. It can involve the use of threats of exclusion or strategies tom divide and conquer. Sibling triangulation may involve narcissistic abuse. The narcissist could be your father, mother, sibling, partner, spouse, relative, friend, co-worker, boss, or someone else.”
― Dana Arcuri CTRC, Toxic Siblings: A Survival Guide to Rise Above Sibling Abuse & Heal Trauma

“Chris's apartment was like a time capsule, and every time I stepped through the door I became one of its many preserved fixtures, reprising my role as the submissive starry-eyed girl, again and again and again.”
― Megan Farison, Dissonance

“We lived separate lives, but I believed wholeheartedly that we shared the same reality.”
― Megan Farison, Dissonance