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Introduction to Coercive Control · Inside The Consulting Room - Understanding the Child Behind the Behaviour

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome back.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: This is Kim Lee, child and adolescent psychotherapist.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: And we're continuing the series entitled Dangerous Relationships.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: So far, we've looked at particular clear types, those where addiction may be present, where narcissistic behavioural traits or disorder may be concerned.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: And we've looked at a more complex and harder to recognize type, which is the sociopathic or the person who has sociopathic tendencies.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: And we've we've kind of looked into those things from a clinical point of view, but I I think, as I've said in all of these episodes, none of them are intended to help you to diagnose those things.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: And in some ways, the diagnosis is less important than the lived experience for the person or people who on the who are on the receiving end.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: So now I want to move into another kind of dangerous relationship, which is very complex because maybe maybe it's the case that all of the uh conditions I've talked about and the different patterns may be present, but maybe to a lesser extent.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: And in a sense, they all carry the same consequences, and that is that the person or people who are inside, who are locked inside these relationships, suffer considerably.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so with that in mind, I want to turn my attention to the question of coercive, manipulative, and emotionally abusive relationships, the damage they do, what they look like, what it's like being inside them, and how we then move away from them.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm saying moving away because it's I I don't really want to encourage anybody to believe that by staying in a relationship of that kind and simply learning how to manage it is necessarily a good thing.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: So the the moving away, I think, is both internal and quite often the movement is a literal one.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to revisit a concept that I introduced a while back.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now it may very well be that this is a concept that has been used and is used, underpins helping people to change anyway, but but it's something I came up with, and it's the three R's, and they stand for recognition, reckoning, and recovering.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd like to start with asking a simple question.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: How do intelligent, thoughtful, compassionate people gradually find themselves living lives they would once have believed were impossible?
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: How does someone who was once confident begin doubting every decision they make?
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: How does someone who was once independent begin by asking permission for things they'd never previously questioned?
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: How does someone who was once joyful begin walking on eggshells?
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: And perhaps the most painful question of all, how does love slowly become fear?
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: And these are the questions really that give birth to this series.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now, over the many years I've worked as a child and adolescent psychotherapist, I have met countless children, parents, couples, and families whose lives have been profoundly shaped by abusive, manipulative, and coercively controlling relationships.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: And one thing has become increasingly clear to me that very few of these relationships began with abuse.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Quite often it would be the opposite.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: They begin with hope, affection, possibility, excitement, being seen, feeling understood.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's one of the reasons why abusive relationships can be so difficult to recognize.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: Because the abuse rarely arrives all at once.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: It develops gradually.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: One conversation at a time, one criticism at a time, broken promises, subtle manipulations, until one day the person living inside the relationship notices that something has changed.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Not necessarily in the other person, but in themselves.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: Their confidence has diminished, their world has become smaller, their friendships have become fewer, their thoughts are increasingly occupied by somebody else's moods, reactions, and expectations.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: And without consciously deciding to do so, they've begun organizing their emotional lives around another person's psychological world.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: And to me, that's probably one of the most defining characteristics of an abusive relationship.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: Not simply that someone behaves badly, but that the other person's psychological freedom is gradually reduced.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the freedom to think independently or the freedom to disagree, to make decisions without fear, freedom to maintain friendships, and freedom to trust judgment, your own judgment, and just to be yourself.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why this series is not really about dangerous people, it's about dangerous relational patterns, because abuse can occur in many different forms.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's obvious, sometimes it's almost invisible, sometimes it is physical, most often it's psychological, sometimes it's loud, sometimes it's quiet.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it comes through intimidation, others through guilt, sometimes through dependency or charm, fear.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Different methods, same outcome.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: And that is the gradual erosion of another person's emotional freedom.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: So throughout this series, we will explore several relationship patterns that may become organized around manipulation, control, and exploitation.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: We'll look a little more at addiction, where an illness can gradually become the organizing principle of a family.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: We'll return to narcissistic personality organization and asking another person's how another person's need to protect themselves can slowly undermine everybody else.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: And also we'll look back at the sociopathic and antisocial patterns where relationships become organized less around the emotional connection and more about advantage and exploitation.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll spend time considering coercive control itself.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's the psychological architecture that often underpins abusive relationships, regardless of diagnosis.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to return to the fact that this is not for diagnostic purposes.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: This is really for people who find themselves or know of people who have found themselves in these damaging relationships.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I think really this has to do with recognition.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: It has to do with recognizing patterns, because recognition is where the recovery begins.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I think this particular function, recognizing, is often surprisingly difficult because it's the moment someone begins asking, perhaps it isn't me.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps what I'm experiencing or have experienced isn't normal.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: And perhaps the relationship has been changing me in ways that I never saw or understood.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: Recognition isn't necessarily dramatic, it can be slow and gradual, tentative, and also with with it with the likelihood of returning back to the way you've been used to being, somebody who has accepted, who has normalized what's happening.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: But I think what then happens is once the recognition comes to the surface, then something else replaces it.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's the reckoning.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: Reckoning is a kind of acceptance that precedes action.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: It often involves grief, anger, pain.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's not an easy stage to go through, but it's necessary because it is the one that precedes healthy recovery.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: The reckoning sometimes involves taking action.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: It sometimes involves saying the things you've never been able to say in the knowledge that what you're saying isn't a discussion point, it's not a question, it's a statement, it's clear.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: And it's you owning what you have experienced at the hands of another.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: And this is necessary because recovery is the final phase.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: And recovery is not about returning necessarily to the person you were, maybe some elements of the person you were.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: But actually, recovery is about redefining and reshaping who you want to be.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it involves defining boundaries, discovering the freedom to become yourself, developing the confidence in your own judgment and trusting in your own perceptions.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: Before we end this introductory episode, I want to say that as a therapist, I can't speak about dangerous relationships without speaking about children.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: Because obviously, children who grow up in environments of this kind really do need to be considered.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: They need to be understood through the eyes of the child.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: We need to think about how to protect such children.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: We need to think about what they internalize, the divisions that occur inside them.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I will always return to this, principally because I'm a child and adolescent psychotherapist.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: But I think also it's because when a person is in a relationship of this kind, their wider vision is restricted or redefined by the person who is abusing them.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: And that means that although a person may have an awareness of the effect upon the children, the person who's responsible for controlling and using coercion is likely to reframe that awareness or even deny it.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll look at that in more detail as the series progresses.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: This is a very meaningful series for me, and it is not theoretical.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: It comes as a consequence of much experience of helping people through these incredibly difficult and toxic situations.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes that's in the confines of the consulting room, other times it can be in court where I'm giving evidence where in family law settings.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: But it also means that I'll be communicating with safeguarding services where there is a risk of emotional harm to the child because the relationship, the family relationship, and the coercive control has seeped into them in different ways.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: So it's something I take very seriously, and it's something which I perhaps unfairly, but it's something I'm on the lookout for in new cases.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I notice in the consulting room the behavior of parents when they come for first consultation.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm listening to what is being said, and listening to all of the parts of the case history, but I'm also listening to what's not being said.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: And there are times when I will see behaviors between the parents which demonstrate to me that something isn't right.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: And it is it sadly, it's very unusual for that kind of observation to be inaccurate almost always when I see something.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: I think something isn't right, and very often that's the case.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: It may not be that I know what it is, but I can see that something isn't right.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: It could be the way that the couple don't look at each other.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: It could be how one of them is being very careful when they're talking about the other.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: When I see people overexplain, when I see one person interrupting or correcting what the other person is saying.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: So these may seem like subtle individual things, but very often what I see is a repetition of those behaviors, which prompts me to stop the session and to, or maybe not stop the session, but to change direction slightly.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: So this comes from those experiences, but also working with individuals who have a history of relational abuse.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: It is normally the victims who I do that with because the perpetrators tend not to like what I do very much.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: So I really hope that this series is something which will, even if it's not directly relevant to you, I'm fairly confident it will be relevant to somebody you know.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: Or you suspect it's relevant to someone you know.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: And in that case, please let them know about this particular series.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening, and I'll join you for the first episode soon.