Briefly share your experience with intimate partner violence
I was in a long, abusive relationship that was incredibly coercive controlling and at the end included psychological, physical, and sexual abuse. It took me three attempts to leave and lasted almost the entirety of my 20s.
How do you think someone in this situation can find themselves again?
I found that sharing my story with safe loved ones and qualified therapists was essential. The more I talked about it the less shame I felt. In addition to the threats my abuser made, it was also the unjustified shame I felt at being in that relationship that helped keep me stuck. The more I was able to shed that shame, the more empowered I felt.
How do you think your experience could help others?
Awareness of what abuse is, what coercive control is, how it can look, how it can be really insidious, how it is not always “obvious” will hopefully be of help to others. While my abuser did very overt acts of violence (including strangulation) to me, I think the more covert and ongoing experiences that were much less obvious was the coercion and isolation and micro regulation as that kept me trapped for much longer. If people can learn about patterns of coercive control earlier in a new relationship, maybe they will have more options for safety.
