not as obvious but just as damaging 😞 #coercivecontrol #dvawareness #narcissisticabuse #emotionalabuse

There's a form of abuse that's just as psychologically damaging as physical violence. It leaves no bruises, it's rarely talked about, and most people don't even realize that it's happening to them. It's called coercive control. And it's what happens when somebody uses a pattern of behavior, not individual incidents, to dominate every aspect of your life. It can look like maybe monitoring your phone, controlling your money, isolating you from friends and family, dictating what you wear, who you see, where you go, making you feel like you need permission to exist almost. And none of these things leave marks, none of them would hold up as evidence in a conversation with someone who doesn't understand abuse. And that's exactly why they're so effective and so under-reported. But the psychological damage it causes is just as real, just as lasting, and just as hard to recover from as physical violence. So if somebody made you feel like you need permission just to be yourself, that was abuse. You don't need a bruise to prove it.