A changing sense of self in the context of coercive control

Abstract

The present study aimed to gain an insight into how women's sense of self change in the context of coercive control. Building on the previous literature of complex trauma, it pursued an understanding of how male violence is gradually structured in marriage, how women experience, react to, and cope up with such violence, and how their experiences and definitions of self are transformed throughout this processes. A qualitative methodology was used and in-depth interviews were conducted with nine women with histories of intimate partner violence, who had ended their relationships and were in therapy. The interviews were analyzed using grounded theory. It appeared that the participant women experienced marriage as a period of intense loneliness and enstrangement, with no space provided to exercise agency, and confronting repetitive rejections of their expectations of intimacy and closeness with their husbands. The partner, in overt or covert fashion, made the women feel incapable, useless, ignorant, as lacking of necessary resources, and unable to do things on their own, even unable to judge right from wrong on their own. Such a sense of self seemed to lead to both shame and guilt, in that feelings of shame was induced by perceiving self as defected, and feelings of guilt arose from perceiving self as leading the husband to inflict violence. The changes in the sense ofselfofthe women during marriage could be conceptualized as falling into one broad category of shame and doubt: doubt regarding one's own worth; doubt regarding one's strength, accomplishments and independence; and doubt regarding one's decency and competency. iii