(this essay was published in counselling magazine)

This essay is written for trainee Counsellors, Counsellors, those who have survived Controlling and for those still in such relationships. In this I write regarding the behaviour of men who ‘control’ or attempt to control others. This I understand to mean men who manipulate others behaviour for their own gratification, this manipulation is coercive and covert in that their needs are (purposely) never clearly articulated. I do not suggest that all or some men wholly own this behaviour. (Women who control are discussed in an another essay) I’ve written this for people who have found themselves as targets for this behaviour, for those who have ‘walked away’ and for myself, as a survivor of such a relationship to help better understand these behaviours. This essay is part of a series given to Students on the Advanced Diploma in Counselling and Group Work I facilitated over the past two years. The essay focus on how individuals attempt to control others behaviour, within groups, one to one relationships and families.

The main issue to remember about controlling men is that their behaviour is always ‘somebody else’s’ problem.  Nobody else exists except them.  Theirs is a narcissistic way of being in the world; they hold a complete lack of empathy.  If they were to fully understand another’s ‘way of being in the world’ or that others existed independently, then they could not exercise control in the manner they do. if they receive empathy; they instead use it to further manipulate.  Any information given to a controller will rebound.  ‘Ah, but you said…’ and use whatever was said in such exchanges to further manipulate. Colloquially speaking, If you are familiar with the feeling of ‘walking on eggshells’ around somebody or being scared to speak in case you enraged that somebody further, then you know what I mean by this. Your attempts to understand, aid or empathise will be used to a controllers ends and not your own.

Their behaviour is similar to that of a drug pusher, they give only a little bit of the drug at the beginning, then slowly over time increase the dosage.  The idea of a drug pusher is to make the person dependent on them, so all actions by the controller are designed to strip away the independence of the person they wish to control.  The drug analogy works for me because it takes the intended victim into an altered state of consciousness and disconnects them from their friends, family, and the rest of the world. Also, unless the controlled person (your client) was raised within a manipulative environment then overt forms of control will repel them and the relationship is not entered into. I wish to underscore here, that on some level the controller recognises their behaviour as unacceptable and hence they need to seduce, slowly but surely over time their victim into victimhood.  So they entrap their victim into accepting that their worldview is the correct way of doing things. Clients after leaving such relationships will be puzzled how they became involved in such destructive relationships.

As a therapist my other way of looking at this is that it is like brutal army/navy training, the person is shocked by the demands made upon them, change of hair, clothes, behaviour, if you’re going to be with me, this is how you must be.  The person comes to accept a new regime and way of being entirely different from how they have been before. A seductive element of this, as with forces training, is that certainties abound. For those who need certainties or ‘right ways of being’ these relationships initially offer a certain kind of security. Having been in the Royal Navy I look back with fascination to the beliefs that I held unquestioningly and still hear expressed by friends still in the Navy. These beliefs offer certainties about the world and their (and once mine) place within it. To not hold the views held as certainties by the Navy (and in this essay controlling relationships) results in sanctions…

 What this does then is to place all knowledge, all authority and information with the controller. This reduces further the independence of the person being controlled. Cowardice enters here: Other people will know what the controller is like.  His family, friend’s etc will know what he is like but they too have become scared of the consequences if they go against whatever he wants.  The consequences can be silence, violence, going missing, sulking, communicating by notes, until eventually they learn to give up, much as the person being controlled learns to give up. Giving up is the: “anything for a quiet life, anything to keep him happy.”  This cowardice is two-edged; the first edge is dealing with the controller and not wanting to face the consequences of saying no. 

The second -and one in which we all play a part whether as Counsellors, Survivors or as passive bystanders-Is wholly our own in not wanting to face up to understanding that we have let somebody else have control over our lives. To face ourselves in this situation and to aid our clients, is to understand that we have allowed another’s needs and wishes precedence over our own. To find autonomy again can be a long hard road on which to trust others again may not be easy. Esteem can become so low that clients may have forgotten what their own needs, wants and wishes are.

My aim is not to disparage those who have entered into or endured these controlling relationships; cowardice will be the one of the last qualities they may accept about themselves. In that they may have suffered long and continuing violence, extreme hardships and broken bones and through misunderstanding regard themselves a brave person and that for them to leave such a relationship they regard themselves as cowardly. My point here is that endurance of these behaviours stems not from bravery but from misplaced loyalty that a controller promotes for his or her own needs. Experience of this behaviour suggests that controllers may not even recognise their violence for what it is, their victims will be seduced into not recognising this also. Violence then becomes casual; this increases in the victim a sense of unreality about their situation and thus allows the controller to escalate their violence… or even more sadly that the victim had a part in inviting such violence.

To walk away from this behaviour is bravery of the highest kind; to walk into the unknown from the known is true bravery. For those of us as onlookers, as friends or as therapists who wish to help break these patterns, this recognition must be made paramount: the controller may accuse their victim of being a coward by; ‘leaving before things are sorted…’ The victim is leaving what they have been seduced into knowing as ‘right ways to be’ and these ways of being offer their own kinds of security. Our role as people with honour, whether in helping roles or as humane human beings is to provide a helping recognition that the major problem within the relationship lies with the controller and that they have their behaviour because it works for them.

I find it best to remind would be survivors (clients) of controlling people is not to confront, contradict or conflict.  The only way is to ‘walk away’.  Any confrontation forces the controller further into being right, into defending his or her position, into being misunderstood, and anybody who would contradict is stupid. Any contradiction only serves as further vindication; to walk away is the only answer. Conflict is what controllers ‘do’ best, to enter the arena is to enter the controllers area of expertise.

From experience of working with clients who have left such relationships, when they walk away they are left with ‘it all went wrong’, ‘I did my best’, ‘if only I had done more’ and this is a hangover from their controlling training.  The controller wants them to feel like it was their fault, wants them to feel like they got it wrong, they could have done more if only they hadn’t been so stupid.  This game can go on for years after separation, after divorce, even after their controller has found a new victim. Support for survivors can be lengthy; self esteem once stripped in this way can take time to rebuild. Counsellors may be the only support that a survivor has; the controller will have worked at destroying other supports in order to reinforce their own control.

Children can be drawn into the game, as can friends and family. Remind clients not to expect too much support from the controller’s friends and family because they will be reminded of their own cowardice by your clients’ courage in walking away.  They may pass the odd message like: ‘we knew what he was like all along’, but they won’t engage in a lengthy conversation or lengthy correspondence, because this would exacerbate their relationship with the controller and if the controller were to discover a continuing relationship this would invite repercussions for them… The Controller needs to cut off these support networks because they may expose him for what he is. 

Part of the feelings after having left a controller will be of self-stupidity, again typical reactions may be: ‘how come I didn’t know? If only others had told me how they felt’.  All of these things, plus others, can add to a sense of self-stupidity.  However, it is really important to remember and remind clients to remember that the Controller’s existence happiness was the important issue in the relationship and that any information that did not fit what they wanted, would be chopped off; for example, if somebody said something disparaging about the controller’s behaviour, it was because there was something wrong with the speaker: malice, jealousy etc.  Also the controlled person would over time become increasingly isolated as all attention would be going towards the controller, there would be no space for this information to come in.  A common feature of this is that victims spend a lot of time and energy explaining away controllers actions, somehow making it right in the world for him to behave in that way.  Like saying at parties ‘Oh he didn’t mean that anyway’, or he would not turn up to the party and victims would have to make up an excuse for their non-attendance. Or typically they could not attend a social function because the controller had banned attendance in the threat of violence.

Party’s feature here as they are social events and these can be a source of anxiety for controllers: others may observe their behaviour and see it for what it is. Also, social events break down the isolation they have erected around their victim. It is important to remember is that this explaining away of behaviour continues for years afterwards, Culturally we are ‘not supposed to say nasty things about people.’  I think that’s OK to some extent, bearing in mind the concept of ‘non-judgementalism’ but we can tell our own truth and recognise that the relationship was controlling. To tell ‘the truth’ is embarrassing, to say as a client once could not: “he locked me in the bathroom, threatened to beat me if I came out, for years afterwards my sister thought that I had been ill on her 30th birthday party” In this instance it was only when she told her sister the truth was she able to fully recognise how she had been controlled in that relationship.

Hopefully when our client leaves the relationship, the controller will not be a controller in their next relationship and vitally for survivors it is important that the past, present and future behaviour of a controller has nothing to do with anyone but the controller himself. I believe it is important for all Trainees and Counsellors that If we can say it is not our problem in relationships that others are controlling, we are modelling the behaviour that it is possible to divorce from such relationships with emotional health. Clients can be encouraged to stop being controlled, to have to let ‘the other’ go, to walk away. That to be healthy, they will need to divorce themselves emotionally from the controlling person and say: ‘that’s who they were with us, how they are with the next person has got nothing to do with us. Any effort, any emotion, any time that we spend thinking about them and their actions puts us back into their controlling game.  They have managed to get us thinking about them and make them important.  We have to let them go.’ 

 Vitally for us as Counsellors we need to remember that when others or ourselves have become addicted to a drug, or been through a brutal training regime, it is hard to kick the habit

(c)neilbenbow