A mother of two in the middle of a custody battle sits in a family court hearing waiting to find out whether she’ll be granted protection for her children after having detailed the emotional abuse and coercively controlling behaviors of their father and her soon-to-be ex-husband. She’s endured years of her spouse surveilling her, limiting her access to their finances, and sabotaging her connections to loved ones.
Her children have endured years of devaluation and have carried the emotional burden of soothing their father’s anger and resentment. She hasn’t slept in weeks, particularly during the times her children were with their father. While the younger daughter, just three years old, had cried during the handoffs, the older daughter had protested these visits so vehemently that a neighbor had asked if she needed to call the police. Now, their father is filing a claim of parental alienation against her.
She’s sweating following testimony that unsettled her deeply by exposing her mental health records and highlighting her trauma. She looks anxious, unreliable, punitive. Her spouse, in contrast, appears rational, calm, and composed. She holds her breath. And then, the ruling arrives. The judge declares that there’s no evidence of abuse, but that there is evidence she’s “alienating the children.” In a matter of seconds, she’s lost full custody of her children to the abuser she’s been desperately trying to protect them from.
Our field is failing the victims of emotional abuse. I believe this is happening, at least in part, because we’ve been trained to see clients’ stories as highly subjective, even distorted, especially when it comes to their perceptions of their own relationships and the role they play in creating certain patterns. Another factor is that we’ve been trained to focus on the individual in front of us, rather than on the people with whom they have relationships. These default settings in therapy make sense in many situations, but not when it comes to uncovering the depth of clients’ vulnerability in coercively controlling dynamics.
Even when it occurs to us that a client’s significant other could be the problem in a relationship, and may be abusive, we still err on the side of keeping the focus on our client. Do they need to set better boundaries? What patterns in their past led them to choose this person? Or maybe we second-guess our clinical judgment. After all, we’re only hearing one side of the story. If we voice our suspicion of emotional abuse, we wonder, are we jeopardizing our reputation, ethical codes, and clinical objectivity? There’s no physical aggression here. Surely, my client’s partner doesn’t share this perspective. Even if he’s a bit manipulative or controlling, is that really so bad?
I’m here to tell you it is.
Much of my clinical work involves treating survivors of coercive control—now considered a form of intimate terrorism since it subjugates the target by eroding their autonomy, resistance, independence, and sense of empowerment. Because I consult with private attorneys on cases within the family court system, serve as an expert witness, and give peer-review custodial evaluations, I have a unique perspective on how our work as therapists can help or harm the victims of coercive control who end up in court.
Coercive Control and Mandated Reporting
In the early 2000s, sociologist and forensic social worker Evan Stark illuminated the dynamics of coercive control through his award-winning research, which led several states, including California, to pass laws that help provide protective orders to victims of this form of abuse. Still, many people—including therapists—remain puzzled by the concept of coercive control. After all, there’s a fine line between being controlling and exercising coercive control, and it can sometimes be hard to parse.
In 2017, when someone asked me to present at a California Marriage and Family Therapist chapter meeting on narcissistic abuse and coercive control, I was ready to decline the invitation, weary of how the topic would be received. At that time, many clinicians didn’t even believe it was a real interpersonal pattern. But because the topic was generating interest on social media, I agreed to share about it from a clinical and empirical perspective. After the presentation, a line of people wanting to ask me questions snaked out of the room and down the hallway. At one point, someone exclaimed loudly, “Why aren’t we talking about this more?” I decided we should be.
Years later, though our field now has an operational definition of coercive control, it’s often undermined by a legal system that places the burden of proof on victims—a losing setup, since emotional maltreatment is hard to prove and easy for an abuser to dispute. I’ve heard countless lawyers ask, “Doesn’t a husband have the right to keep tabs on his wife? Isn’t it interesting that the accuser is speaking up, now that her partner has cut off her access to credit cards?” I’ve even heard judges say to victims, “Well, you decided to have children with him. I can’t really feel sorry for you.”
When it comes to our work as clinicians, the waters are equally murky and full of pitfalls. Legal mandates provide basic guidelines regarding our responsibility to report abuse vs. maintain confidentiality, but they don’t factor in the nuances of every context or situation, nor the fact that, although we might encourage victims to report emotional forms of abuse, when they do, departments of children and family services and law-enforcement agencies frequently categorize these reports as unsubstantiated. These reports then leave victims fully exposed, increasing the likelihood that their abusers will retaliate.
It doesn’t help that many clinicians are quick to subconsciously pathologize emotional-abuse victims by filtering what clients share through clinical assumptions. She has a trauma background. She’s extra sensitive. Her black-and-white thinking is shaping her perceptions. I wonder if codependency is at play. We should focus on helping her figure out where she went wrong, right?
Wrong! Clinical work with abuse victims should initially focus on establishing physical safety, then on regaining the mental and bodily autonomy that’s lost in complex trauma. If the treatment focus is the client’s poor judgment and lack of insight—and the session notes reflect the therapist’s perceptions that the abuse is the result of the victim’s own cognitive distortions, poor emotion-regulation skills, and past traumas—this information can be used against them in court.
So when we must follow our mandate to report, how can we make sure we aren’t further harming clients? Only disclose necessary information relevant to the abuse. For example, if we find that a minor has been subjected to similar forms of abuse as the mother, we might need to make a mandated child-abuse report, but it should only include details about the abuse and not about the mother’s historical records or past mental health treatment.
When Therapists Side with the Abuser
A therapist may be the only person in a client’s life who can help them identify confusing, toxic behavioral patterns. This doesn’t mean you jump to diagnose your client’s partner, or insist your client convince their partner to receive a psychological evaluation. Most antagonistic and maladaptive personality styles are never diagnosed. And even when they are, psychological evaluations of abusers frequently fail to accurately assess domestic violence. Personality pathology is often viewed as prejudicial, so evaluators are wary of asserting it exists and tend to sidestep it.
Sarah, a woman in her 40s, came to see me after a series of YouTube videos helped her realize she’d been experiencing coercive control over the course of a 20-year marriage with a verbally and emotionally abusive husband, who was the CEO of a Fortune 500 corporation and fighting her tooth and nail in family court. They had three children, who were now in early adulthood. Thankfully, she wasn’t having to deal with a custody battle, but she was grappling with financial abuse, legal abuse, chronic fatigue, isolation from friends who’d chosen her husband’s side, and depression.
Before meeting her husband, she’d been a successful writer in Hollywood and had considered herself ambitious, autonomous, and empathic. Soon after her marriage, things changed behind closed doors. Sarah got pregnant, and little by little came to feel alone in her relationship. Her husband often rolled his eyes when she talked about her work, criticized her friends and the way she interacted with them, and told her she was being “unpleasant” when she voiced unhappiness with how he communicated with her. He traveled for work, and there was evidence he was being unfaithful, but he denied it for years, calling her paranoid and anxious.
When Sarah became depressed, she shared the truth of her relationship with some close friends, who mostly downplayed the severity of the situation because her husband came across as friendly. To them, he was stable and vibrant, while she was often nervous and distracted. When she mentioned the demeaning things he’d said about her in front of their kids over the years, some seemed shocked that she’d stay with someone who’d treat her that way, while others saw her disclosures as a form of revenge for her unhappiness. Either way, she felt like she was wearing a sandwich board that said weak on one side and poisonous on the other.
The advice she read online acknowledged how common it is to feel isolated and dead in a long-term relationship, offering tools and phrases couples could use to connect more and even heal from infidelity. The implication was that what she was experiencing was normal, and there were ways to fix it. But every time she tried to sit down with her husband—openly, honestly, authentically—he’d insist he was the victim of her neediness (or coldness, depending on the conversation), and that their children were victims of her anxious parenting. His criticisms wore her down to the point where she’d end up apologizing for things she hadn’t done wrong—which only left her feeling worse.
Eventually, Sarah got her husband to agree to couples therapy by allowing him to choose their therapist, but the experience was anything but healing. The therapist grew to prefer her husband, who seemed deferential and engaged in the work, compared to Sarah, who in one session could go from being despondent to desperate and defensive. The therapist regularly challenged Sarah on her lack of forgiveness and rigidity, and claimed she needed to take equal accountability for the toxic dynamic in the relationship—a common misstep therapists make with coercively controlled clients.
When Sarah finally worked up the courage to end therapy, her husband accused her of being the reason the marriage wasn’t working. After all, he’d been a compliant client and was open to continuing with their therapist. Sarah had hoped to experience safety and validation in therapy, but the opposite had happened. The experience had destabilized her further. Now she was facing a traumatizing divorce, in which her husband was showing her no mercy. Instead of being able to heal, she lived in fear of her future and how the separation would affect her financially and emotionally.
Documenting Coercive Control
As Sarah shared her story with me, along with the details of her couples sessions, my first concern was related to how her former therapist had documented sessions. Haphazard or biased documentation can injure coercive-control victims in court. I was acutely aware that if Sarah’s former therapist’s notes were subpoenaed, she’d likely come across as delusional, petty, punitive, and symptomatic. In other words, she—not her partner—would be painted as the problem.
So what’s the best way to document cases where coercive control is an issue? The short answer is, carefully. Often, all we have to work with are diagnoses that overpathologize clients or place them in a category that doesn’t address the chronic relational trauma they’ve endured. This can lead to ineffective and sometimes harmful treatment plans, as well as issues with custody in court cases where a coercive-control victim has children. Survivors are often mandated to attend treatment and undergo multiple psychological evaluations. Indeed, after years of living with repressed feelings, a weakened sense of self, and basic biopsychosocial needs unmet, they often exhibit more visible symptomology than the perpetrators of abuse.
So although there’s no one-size-fits-all protocol for documenting sessions with clients struggling with coercive control, there are a few guiding principles:
Describe the abuser’s behaviors. Clearly and briefly, I describe the general situation and behavior patterns my client has revealed that align with the statutes of coercive control. I also highlight elements of the partner’s actions that align with narcissistic and antisocial personality disorder, though I don’t diagnose them or assign those labels.
Focus on the client’s premorbid mental and emotional state. I describe how the client developed their symptoms, the course of their life in relation to the abuse, and most importantly, what they were like before they lost their sense of agency and personal freedom.
Share the big picture. Paint an entire picture, rather than just reporting a snapshot in time, but avoid details that could be skewed or weaponized. For example, a client who’d endured years of emotional abuse in her marriage once came to me after her therapist had failed to assert privilege on her behalf when opposing counsel had subpoenaed her session notes. Because the notes included intimate details about her childhood—her father had become HIV positive and had hid it from the family until he was close to death—she was viewed as unstable because she’d grown up in an environment filled with secrets and lies. The court concluded she’d been projecting her past trauma onto the current relationship with her husband.
Educate your clients about the legal ramifications of trauma diagnoses. Courts can use trauma diagnoses against a client—which is itself a perpetuation of trauma. When I begin working with a new client, I discuss the legal risks of trauma work with them and ask if they’d prefer I keep specific details related to their past out of my notes. I explain that I can’t pick and choose which notes I supply the court with if they’re subpoenaed, but that I can do my documentation without providing intimate, irrelevant, or potentially damaging details.
Do document. As intimidating as it can be to document in these cases, not documenting isn’t a solution. Failure to document can jeopardize a client’s credibility. In Sarah’s case, I began documenting her treatment with me in a way that identified her complex post-traumatic stress related to her marriage. I was clear and specific about how I believed her former couples therapist had perpetuated it. Thankfully, her case never ended up having a hearing, mostly because her children weren’t minors. But if it had, the court would’ve gotten a reliable narrative that reflected the truth of the coercively controlling dynamics she’d experienced and their impact on her mental health.
If you’re subpoenaed. Many therapists feel anxious when they’re subpoenaed or asked to go to court. If this happens to you, don’t be overly intimidated by attorneys. Your duty is to let opposing counsel know you’ve received the subpoena. Don’t give a report for fear of losing your license, unless this disclosure is clearly mandated by our reporting laws. Protect your client and yourself by keeping documents or information private unless your client and their attorney have waived privilege.
Once you’ve responded to a subpoena, contact your client immediately. Let opposing counsel know you’re asserting privilege. The only time you ever have to hand over documents is if a judge issues a court order that overrules your assertion of privilege. If this occurs, a clinician still has the right to appeal because they believe producing these documents could harm their client. If you appeal and the judge concludes that your concern for your client is warranted, they’ll allow you to maintain your client’s confidentiality.
We’re Clinicians, Not Investigators
Unfortunately, our court system isn’t friendly to victims of coercive control. Though there’s been some progress regarding laws of protection in certain states, definitions of emotional maltreatment remain ambiguous, and there are real risks to reporting it.
When I spoke recently at a conference for the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, my sense was that many judges are developing a better understanding of how exposing a victim’s mental health can perpetuate trauma and abuse. But statistically, mothers remain likelier to lose custody of their children after alleging abuse against an ex-partner because it’s assumed they’re embellishing the allegations. In other words, in a court setting, judges tend to minimize allegations of abuse based on heuristic methods and research claiming that children do best when both parents have equal influence in their lives. The reality is that this research is simplistic and doesn’t account for abusive dynamics.
This is scary stuff! One client said to me, “I saw some posts about a good mother who lost all custody of her kid because her ex was a narcissist who lied in court. I’m terrified. I’d rather be in an emotionally abusive relationship than not see my kid.”
So how can you relay the important information clients need to hear about leaving their coercively controlled relationships without becoming a messenger of grim fate and instilling further helplessness and hopelessness? We may be unable to change the court system, but as clinicians, we can teach emotional-regulation skills that empower clients to focus on concrete strategies and make important decisions.
I believe Sarah’s healing in therapy began after I spoke these words: Sarah, I believe you. Some clinicians are scared to validate too quickly because in rare situations, a client might exaggerate or lie about abuse. Those cases are the exception rather than the rule. We’re serving our clients far better by assuming that what they’re sharing is what they’re experiencing. I’m not saying they don’t play a part in interpersonal dynamics: they must eventually reflect on the silent agreements they made with an abuser over the course of their relationship. But first, they need to feel seen, heard, and validated.
Because many therapists have been trained to feel safer seeing themselves as arbiters of objective truth and distancing themselves from clients’ version of events, I tell my graduate students, “We’re clinicians, not investigators.” By providing validation, we provide the safety clients need to access self-compassion—something many victims can’t do while with their abuser. Validation doesn’t violate ethical codes; if anything, it supports our commitment to them.
Sure, responsibility and accountability are important parts of growth, and we can help clients identify and change certain harmful choices and patterns. But we have to realize that many of the choices coercively controlled clients have made in their relationships were based on survival. Advocating for themselves, or even being their authentic selves, wasn’t safe. Maybe they were raised to think they had to be “the bigger person” in the relationship. Maybe they felt their children’s well-being hinged on their keeping the peace. Whatever the case, they were robbed of autonomy, and therapy has the power to change that.
I’ve found it best to be transparent with clients about my interpretation of subjugating patterns of behavior while also emphasizing hopeful possibilities. I tell them that I can’t predict what will happen in the future, but progress isn’t solely measured by outcomes in court. Rather, it’s marked by whether they can reengage with parts of themselves that were lost to a coercively controlling partner. Autonomy isn’t necessarily granted by a judge; it can be about feeling in control of thoughts, feelings, and reactions, even in small, everyday stressful exchanges.
As Sarah and I explored her sense of autonomy, we often ran up against her commitment to positivity. Her parents had rarely had disagreements, at least not in front of her, and had taught her to forgive easily and find beauty in things, no matter what. Anger was foreign to her. She believed it had no place in her life and relationships. One day, I asked, “Where’s your anger toward your husband?” This opened up a conversation about whether anger could be productive and healing instead of shame-ridden and threatening. Allowing herself to feel anger toward her husband helped her feel stronger during the divorce process.
Coercive control can be hard to recognize, but it’s not invisible. Historically, we’ve been left scrambling to defend and justify abuse survivors’ claims, and we’ve thereby allowed perpetrators to get away with the greatest gaslighting trick of all: convincing courts that the abuse never occurred. My work, my passion, is to make sure all therapists understand how much their work matters in exposing this trick, not only in the therapy room, but in the courtroom.
Catherine Barrett
Catherine Barrett, PhD, is a clinical forensic psychologist in Los Angeles specializing in coercive control, CPTSD, and court-ordered evaluation reviews. Contact: cbpsychological.com.
