MAY 3, 2024
Understanding the Trauma Reactions Children May Have While Living in a Home or Sharing Custodial Time with a Coercive Controller
Flight:
Flight is not just about physical escape; it’s a psychological response to perceived danger. Children who exhibit flight responses may seem driven and high-achieving, but underneath, they are often using their accomplishments as a shield against what they are feeling intuitively in their bodies: unsafe.
Children exhibiting this response may engage in high-achieving behaviors, overwork themselves, or even resort to reckless behavior or substance use as a means of escape. These children may feel intense pressure to excel, fearing that any perceived failure could lead to further harm or rejection.
Protective parents should attempt to recognize when their child’s drive for perfection or constant business may be a coping mechanism rooted in the trauma of living in a home with a coercive controller or simply spending time with a coercive controller.
When our children are doing exceptionally well, they are excelling in a particular area, perhaps in their academics or “thriving” in their favorite sport or instrument. Ask yourself: Is it also a coping mechanism? Are they hyper-focused on this? Obsessive? Are they feeling pressured to meet certain expectations? Are they feeling overwhelmed with the parental subsystem relational dynamics or the coercive controller’s exertion over them and therefore regulating in this way?
Freeze:
Freeze is characterized by emotional numbness and dissociation from reality. Children in freeze may avoid confronting their feelings or memories, retreating into a world of distractions to escape the pain.
Children in freeze mode appear detached or dismissive of their experiences, opting to avoid conflict and discomfort at all costs.
They immerse themselves in distractions to the point where the protective parent may feel they have an “addiction” and obsessiveness about this distraction. For example, excessive screen time or other immersions in themselves, such as playing the piano excessively, may cause them to appear outwardly calm or indifferent, masking their inner turmoil with a facade of apathy.
In this technological world, it’s hard to tell: are they disassociating, addicted, or simply being a teen? Of course, other addictions, such as substance use, vaping, etc., may occur when self-medication feels better than addressing the harm someone has experienced.
As protective parents, it’s crucial to recognize when our children’s pursuit of success becomes a means of evasion. While academic or athletic achievements are undoubtedly commendable, they shouldn’t come at the expense of our children’s well-being.
Keep in mind that children know, even subconsciously, that the love from the coercive controller is conditional. There is a great deal of betrayal in this experience—a loss that creates grief—since children rely on their caretakers for unconditional love.
Our goal is to show them that they do not need to be perfect and that there are alternative ways to cope with their loss.
We show them this by role-modeling it for them. And in that, we begin to heal our brains, and they, with our support, ever so slowly, or perhaps, if we are lucky, more quickly, begin to heal their brains too.
As protective parents, creating a safe space where our children feel heard and validated is essential. We must recognize their emotional numbness and support them in acknowledging it and the underlying trauma that may be driving this behavior. We must be gentle in this process and ensure they feel safe sharing their experiences. When we gently encourage our children to share their feelings and process their experiences, ensuring we are attuned to them, is it the right time? How much should I plan to spend?
Children are often having the same reactions that their protective parent has had.
In the Voice of a Child
In the voice of the child, and as research affirms, growing up in a home with a coercive controller has significantly impacted my developing brain. I learned early on that I must regulate my behaviors like the protective parent has in order to support creating equilibrium in my home. Walking on eggshells is a part of my life.
No one really notices there is abuse by the coercive controller because the abuse is all too often insidious. Physical violence does not have to be the defining characteristic of abuse. As a matter of fact, it often is not until it is. This consistent regulation of my behavior has caused hypervigilance in me.
It may cause me to be easily stressed. To have toxic stress, to be dysregulated, to have attention difficulties, obsessive behaviors, anxiety, and, of course, depression. Some may diagnose me with a disability—all because they do not see the trauma I’ve experienced. Like the adult victim didn’t see her abuse, I don’t recognize mine.
Society fails to acknowledge abuse unless it is violent in some way. Yet research affirms that abuse that is not physically violent causes just as much suffering.
Sadly, this coping that I learned early on in life may lead me to relationships with controlling people and/or to be controlling in order to feel safe.
When I cannot feel safe in my own home, my self-worth is diminished. My ability to adapt to challenging situations is compromised. I’m sure you can understand. The developing brain is just that. Developing.
This is what the coercive controller wants. For me to be compromised. If I am compromised, I will more readily align with the coercive controller and may even participate in some of the behaviors being modeled for me. Aligning often feels safer. My protective parent, stripped of her autonomy, may be unable to advocate for herself.
Of course, when systems do not support her, she remains trapped. I quickly learned there is one parent with more power in the home. I quickly learned that it may be safer to align with the more powerful parent. The grooming process is similar to that of a sexual predator for both me and my protective parent.
Sometimes, the coercive controller is a child sexual predator. No matter what, the betrayal is significant. The foundation of trust was annihilated. I have one parent who is trying to protect me but is unable to do so. And another parent communicated to me—overtly or covertly—that if I do not cooperate, then I may receive the same treatment my protective parent has. It is so frightening, yet oftentimes I do not even know that fear is what I am feeling.
Fear is what I’m feeling. Make no mistake. This has been the plan all along. The coercive controller, from day one, wanted to ensure they had this power over our family system. In the rare event that the protective parent feels supported enough to escape, I will most certainly be weaponized against her and continue to live in this state of fear. I may never have suffered physical or sexual violence or verbal assaults, but research affirms that the trauma of abuse that is difficult to name may oftentimes be that much more traumatic.
If you can’t see it, the abuse supposedly didn’t happen. How do I, as a child, explain to anyone that my brain lives in reptilian mode? Survival? All too frequently, the only mode I know.
When gaslighting, manipulation, and diminishing of autonomy are consistent and repetitive in the family system, then it makes sense that the child’s experiences are traumatic. They are the same as the adult victim. Children who are living in these family systems truly understand, even if only subconsciously, that they are an object, fulfilling the needs of the coercive controller. Their love is entirely conditional. Being authentic is something every child needs to have for healthy development. In this home, I cannot be authentic.
It’s unfortunate since unconditional love and the ability to be authentic are primal needs for healthy attachment to occur, a primal need for all children. But of course, the coercive controller is trying to maliciously fracture that ability for me to feel this secure attachment to my protective parent.
I know I am not loved unconditionally by the abusive parent, that I cannot simply be myself, and that I must appease the coercive controller in order to retain as much equilibrium in the home as possible.
I have also been told that my protective parent doesn’t love me implicitly. Like the protective parent, I am trapped.
This use of power and control over me—coercive control—harms me and harms my ability to feel safe. I am a trauma victim, much like my protective parent is.
This intergenerational trauma can be prevented, but only if the systems recognize the abuse of my protective parent. Oftentimes, physical violence may not even be evident. recognize my own abuse and unacknowledged child abuse.