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The Wasteland of Women
Coercive control has made a desolate wasteland of women, leaving many with a profound sense of loss, disconnection, and longing for a self and life that may feel stolen. Its invisible, gradual, and insidious nature makes it difficult to name, prove, or recover from, with impacts on mental health comparable to broader interpersonal violence. Recovery requires more than the abuse ending; women need support to rebuild belonging, identity, purpose, and security — to come home to themselves.
Bianca de Verteuil
8/25/20253 min read
The Wasteland of Women
Coercive control has made a desolate wasteland of women.
Its impacts can perhaps be reflected in the Welsh word Hiraeth. Difficult to translate, for there is no other word that captures its nuance, Hiraeth describes a deep, nostalgic, yearning for a home that one cannot return to - perhaps even a home that is oneself. It is a longing tinged with sadness, grief, and loss; a mourning for not only what has been stolen, but for the belonging, the life, or the self, that may have existed only in hope.
One third of women will experience domestic abuse in their lifetime. Coercive control behaviours have been identified in 58% of interpersonal violence (IPV) relationships (WHO, 2024). While IPV is a well-established societal burden, the specific impacts of coercive control are far less researched. It is both an established dimension within IPV, and a distinct, especially insidious form of abuse in its own right.
Much research has characterised what abusers do (isolation, degradation, devaluation, monitoring, economic control). But there is a little research examining why these tactics cause lasting harm. A recent qualitative study (Lohmann, Felmingham, et al., 2024) identified the underlying qualities of coercive control that impact the victim, as opposed to the characterisation of the behaviours. The voice of the women in the study described why the qualities are so impactful because the abuse by its very nature is subtle, intangible, and insidious. This framework shows that the invisible nature of coercive control, the gradual worsening, leave women without the words to share what happened to them. It is an abuse that is hard to name, or prove.
The effect can be likened to the boiling frog analogy: no woman would consciously choose gradual diminishment. Coercive control thrives precisely because of the societal, cultural, and economic systems that conceal it - and many women themselves do not recognise their own experience of abuse, carrying shame and blame in absence of an external mirror.
A companion meta-analysis and literature review by the same authors (Lohmann, Cowlishaw, et al., 2024) pooling 107 effect sizes from 45 studies, found that the mental health impacts of coercive control to be as severe as those of broader categories of interpersonal violence.
One dimension of note that is underserved in the research is enforced relocation. We are wired to connect. Repeated, serial relocations as attempts to isolate, strip away a women’s ability to regulate stress; and over time, her wellbeing (Coan & Sbarra, 2015).
If coercive control robs a woman of her sense of being at home within herself, the recovery is more than the abuse ending. Recovery needs structure and services to enable her to rebuild; to cultivate belonging, purpose, identity, and economic security. Much more research is needed to give voice to the experience; with tailored services to help women come home to themselves.
I am interested in exploring how forced relocation within coercive control abuse impacts holistic health and wellbeing, recovery processes. I am seeking to build an understanding of how victims rebuild a sense of self, reconstruct their identities, applied through social baseline theory (Coan & Sbarra). I would welcome hearing from anyone working in this space.
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References
Lohmann, S., Cowlishaw, S., Ney, L., O’Donnell, M., & Felmingham, K. L. (2024). The trauma and mental health impacts of coercive control: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 25(1), 630–647. https://doi.org/10.1177/15248380231162972
Lohmann, S., Felmingham, K., O'Donnell, M., & Cowlishaw, S. (2024). "It's like you're a living hostage, and it never ends": A qualitative examination of the trauma and mental health impacts of coercive control. Psychology of Women Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1177/03616843241269941
Mantler, T., Shillington, K. J., Yates, J., Tryphonopoulos, P., Jackson, K. T., & Ford-Gilboe, M. (2022). Resilience is more than nature: An exploration of the conditions that nurture resilience among rural women who have experienced IPV. Journal of Family Violence. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-022-00479-2
World Health Organisation. (2024). Violence against women. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/violence-against-women