Have you ever wondered what coercive control is when it comes to narcissists? By the end
of this video, I'm going to give you a really good, solid definition of what coercive control
actually is, and even better, what you can do about it. Hi, I'm Rebecca Zung, top 1%
attorney and the bestselling author of the books Negotiate Like You Matter and Breaking
Free: A Step-by-Step Divorce Guide, and I've helped thousands of people go from lives of
drama, trauma, and chaos to step into lives of freedom, possibility, and purpose, and
I do the same thing for you right here in these videos, so make sure that you subscribe
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Let's talk about what coercive control is when it comes to narcissism. The thing that
you have to do is understand where it comes from before we can even really understand
what coercive control is and why they do it. Narcissists have no inner sense of value.
Something happened with them when they were back in their childhood and they came to a
conclusion that the world is a bad place, they came to a conclusion that they have no
sense of value, that there's something maybe innately wrong with them or something innately
broken. It could have been anything. It could have
been a trauma that happened to them, it could have been abuse that happened to them. I've
even read some things that have said that children who are overindulged too much, they
feel like their parents didn't care enough about them to discipline them, to give them
boundaries. Children need boundaries, they need guidelines, they need structure to feel
secure, and without that, they sometimes end up feeling like they have no inner sense of
value. Who knows how it happened, but what happened is that at some point, they drew
the conclusion that they didn't have value to them, so they ended up feeling like they
needed to get value from the outside world in some way, so they're trying to layer it
on, they kind of slather it on, this narcissistic supply, but underneath, it's still a feeling
of emptiness, of worthlessness, and all of that.
No, empaths, you can't fix it. You can't make them better. They just ended up sucking you
into their poisonous vortex and you just end up trying to get out. When people are leaving
a narcissist, they don't just walk away nicely, they run with their hair on fire trying to
get away from these people because it's terrible, so you can't fix them, but they have this
sense of an emptiness inside of them, and so they draw this conclusion that they need
to take control of the world by controlling everything around it because without that
sense of control, they feel like they're not being seen, they feel like they don't exist
in the world. Coercive control is actually a form of narcissistic
supply and that supply is anything that feeds that narcissist's ego, so it could be anything
that feeds the narcissist's ego, it could be money, compliments, prestige, or whatever,
but most of the time, what you see with narcissists is where they are actually trying to control
a person or they're devaluing them or they're manipulating them or intimidating, all of
those, the dark side of narcissism, those are the kinds of things that you often see
with narcissists, and if you've seen that dark side of a narcissist says, give me an
"I've seen it" in the comments. When a narcissist says feels insecure, which
has all the time, they try to exert control over other people in order to control their
environment. It's a type of control that they put over a person that ends up manifesting
itself in all sorts of ways. They actually start to maybe want to know where you are
at all times, maybe they look at your phone, maybe they control how you dress, what you
wear, who you see, when you see them, what kind of car you drive, when you drive your
car. I actually saw a situation one time where the husband would actually check the mileage
on the car before he would leave for work and see if the wife drove anywhere at the
end of the day, and if she did, where did she go? They might put car trackers on you.
They might track your phone. They might have some sort of software that tracks what your
emails are, what your text messaging is, things like that.
I mean, it can get really, really malignant and poisonous where they're looking to control
every aspect of your life: what you think, what you say, how you breathe, almost everything.
Then while they're doing this, they're probably devaluing you and treating you poorly, also
while they're love-bombing you and all the other things, but it's a form of controlling
you that can go really, really deep and really, really far, but what they're trying to do
is make sure that all of your world is about them, every single thing. I mean, they might
even be like, if you happen to inadvertently look up and see a person, they might say,
"Oh, you want that person." They don't even want you looking at other people, they don't
want you talking to other people. Sometimes it can get really, really advanced
like that, so it can be kind of scary sometimes when they get really deep into this type of
coercive control, but it's a form of narcissistic supply. It gives them supply to know that
they have control, it feeds their ego. If you want to know more about narcissistic supply,
check out my video on narcissistic supply, it goes much deeper into what you need to
know about narcissistic supply. In a divorce setting, how I see coercive control
manifesting itself is when somebody chooses a lawyer and they really don't want you to
have a lawyer because now this is another person who might exert control over you, another
person who you might listen to, another person who's going to be advising you, and you might
be taking that person's opinion or advice over theirs, which, of course, you should
definitely be listening to your lawyer if you have one, but what they'll start to do
in this particular situation is they'll start to try to devalue your lawyer to you, so they'll
come up to you and they'll say, "Your lawyer is a bad lawyer," or, "Your lawyer is too
busy," or, "Your lawyer is just in it for the money." They just start to badmouth your
lawyer in some way because they're realizing that they're losing control over you. If you
want to know more about what happens when a narcissist is starting to lose control or
what the signs are, make sure you check out my video on signs that a narcissist is losing
control. But in a divorce setting, anybody who's going
to start to try to have control over you or that they perceived is going to have now control
over you instead of them is going to become the enemy, so they're going to start targeting
those people so that you stay into their web of control, even as you're on the way out.
Even if they are divorcing you, even if they're the ones leaving you, you start to see that
happening. If you are getting ready to negotiate with
a narcissist, grab my free Crush My Negotiation prep worksheet at winmynegotiation.com or
at the link below. If you like this video, give me a Like. If you think it's really going
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I'm so glad that you were here. I'm so glad you stopped by my channel. Dealing with narcissists
is hell. I'm here to help you get out of that hell with real, concrete steps on how to do
that. Remember that today's a great day to start negotiating your best life. I'll see
you in the next video.