Living with Coercive Control: Trapped within a Complex Web of Double Standards, Double Binds and Boundary Violations

Abstract Social workers engage with domestic violence in a wide range of practice and service contexts. Despite the increasing focus on the centrality of coercive control to domestic violence, the effectiveness of the profession in protecting women and children has been constrained by a pervasive historical emphasis on physical violence as the defining feature of domestic violence. Coercive control is critical for social work practitioners to recognise and assess, yet has proved difficult to operationalise. In this paper, a model entitled ‘The Trap’ is presented, based on a subsection of the results of a feminist study of the lived experiences of coercive control for women. A thematic analysis of in-depth interviews with thirty women in Tasmania either currently or previously facilitating shared parenting arrangements in a context of domestic violence also revealed the nuances of their pre-separation experiences of coercive control. ‘The Trap’ conveys how the entitled, superior and adversarial attitudinal style of their partners entrapped them within a web of double standards, double binds and boundary violations, denying them equality, autonomy or agency. This paper argues that it is incumbent upon the social work profession to develop the skills for assessment of coercive control to develop best practice in domestic violence.