In Part 1 of Dawn Bouillon’s new 3-part series “When Love Becomes Control: Understanding Psychological Abuse,” Dawn breaks down why coercive control is so often missed—and why it can leave strong, capable women feeling confused, trapped, and disconnected from themselves even when there are no visible bruises.

She introduces the idea of psychological layering: a stack of subtle tactics that, over time, creates an invisible “cage” where you begin policing yourself to stay safe. Dawn walks through key layers like gaslighting (controlling your reality), intermittent reinforcement (the addictive cycle that fuels trauma bonds), identity erosion (shrinking your voice, needs, and dreams), isolation, fear conditioning, and spiritual control—especially when faith language is used to shame or trap someone into staying.

Most importantly, Dawn reframes the painful thought of “I chose this” with compassion and clarity: survival inside coercive control is not the same as true choice. This episode is an empowering starting point for anyone trying to make sense of what happened, support someone they love, or begin healing by learning to trust their perceptions, body, and boundaries again.

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Embrace Your Brave: Hey, friends! Welcome back to Not That Girl Anymore. I'm your host, Dawn Bouillon, trauma therapist and coach, and a founder here of Embrace Your Brave.

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Embrace Your Brave: And today, I am starting a 3-part series that I'm calling When Love Becomes Control.

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Embrace Your Brave: Understanding Psychological Abuse.

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Embrace Your Brave: And in this series, we're going to talk about, how psychological abuse actually works, how it affects the brain and the body, and why so many strong women end up trapped in these dynamics, and most importantly, how we can heal.

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Embrace Your Brave: So, just from the start, I just want to say…

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Embrace Your Brave: If you've ever struggled with trying to explain what happened to you.

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Embrace Your Brave: Or if you've ever said, it's really… it's not that bad, I just completely lost myself.

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Embrace Your Brave: Or if you've ever wondered, why is it so hard to leave?

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Embrace Your Brave: Or why you still feel so impacted, even after you did.

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Embrace Your Brave: Then this episode is for you.

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Embrace Your Brave: So, part one today, I want to talk about something that really doesn't get enough attention when we talk about abuse.

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Embrace Your Brave: And that is the psychological layering.

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Embrace Your Brave: Which is really the engine behind what we now call coercive control.

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Embrace Your Brave: And this is not about weakness, and it's not about being naive.

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Embrace Your Brave: This is about what happens when a human nervous system Is slowly trained to survive.

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Embrace Your Brave: Inside of someone else's control.

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Embrace Your Brave: And this term, coercive control, I think many are unaware of.

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Embrace Your Brave: Or we miss it altogether.

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Embrace Your Brave: as abuse.

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Embrace Your Brave: Because many people still only think of abuse as yelling, hitting, obvious cruelty.

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Embrace Your Brave: But many of the women that I work with, and honestly parts of my own story, don't look like that.

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Embrace Your Brave: On the outside.

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Embrace Your Brave: Instead, it looks like… Constant self-doubt.

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Embrace Your Brave: Or walking on eggshells.

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Embrace Your Brave: Or shrinking yourself.

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Embrace Your Brave: Or over-explaining, trying harder and harder to be better.

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Embrace Your Brave: And from the outside, it looks like, but he loves you, or your church seems so kind.

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Embrace Your Brave: Or your boss says you're amazing.

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Embrace Your Brave: But yet, on the inside, you feel trapped.

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Embrace Your Brave: Confused.

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Embrace Your Brave: Disconnected from yourself.

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Embrace Your Brave: That's where coercive control lives.

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Embrace Your Brave: It's not one big explosive moment.

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Embrace Your Brave: But in a system of psychological tactics, they stack on top of each other over time.

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Embrace Your Brave: That's the psychological layering that we're talking about.

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Embrace Your Brave: So what is this? What does this mean?

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Embrace Your Brave: It means it's not just one behavior.

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Embrace Your Brave: It's many… it's many subtle tactics happening at the same time.

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Embrace Your Brave: Each one reinforcing the other, until you're living inside a reality that someone else controls.

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Embrace Your Brave: And each tactic alone might feel survivable, or maybe explainable, or maybe even forgivable.

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Embrace Your Brave: But together, they create a cage that you can't see.

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Embrace Your Brave: And eventually, you don't just follow their rules.

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Embrace Your Brave: You start policing yourself.

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Embrace Your Brave: And that is the goal of coercive control.

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Embrace Your Brave: And this is where I really want to kind of pause for a minute, because I hear this from the women that I sit with all the time.

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Embrace Your Brave: But Dawn, I chose to stay.

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Embrace Your Brave: I chose to keep trying. I chose that relationship.

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Embrace Your Brave: And I just want to say this so gently, but yet so clearly.

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Embrace Your Brave: When someone is living inside coercive control, they're not making free choices in the way we… what that usually means about choice.

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Embrace Your Brave: Because real choice requires access to accurate information.

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Embrace Your Brave: Emotional safety.

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Embrace Your Brave: Freedom from punishment.

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Embrace Your Brave: Freedom from punishment.

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Embrace Your Brave: Okay.

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Embrace Your Brave: And the ability to say no without consequences.

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Embrace Your Brave: In coercive control?

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Embrace Your Brave: All of those things are slowly taken away.

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Embrace Your Brave: So yeah, you might have made decisions

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Embrace Your Brave: But you were making them inside a system that was designed to… Distort reality?

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Embrace Your Brave: Threaten your safety?

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Embrace Your Brave: And make your own independence feel dangerous.

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Embrace Your Brave: That, my friend, is not a free choice.

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Embrace Your Brave: That is survival.

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Embrace Your Brave: Inside of the cage.

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Embrace Your Brave: And when women say, I chose it, what I usually hear is a woman taking responsibility for something that should never have been hers to carry.

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Embrace Your Brave: So I just want to challenge you in thinking about that.

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Embrace Your Brave: Did you really have a choice?

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Embrace Your Brave: do you really have a choice? Are there consequences that you

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Embrace Your Brave: Know about and are afraid of.

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Embrace Your Brave: So let's talk about the first layer.

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Embrace Your Brave: Of, the psychological layering that we're talking about.

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Embrace Your Brave: And that's gaslighting, which is controlling your reality.

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Embrace Your Brave: And this can look like… But that's not what I meant, or you're… you're remembering it wrong.

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Embrace Your Brave: Or you're just too sensitive? Or why do you always make things a big deal?

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Embrace Your Brave: And over time, what that does is… You stop trusting your gut.

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Embrace Your Brave: You stop trusting your own memory.

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Embrace Your Brave: You stop trusting your own eyes.

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Embrace Your Brave: You start asking other people.

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Embrace Your Brave: Am I crazy for feeling this way?

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Embrace Your Brave: And this is… is not just something that's emotional, it's neurological.

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Embrace Your Brave: Your brain is trying to survive by outsourcing reality to the person who feels safer than your own uncertainty.

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Embrace Your Brave: And when you can't trust your own reality, it becomes almost impossible to make clear choices.

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Embrace Your Brave: Because now you're not choosing between healthy and unhealthy.

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Embrace Your Brave: You're choosing between Keeping the peace, or being blamed?

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Embrace Your Brave: Between staying connected or being alone and punished.

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Embrace Your Brave: Those aren't real choices.

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Embrace Your Brave: Those are coerced options.

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Embrace Your Brave: And I'm just thinking, I can think of so many women in this position right now.

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Embrace Your Brave: And this is what they're faced with.

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Embrace Your Brave: And it's so confusing, and you want to say, but this is what I want, or this is what I asked for, but you've been conditioned to think that way.

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Embrace Your Brave: These ideas have been put into your head, and you think that they're yours… now.

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Embrace Your Brave: But they're deeply harmful to you.

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Embrace Your Brave: The second layer is, what we call intermittent reinforcement.

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Embrace Your Brave: Which is the same mechanism that creates addiction.

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Embrace Your Brave: Okay.

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Embrace Your Brave: So, it's… Love, right?

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Embrace Your Brave: And then cruelty.

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Embrace Your Brave: And then the, oh, I'm so sorry, I'll never do it again, the apology.

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Embrace Your Brave: And then you lower your guard, and you get close again, and the cycle just continues.

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Embrace Your Brave: And you get just enough good moments to keep you hopeful.

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Embrace Your Brave: And your brain starts chasing it.

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Embrace Your Brave: And you think, well, if I just say it right, or if I just try harder, or if I just don't upset them.

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Embrace Your Brave: And this is what creates the trauma bond.

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Embrace Your Brave: It's not because you're attached to the person.

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Embrace Your Brave: But because your nervous system is attached to the cycle.

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Embrace Your Brave: And then the hope you have for the good stuff?

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Embrace Your Brave: becomes the hook.

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Embrace Your Brave: That keeps you stuck.

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Embrace Your Brave: And hope is not stupid, okay? Hope is human.

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Embrace Your Brave: But in these moments, it becomes what keeps you in bondage.

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Embrace Your Brave: So that is the, the trauma bond, right? It's the intermittent reinforcement. It's the… where we are constantly chasing for the little bit of good that we can get out of this. And that's why it's so confusing, because some moments you get good.

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Embrace Your Brave: But then you get really, really bad.

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Embrace Your Brave: And so, it confuses our nervous system, and we get attached to it, and we get stuck.

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Embrace Your Brave: The next layer, is what I call identity erosion.

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Embrace Your Brave: Which, over time, you just hear so much criticism of your character.

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Embrace Your Brave: Or insults about your intelligence.

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Embrace Your Brave: Or comments about your emotions being too much.

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Embrace Your Brave: And jokes that don't feel like jokes.

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Embrace Your Brave: And slowly… The question shifts from, What do I want?

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Embrace Your Brave: 2. How do I not… Messed this up.

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Embrace Your Brave: How do I start shrinking myself?

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Embrace Your Brave: how do I start shrinking my voice?

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Embrace Your Brave: And we slowly, without even realizing it, that's what we do. We shrink ourselves, we shrink our voice, we shrink our dreams, we shrink our needs.

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Embrace Your Brave: And this is where women start saying things like, I don't even know who I am anymore.

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Embrace Your Brave: I used to be so confident.

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Embrace Your Brave: And now, I don't recognize myself. I feel invisible.

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Embrace Your Brave: And that is not accidental. That's control. That's the purpose. That's the goal.

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Embrace Your Brave: Okay? For you to completely lose you.

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Embrace Your Brave: And the fourth layer is isolation.

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Embrace Your Brave: Okay? It doesn't always mean you're locked in your house.

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Embrace Your Brave: It means… the tension That you get every time you try to see your family.

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Embrace Your Brave: Or your friends.

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Embrace Your Brave: Or the drama around… Friendships.

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Embrace Your Brave: Making you feel bad for having friends. Making you feel bad for hanging out with other people.

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Embrace Your Brave: Or guilt when you spend time with people who empower you.

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Embrace Your Brave: No, that's an interesting one.

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Embrace Your Brave: I've seen that happen with a lot of my friends, too.

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Embrace Your Brave: they start being made feel guilty, when they spend time with me, because I'm…

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Embrace Your Brave: I'm building them up and empowering them, and then I become a threat.

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Embrace Your Brave: 2.

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Embrace Your Brave: the… the system.

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Embrace Your Brave: So… Start paying attention to that, right? Be mindful of that.

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Embrace Your Brave: And sometimes it's subtle, and sometimes it's spiritual, and sometimes it's emotional.

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Embrace Your Brave: But the result is the same.

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Embrace Your Brave: The person controlling you becomes your primary emotional reference point.

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Embrace Your Brave: And now leaving doesn't just mean losing a relationship.

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Embrace Your Brave: It means losing your entire sense of safety and belonging.

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Embrace Your Brave: That's deep.

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Embrace Your Brave: Right? You feel like you're doing something wrong.

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Embrace Your Brave: When you leave.

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Embrace Your Brave: And the next layer is what we call fear conditioning, and this is where…

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Embrace Your Brave: The nervous system gets really trained?

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Embrace Your Brave: by fear.

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Embrace Your Brave: And this can look like rage, silent treatment.

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Embrace Your Brave: Withdrawal from… withdrawing affection from you.

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Embrace Your Brave: unpredictable moods.

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Embrace Your Brave: And your body starts to learn.

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Embrace Your Brave: Safety equals compliance.

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Embrace Your Brave: If I'm compliant, I can stay safe.

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Embrace Your Brave: So you start scanning.

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Embrace Your Brave: And overthinking and anticipating.

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Embrace Your Brave: And not because you're anxious, but because your body is doing its job. This is survival. It's reading it correctly. So when people say, why didn't you just leave?

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Embrace Your Brave: What they're really asking is, why didn't you override the survival system that was trying to keep you safe?

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Embrace Your Brave: Your body wasn't.

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Embrace Your Brave: choosing comfort, your body was choosing what felt safest in the moment, and that matters.

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Embrace Your Brave: I want us to grasp this. I want you to grasp this. If you're a survivor, I want you to grasp this if you're a friend of a survivor.

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Embrace Your Brave: People aren't choosing to stay in this. They're choosing to stay alive.

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Embrace Your Brave: They're choosing safety.

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Embrace Your Brave: Okay? And their body is… is trying so desperately to keep them safe.

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Embrace Your Brave: And another layer is what I call moral or spiritual control.

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Embrace Your Brave: In religious environments, coercive control often uses God language, okay?

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Embrace Your Brave: I've seen this so many times.

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Embrace Your Brave: God Hates Divorce, which is a scripture completely taken out of context, used to abuse.

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Embrace Your Brave: Okay.

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Embrace Your Brave: You need to forgive more.

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Embrace Your Brave: Very damaging and minimizing of our pain.

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Embrace Your Brave: Where your role is to submit.

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Embrace Your Brave: Okay.

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Embrace Your Brave: More lies.

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Embrace Your Brave: that come from what I call shitty theology.

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Embrace Your Brave: Or don't touch God's anointed.

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Embrace Your Brave: Any of these things sound familiar?

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Embrace Your Brave: To you?

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Embrace Your Brave: And what happens with this shift when religion is used to control?

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Embrace Your Brave: Is now it's not just risky to leave, now it feels sinful to leave.

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Embrace Your Brave: And you protecting yourself starts to feel like selfishness, because that's what you've been conditioned to think.

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Embrace Your Brave: And boundaries start feeling like rebellion.

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Embrace Your Brave: And that is the psychological captivity at a soul level.

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Embrace Your Brave: So, psychological layering… is dangerous.

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Embrace Your Brave: Because it doesn't look like… abuse.

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Embrace Your Brave: It looks like, and feels like, confusion.

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Embrace Your Brave: It doesn't leave bruises, it leaves identity loss.

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Embrace Your Brave: Which can be far more damaging and painful.

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Embrace Your Brave: It doesn't require constant force, because eventually, You control yourself for them.

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Embrace Your Brave: They don't have to do a thing.

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Embrace Your Brave: You've already been conditioned.

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Embrace Your Brave: to comply.

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Embrace Your Brave: And the longer it goes on, the more your nervous system believes I can't survive without them.

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Embrace Your Brave: Even when your mind knows something is terribly wrong.

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Embrace Your Brave: And this is where I want to speak directly to anyone who's ever thought, you know, why didn't I leave sooner? Why'd I put up with this for so long?

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Embrace Your Brave: your brain is not failing you. Your brain is operating exactly as it was designed to. It's trying to keep you alive inside of a system that punished independence.

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Embrace Your Brave: and rewarded compliance.

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Embrace Your Brave: And when survival is on the line, the brain

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Embrace Your Brave: does not prioritize freedom. It prioritizes connection and safety.

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Embrace Your Brave: And that's just human biology.

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Embrace Your Brave: Leaving requires your nervous system to believe safety is possible again, and that takes time.

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Embrace Your Brave: Support.

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Embrace Your Brave: and healing.

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Embrace Your Brave: So let's talk about healing, because there's always gotta be hope in this, and I fully believe that you can heal.

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Embrace Your Brave: But healing starts when you begin trusting your own perceptions again.

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Embrace Your Brave: When you start listening to your body, you get reconnected, and you're listening.

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Embrace Your Brave: To your body, and you're honoring it.

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Embrace Your Brave: And you begin choosing relationships where fear is not the price of connection.

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Embrace Your Brave: And in the next episode, we're going to talk about how coercive control actually rewires the nervous system.

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Embrace Your Brave: And while… and that's why healing has to involve the body, not just your thoughts.

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Embrace Your Brave: Because understanding what happened is powerful.

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Embrace Your Brave: But understanding how to heal is where freedom really begins.

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Embrace Your Brave: And so… We've covered a lot today.

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Embrace Your Brave: And if you're telling yourself, oh, Dawn, I should have known better, I chose this, I let this happen, I want you to hear me clearly.

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Embrace Your Brave: You did not consent to being controlled.

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Embrace Your Brave: You did not agree to have your reality slowly taken away.

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Embrace Your Brave: You did not sign up to lose yourself in order to keep the peace.

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Embrace Your Brave: You were responding to a situation that was designed to limit your options and make leaving feel dangerous.

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Embrace Your Brave: And that changes the story completely.

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Embrace Your Brave: You are not weak for staying.

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Embrace Your Brave: You were surviving, and we celebrate that.

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Embrace Your Brave: You are not dramatic. You are responding to psychological captivity.

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Embrace Your Brave: And you are not broken for still feeling the impact.

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Embrace Your Brave: Your nervous system learned what it had to do.

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Embrace Your Brave: To keep you alive.

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Embrace Your Brave: But you are allowed to heal now.

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Embrace Your Brave: You are allowed to choose yourself now.

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Embrace Your Brave: You are allowed to build a life that does not require you to disappear to keep the peace.

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Embrace Your Brave: You are not that girl anymore.

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Embrace Your Brave: And you never have to be that girl anymore.

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Embrace Your Brave: So just take this in, guys.

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Embrace Your Brave: Psychological layering.

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Embrace Your Brave: Is one of the most dangerous tactics, because it's so many things pushed into one at the same time, reinforcing one another.

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Embrace Your Brave: And confusing you, And… keeping you in bondage.

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Embrace Your Brave: You're not crazy.

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Embrace Your Brave: So come back next week, and we will start talking about the impact on the nervous system, the brain, and how we can heal. I'm excited to tell you about some

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Embrace Your Brave: some things I've been seeing with my own clients that's really been helping them.

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Embrace Your Brave: heal.

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Embrace Your Brave: And, so thank you so much for just being here with us today, and remember…

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Embrace Your Brave: You're not that girl anymore.