Family Advocacy helps RAF Mildenhall understand controlling behaviors

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman Ethan Morgan
  • 100th Air Refueling Wing Public Affairs
RAF MILDENHALL, England --  Relationships can have strong effects on people, though when someone with a controlling personality is involved in the relationship, a relationship can have a very negative impact.

According to www.homeoffice.gov.uk, controlling behaviour is a range of acts designed to make a person submissive or dependent by isolating them from sources of support, exploiting their resources and capacities for personal gain, depriving them of the means needed for independence, resistance and escape and regulating their everyday behaviour.

"Usually people who control others do so in an attempt to lessen internal psychological pain," said Darin Gere, 48th Medical Group Family Advocacy treatment manager. "Obsessive thinking and compulsive behavior take energy away from internal emotional conflict and external stressors and focus it on the object of the obsession."

People, who have relationships with someone with a controlling personality should be aware that these relationships can be unhealthy and could eventually turn abusive.

"Sometimes controlling behavior goes together with extreme physical or sexual abuse, but other times it does not," said Gere. "A one-time, subtle, private incident of violence can pack enough of a threat to keep a person submissive to the one exerting control for years in a relationship."

Gere suggests looking at the 'Power and Control Wheel' to better know and understand the characteristics of a controlling personality. Examples from the wheel included:

Coercion and threats -- Making and/or carrying out threats to do something to hurt the victim. For instance, threatening to leave or commit suicide.

Intimidation -- Causing fear by using looks, actions or gestures.

Emotional abuse -- Putting the victim down, making them feel bad about themselves or calling them names.

Isolation -- Controlling what the victim does, who they see and talk to and where they go.

Minimizing, denying and blaming -- Making light of the abuse and not taking the victim's concerns about it seriously. Saying the abuse didn't happen, shifting responsibility for abusive behavior to the victim.

Economic abuse - Preventing the victim from getting or keeping a job. Making them ask for an allowance. Taking their money or not letting them know about or have access to family income.

Sex privilege -- Treating the victim like a servant: making all the big decisions, acting like the "master of the castle," or being the one to define male and female roles.

For more information, or to receive treatment in prevention or recovery of a controlling relationship, contact the family advocacy office at DSN 226-8070 or commercial at 01638 528070.