Threatening to expose someone’s weakness or spread rumors. Telling malicious lies about an individual to peer group.
Anger/Emotional Abuse:
Putting partner down. Making partner feel bad about her or himself. Name calling. Making partner think she/he is crazy. Playing mind games. Humiliating one another. Making partner feel guilty.
Isolation/Exclusion:
Controlling what another person does, who partner sees and talks to, what she/he reads, where partner goes. Limiting outside involvement. Using jealousy to justify actions.
Sexual Coercion:
Manipulating or making threats to get sex. Getting her pregnant. Threatening to take the children away. Getting someone drunk or drugged to get sex.
Using Social Status:
Treating partner like a servant. Making all the decisions. Acting like the “master of the castle”. Being the one to define men’s and women’s roles.
Intimidation:
Making someone afraid by using looks, actions, gestures. Smashing things.
Destroying property.
Abusing pets. Displaying weapons.
Minimize/Deny/Blame:
Making light of the abuse and not taking concerns about it seriously. Saying the abuse didn’t happen. Shifting responsibility for abusive behavior. Saying she/he caused it.
Threats: Making and/or carrying out threats to do something to hurt another. Threatening to leave, to commit suicide, to report partner to the police. Making her/him drop charges. Making partner do illegal things.
(Adapted and developed from “Teen Power and Control Wheel”)