Choosing Freedom When the Cost of Staying Is You | Christine Dillard on 17 Years of Coercive Control

Coercive control doesn't bruise. It doesn't photograph. It doesn't trigger emergency calls or leave marks on the world that the world can see. It operates through erosion. So gradual that the person living inside it often does not recognise what is happening until they have lost themselves entirely.

 Christine Dillard lived inside that erosion for seventeen years. She was a Fortune 500 director. A single mother of two. The woman everyone at work knew as strong, capable and unshakeable.

 Behind closed doors she was bracing every time she heard the garage door. She had forgotten her favourite dinner, her favourite film, her favourite colour. Her body was carrying the truth in inflammation, insomnia, a racing heart and high blood pressure, years before her mind was ready to hear it.

 She had no idea there had been four separate incidents in the car, not one. Her brain had protected her from remembering them all.

 This conversation is about what coercive control actually looks and feels like from the inside. About why staying made sense. About what it cost her to leave and what she found on the other side. And about her daughter who described her in one word two years after leaving. Tranquil.

 This episode was recorded earlier this year. I am re-releasing it today because some stories deserve more than one audience. And because somewhere someone is listening who needs to hear it for the very first time.

 Content note: this episode contains discussion of coercive control, domestic abuse and threats within a long-term relationship.

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