Survivors Group Therapy: Understanding Coercive Control & Healing

This trauma-informed survivor session explores intimate partner violence, coercive control, the nervous system, the mind, and pathways toward healing. You will learn how coercive control can appear through isolation, monitoring, financial control, intimidation, threats, gaslighting, manipulation, and other repeated patterns of domination. The session also explores how living with chronic fear and unpredictability can affect the nervous system, emotions, memory, decision-making, self-trust, and sense of safety. We also look at common survival responses such as fight, flight, freeze, and fawn, and why these responses are not signs of weakness. The session helps survivors understand their experiences without judgment or blame and recognize the difference between isolated incidents and larger patterns of control. Finally, we explore pathways toward healing, including trauma-informed therapy, safe connections, education, stability, boundaries, rebuilding self-trust, and reconnecting with your identity and sense of self. You are not defined by what happened to you. Healing is not linear, and you do not have to navigate it alone. This educational session is intended to support understanding and reflection. It is not a substitute for individualized therapy, emergency assistance, legal advice, or personalized safety planning. The content is directly supported by the deck: the session moves from understanding IPV/coercive control, to nervous-system and mental effects, the survivor experience, and finally pathways to healing.