Welcome to Decoding Coercive Control with Dr Emma Katz

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Welcome

Welcome to Decoding Coercive Control with Dr Emma Katz — I’m Dr Emma Katz, Ph.D. (see my website), a world-leading expert on coercive control.

Since 2016, I’ve built a thriving social media presence (Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn) centred around raising awareness of this severe form of domestic violence and abuse, including both the harms it causes and the ways survivors recover.

Before joining social media, I did the research that became the basis of my 2022 book Coercive Control in Children’s and Mothers’ Lives, published by Oxford University Press.

As I gradually finished the book (which overall took me about ten years to write!), social media became a fantastic space for me to communicate with survivors, practitioners working with survivors, and many others with an interest in these issues.

Together we have shared wisdom and insights and offered much support, as well as pet pictures! Here are my three lovely dogs.

Survivors have told me they find my insights validating, healing and useful. They’ve said my posts have given them a language to articulate things that they have felt but had no words for. They’ve said my work makes them feel less alone.

I, in turn, have found it very helpful to be able to gauge whether my ideas are resonating with survivors and where I need to make adaptations. I’ve valued all the feedback I’ve received, and been deeply touched whenever people have told me that my posts have personally helped or comforted them.

What this Substack does

This Substack is the place for me to illuminate complex issues in accessible ways:

• How coercive control affects children

• How it affects children’s relationships with their survivor parent and with their abusive parent

• The dynamics and tactics of coercive control, including why perpetrators behave in the ways they do

• How survivors are harmed, and how they attempt to resist and cope

• The recoveries of adult survivors and child survivors, and how relationships between adult survivors and their children can be made stronger

• Survivors’ (sadly often negative) experiences of trying to navigate systems that should be helping them, including family courts, police, and social services

Making these conversations supportive and never blaming victims-survivors will be prioritised. Abuse is never the victims’-survivors’ fault. Responsibility lies with the abuser

Free subscriptions

Everyone who subscribes to Decoding Coercive Control with Dr Emma Katz gets:

• Expert knowledge

• Myth-busting

• Key ‘takes’ on coercive control

Paid subscriptions

For the price of a monthly Starbucks coffee & cookie – US$60/yr or US$6/mo – you get full access to this ever-growing site and its current and upcoming pieces:

• A world of important research findings, legal advances + Dr Emma Katz’s expert analysis of what it all means

• Expert analysis of key academic articles and court judgements

• The ability to make comments in response to posts, and receive responses from me

You can have a look with no commitment by starting a 7-day free trial below.

(If it says below ‘This post is for paid subscribers’, refresh the page. ‘Keep reading with a 7-day free trial’ should then come up.)