Written by Janice LaFountaine, LMFT on .

Editorial infographic titled From Naming the Pattern to Reclaiming Your Life, contrasting the narcissism lens (naming the pattern) with the coercive control lens (identifying the strategy of intimidation, isolation, monitoring, and rule-making), and the recovery focus on rebuilding autonomy and self-trust.

 When 'Narcissist' Isn't the Whole Story: Recognizing the Coercive Control Pattern:

Most people arrive at the word narcissist the same way: slowly, and then all at once. They’ve been explaining a pattern to a friend, or lying awake trying to name what is happening, and the word surfaces because it fits something real. The contempt. The way a minor disagreement becomes a referendum on their worth. The fog that settles after a conversation that somehow ended with them apologizing. Reaching for that word isn’t a mistake—it’s the first act of recognizing a pattern that has no name yet. This article is for people who are in that moment, and who are ready to see whether another frame—coercive control—might open something the narcissism frame doesn’t.

Understanding Narcissistic Abuse and Coercive Control

Narcissistic abuse and coercive control describe overlapping but distinct experiences. “Narcissistic abuse” is the term most survivors reach for first—it captures relationships marked by manipulation, contempt, and emotional erosion, and it focuses on a partner’s personality. “Coercive control,” a clinical and legal framework developed by Evan Stark, focuses on the pattern itself: a sustained system of intimidation, isolation, monitoring, and rule-making that strips autonomy over time. The same relationship can be described by both. The difference matters because each frame opens different paths—narcissism centers identifying a personality type, coercive control centers identifying a strategy. For survivors, that shift can change how recovery, safety planning, and self-trust are approached. Janice LaFountaine, LMFT, works with survivors of narcissistic relationships and coercive control throughout Washington and Idaho via telehealth and in person.

Both frames are useful. Neither is complete on its own. What this article explores is what each one illuminates—and what becomes visible when you hold them together. If you’ve been using the word narcissist and something still feels unnamed, what follows might help.

This isn’t a diagnostic framework. It’s a way of thinking with two lenses instead of one.

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Written by Janice LaFountaine, LMFT on .

Editorial infographic depicting coercive control as a wall built brick by brick over time

All at once, you felt trapped. You just didn't see the wall being built.

Coercive control is a pattern of behavior — within intimate partner relationships, families, and sometimes high-control groups — in which one person systematically limits another person's autonomy, freedom, and sense of self. First defined by sociologist Evan Stark in his foundational 2007 work Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life, the framework recognizes that psychological and behavioral domination causes profound harm independent of physical violence. Coercive control operates through accumulation rather than through isolated incidents — which is why survivors frequently struggle to describe it. The tactics are designed to restrict resources, produce isolation, erode self-perception, and undermine trust in one's own reality. Understanding coercive control as a patterned system rather than a series of separate events is foundational to recognizing it and, eventually, to healing from it. 

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Written by Janice LaFountaine, LMFT on .

glimmers vs triggers

Healing doesn't always look like a breakthrough. Sometimes it looks like noticing your cat is warm in your lap — and letting that matter.

Glimmers are micro-moments of ventral vagal activation — brief instances when your nervous system registers safety without conscious effort. Identified by polyvagal theory researcher Deb Dana, glimmers are the neurological opposite of triggers: where triggers pull the nervous system into fight, flight, or freeze, glimmers activate the calm, connected state where healing actually occurs. For trauma survivors whose systems have been trained to scan for threat, learning to notice and register glimmers builds the neural pathway for safety recognition — a skill that supports and strengthens the deeper work of EMDR and trauma processing.

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Written by Janice LaFountaine, LMFT on .

reclaiming your authentic self

The Missing Piece in Trauma Recovery: When Healing Means Finding Who You Actually Are

Identity restoration is the recovery work that begins after safety has been re-established — when survivors of coercive control, high-control groups, or manipulative family systems find themselves asking who am I now? even after the nervous system has settled. Coercive systems work by systematically dismantling a person's relationship with their own perceptions, feelings, and inner knowing — replacing internal authority with external dependence. What survives is often a pseudo-identity: a protective construction built to navigate an unsafe environment, which doesn't simply dissolve when the threat ends. This article is for survivors who've completed or are partway through trauma-informed therapy, regulated their nervous systems, and discovered that safety and self are not the same thing. It explains what coercive control takes at the level of identity, why grief arrives even when leaving was right, and what the work of finding yourself again actually looks like. Janice LaFountaine, LMFT, supports this stage of recovery with clients throughout Washington and Idaho via telehealth and in-person sessions.

You left. You're in therapy. You're not in immediate danger anymore. By every external measure, you're doing the work — and it's working. The hypervigilance has softened. You sleep better. You've learned to name what's happening in your body when old patterns surface. In a lot of ways, you're more regulated than you've ever been.

And yet. There's a question underneath all of it that keeps surfacing, quiet and persistent: Who am I now?

This question is not a sign that something has gone wrong in your recovery. It's a sign that you're ready for the next layer. Because here's what many trauma survivors discover partway through the healing process: getting safe and getting yourself back are not the same thing. Safety is the foundation. Identity restoration is what gets built on it. And coercive control — whether in an intimate relationship, a high-control group, or a manipulative family system — makes that second task extraordinarily complex.

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Written by Janice LaFountaine, LMFT on .

attachment styles

Understanding Your Attachment Style: Why You Fight, Flee, or Freeze in Relationships

You've had the same fight again. Maybe it looks different on the surface — the dishes, the tone of voice, who forgot what — but underneath it feels identical to every other fight. (This is the same fight cycle that most couples mistake for a communication problem.) you've had in this relationship, and every relationship before it. One of you pursues harder as the other withdraws further. Or both of you go cold and the silence stretches for days. You're exhausted by the pattern, and still you can't seem to stop it.

Here's something that might reframe everything: you aren't failing at communication. Your nervous system is doing exactly what it learned to do decades ago, long before this relationship existed. The way you fight, flee, or freeze when love feels threatened isn't a personality flaw — it's an attachment pattern. And attachment patterns are written into the body before we ever have words to describe them.

Understanding your attachment style — and the nervous system responses that drive it — is one of the most clarifying things you can do for your relationship. Not because it excuses harmful behavior, but because you cannot change a pattern you can't yet see. This article will help you see it.

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