The Power- and Control Wheel

The Power- and Control Wheel below clearly shows how most of the behaviours that characterize abusive relationships solely is about power and control, and often this includes more than one of the behaviours shown in the image below. A lot of people who see the power- and control wheel for the first time are often surprised how one or more of these behaviours are present in their partners.

Do you live with any of the behaviours which are present in the wheel? Sometimes there are situations when a woman has been in a situation for years and where it is easy to simply become ‘blind’ for what is really happening, what she is being exposed to – where one reaches this kind of point where one starts to believe the situation is normal. For me, it took decades before I fully, completely understood what this is all about – before I really understood and could SEE the patterns and the behaviours. If you over and over again have been exposed to it for years, you finally start to believe that it is some kind of normality.

But I feel this is one of the important things to bring to light and something we need to create an awareness around – among other things, I want to create awareness and to help women to see the often re-occurring patterns and cycles of their situation far earlier than was the case for me (too often the woman start to blame herself, that it is her own fault that she is being subjected to different types of repeated abuse). We all need to do our own bit and in different ways bring awareness and change so that more women can be helped, and so that more and more women will be able to have the right – the human right – to live a life without fear and without a sense of powerlessness.