Below is a clear, grounded explanation of what is really happening when someone says:
- “Don’t tell anyone.”
- “Don’t talk to your family.”
- “Don’t discuss this incident with anyone.”
- “Don’t share our finances.”
- “Don’t tell people our plans.”
🔥 What’s Actually Happening — Neuroscience of Coercive Control
From a brain-science perspective, these commands are designed to isolate you, weaken your internal reference points, and create a dependency loop. Here’s how:
🧠 1. They’re trying to cut off your “reality checks.”
The human brain depends on co-regulation — comparing thoughts and experiences with trusted people to stay grounded.
When an abuser tells you not to talk to others:
- Your brain loses external feedback
- Self-doubt increases
- Their version of reality becomes dominant
This is called cognitive enclosure.
The abuser knows:
If you tell someone, their behaviour will be exposed.
If you stay silent, their control grows.
🧠 2. Isolation triggers survival-mode in the nervous system.
Human nervous systems are wired for connection. When connection is restricted, the brain shifts into:
- hypervigilance
- anxiety
- people-pleasing
- conflict-avoidance
This makes you easier to control.
Your brain starts trying to predict their moods to stay safe — a trauma adaptation known as fawn/appease mode.
🧠 3. They are disrupting your access to resources.
“Don’t talk about finances.”
“Don’t share our plans.”
These aren’t “comfort preferences” — they’re economic and strategic control tactics.
When someone restricts financial conversation:
- Your sense of autonomy weakens
- Your ability to plan or leave is reduced
- Your cognitive load increases (constant uncertainty)
The brain becomes exhausted, which makes resistance harder.
🧠 4. They’re building secrecy pathways in your brain.
Repeatedly being told:
“Keep this between us”
“Don’t tell your family”
“No one needs to know”
recruits the brain’s habit circuits (basal ganglia), reinforcing secrecy as a default behaviour.
This becomes a pattern:
You stop talking automatically
→ which keeps you isolated
→ which keeps them unchallenged
Your brain learns silence as a survival mechanism.
🧠 5. Your identity network is being reshaped.
The longer someone limits your voice, your connections, your financial clarity, your access to support, the more the brain’s sense-of-self circuits in the prefrontal cortex shrink around them.
You begin to unconsciously think:
- “I can’t tell people.”
- “It’s not worth the argument.”
- “They’ll react badly.”
- “Maybe it really is private.”
This is not weakness — it’s neurological conditioning.
🧠 6. These phrases are red flags of coercive control, not “privacy.”
In healthy relationships:
✔ privacy is mutual
✔ boundaries are shared
✔ each person has outside support
✔ communication is open
In abusive dynamics:
❌ privacy is weaponised
❌ information is restricted
❌ isolation is enforced
❌ silence protects the abuser, not the relationship
When someone says:
“Don’t tell your family.”
what they’re really doing is:
cutting off your lifeline.
When they say:
“Don’t talk about this incident.”
what they mean is:
“Don’t expose what I’ve done.”
When they say:
“Don’t tell anyone about our finances.”
their aim is:
to keep you financially powerless.
This is manipulation, not intimacy.
🧠 7. Your brain knew all along something was wrong.
That uneasy feeling you had — the one you couldn’t explain?
Neurology calls that prediction error:
your brain recognising danger before you consciously can.
Your instincts were right.
