THE POWER AND CONTROL WHEEL
The primary tenet of Domestic Violence lies in an abuser’s effort to procure and maintain POWER AND CONTROL over a victim.
To help deepen our understanding of the tools abusers use to secure such means of getting and keeping power over someone, sociologists have developed a POWER AND CONTROL WHEEL to show the cycles of abuse within unhealthy relationships.
The wheel is as follows
Abuse is and has always been about maintaining power and control over a target. One of the best things a survivor can do to take back their personal power from a person or group seeking to harm them, is to recognize the signs of abusive behavior, and if proven so, leave.
It is very seldom that abusers change their abusive behavior, and most victims will drive themselves into a rut trying to resolve unhealthy attributes in unhealthy people.
Our primary responsibility is to ourselves. It is in actively ensuring and maintaining our physical, emotional and psycho-social health so that we are better able to function in the world in our best capacity.
In recognizing dysfunctional behaviors and taking proactive measures to protect ourselves from those who project them, we are enacting our own self-preservatory methods of caring for our well-being.