Isolation tactics

Isolation is rarely announced. It happens through a slow narrowing of someone's world. Friends who are quietly discouraged, family visits that become arguments, a job that's framed as “not worth the stress”, a car or phone that mysteriously stops working.

The law calls this limiting a person’s “contact with others”.

The effect is cumulative: small things add up to become a big problem. The fewer people someone has around them, the fewer people there are to notice what's happening, and the fewer people there are to turn to if they do want to leave.

Isolation is often one of the clearest warning signs precisely because it tends to show up before more severe forms of coercive and controlling behaviour.