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Coercive Control Training:
Documenting Coercive Control with the Executive Summary Workshop
Take control of your story and get the support you deserve!
Coercive control is an insidious, dangerous form of domestic abuse that can leave survivors feeling overwhelmed, misunderstood and exhausted from having to explain their experiences over and over again.
This 90-minute online workshop will teach you how to document coercive control effectively using a trauma-informed method designed specifically for survivors, advocates, service providers, and allies.
Through step-by-step guidance, videos, templates, and practical tools, this coercive control training will help you build a powerful executive summary that documents abusive behavior concisely and clearly.
This transformative workshop includes:
✔ Coercive control training to understand, identify and address subtle forms of abuse
✔ Step-by-step guidance to document coercive control in a clear and compelling way
✔ Templates, examples, and tools to create an executive summary tailored to your needs
✔ A proven method that has empowered hundreds of survivors to reclaim power over their stories and secure the support they need to reach their goals!
What you’ll gain:
A clear understanding of coercive control → Learn how to recognize, document, and explain subtle forms of abuse.
Step-by-step video instruction → In just 90 minutes, you’ll be guided through the entire documentation process.
Templates and examples → Build a timeline, incident / allegation log, and a powerful two-page summary that fits your unique situation, audience and goals.
Confidence in telling your story → No more struggling to put your story into words. This workshop makes it easier and less stressful to explain your experience in a way that others can understand. With the ability to document difficult experiences with ease, you’ll turn traumatic events into clear, actionable records.
Empowerment → Transform trauma into triumph by taking control of your story and helping others do the same.
Instant & lifetime access → Get immediate entry to all course materials and revisit them anytime you need.
This coercive control training is for:
👤 Survivors of coercive control: Learn how to document your experiences in a way that is clear, effective, and aligned with your audience and goals.
👥 Service providers and advocates: Gain the tools to help survivors document and communicate their experiences effectively.
🤝 Allies (friends & family): Understand how to support a loved one in sharing their story.
Why document coercive control?
📂 Gather evidence for subtle forms of abuse that rarely leave physical proof
👮♀️ Report abuse to law enforcement with clarity
📝 Communicate effectively with therapists, doctors, attorneys, and judges
⚖️ Prepare for court dates, divorce proceedings, and legal advocacy* with organized documentation
🔍 Privately process difficult experiences before deciding on next steps
🏡 Improve safety planning & risk assessment by making informed decisions about personal safety
Documentation is power. Let’s make sure your voice is heard.
Survivor success stories:
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"Thank you WomenSV for helping me fly free. Thank you for helping me get my life back."
-Patricia
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"I was granted a lifetime order of protection! Thanks to your advice, I had documented and saved important evidence in a storage unit away from our house. ...
I have tremendous gratitude for you and for all the wonderful advice and support."
-Jolene
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"I came in feeling isolated and struggling, but I have gained the tools and support to move forward. Ruth is an impassioned educator. She teaches us how to recognize domestic violence and abuse and gives us the language to talk about it. This allows me to heal from my past, protect myself in the present, and plan for a healthy future. I use this knowledge and language to help my children understand what we've been through and have happier and healthier lives."
-Anne
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"Being able to share with others helps greatly decrease isolation and imparts a feeling of validation and being seen."
-Paula
“As a survivor with C-PTSD from child abuse, domestic violence, and religious trauma, and as a developer of online courses in the areas of domestic violence, child protection, sexual assault, and coercive control, I found the Documenting Coercive Control: Executive Summary Workshop info-packed, fact-based, gentle but directive, and 100% empowering. This course does, indeed, "act as a survivor's left brain." The workshop helps break down the whirlwind of emotions around the destructive and devasting lived experiences of survivors into clear organized language. So often, survivors are painted as "hysterical;" their justifiable emotional turmoil is weaponized as evidence in favor of the abuser. This course helps a survivor to accurately document events in a way that will support their goals for the next step in creating safety and agency in their life. The workshop can be used mid-crisis or afterward, even after someone has found physical safety, to help process what was experienced and what was taken away. Truly, the workshop's action steps help survivors take charge of often horrific experiences and create power where there was none before. This is so incredibly needed for a person who has experienced this kind of abuse and trauma.
I highly recommend this course to any survivor or professional working with a survivor of domestic violence and especially the more subtle forms of coercive control.”
-Lora D., eLearning professional and author
You don’t have to do this alone!
Hundreds of survivors have moved forward with confidence and reclaimed their lives using this method. You can too!
Course overview:
1. Introduction to Documenting Coercive Control
Safety considerations and self-care strategies
How to customize the workshop for your specific audience and goals
Trauma-informed approach
2. Defining Domestic Violence & Coercive Control
Federal definition of domestic violence
Examples of state laws on coercive control
3. Understanding Coercive Control
Identifying overt and covert coercive control
Verbal and non-verbal examples of coercive control
Decoding the tactics & motives of an abuser
Impact of coercive control on survivors
4. How to Document Coercive Control (Step-by-Step Process)
Identify your audience & goals
Build a timeline of events
Gather evidence in an incident / allegation log
Use supporting documents like the Power & Control Wheel to clarify different forms of abuse
Assess safety risks using the Danger Assessment and WEB (Women’s Experience of Battering) Scale
Summarize the abuse in a clear, concise, two-page executive summary
Why this workshop?
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Stop the exhausting retelling cycle.
No more reliving trauma just to be heard. Your summary will do the heavy lifting for you. -
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Get the support you deserve.
Present your experience in a way that professionals, courts, and allies can easily understand. -
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Reclaim your power.
Documentation isn’t just about clarity—it’s about taking control of your own story.
Ruth Darlene, Founder and Executive Director of WomenSV
Meet your instructor
💜 State-certified domestic violence advocate
💜 14+ years of advocacy experience serving over 1,500 survivors.
💜 Educator for law enforcement officers, therapists, physicians, court staff, teachers, and parents.
💜 Dedicated to helping professionals recognize and break the cycle of coercive control.
I created this workshop to guide survivors through the journey of identifying abuse, putting their experiences into words, gathering support, and ultimately, finding freedom.
This exact process has helped hundreds of survivors take back power over their story so they can gain the support, validation and protection they need.
Remember, you don’t have to go through this process alone! As challenging and overwhelming as it may seem, it is possible to overcome coercive control and move forward into a new chapter of your life where you have the empowerment, peace and freedom you deserve.
You deserve to be heard. You deserve to be believed.
You deserve to be free.
Coercive control is designed to silence you. This coercive control training is here to help you reclaim your voice.
💜 Join today and take the first step toward taking your power back. 💜
Get instant access now!
Scholarships are available for students and survivors experiencing financial hardship. Apply here.
For discounted group / team rates, email us at info@womensv.org.
Watch the video preview:
How to Document Coercive Control in 5 Steps
FAQs
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Coercive control is a pattern of threatening, isolating, controlling behavior that may or may not include physical or sexual violence. It often involves subtle forms of abuse that can be difficult to identify, such as psychological and emotional abuse, technology-facilitated abuse, financial abuse and stalking.
What turns coercive control into a lethality risk is the dehumanizing treatment of an intimate partner, turning them into an object, a resource to be used and used up, a possession or piece of property that is “owned” by the perpetrator. Since the ultimate right of property ownership is the right to dispose of it, once it outlives its use or becomes problematic, this is what makes coercive control a lethality risk. Ending the relationship increases this risk, since it signals to perpetrators that they are losing control. Many domestic violence incidents, including homicides, occur after the relationship ends.
The danger associated with coercive control tends to escalate over time, both during and after an abusive intimate partner relationship.
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Domestic abuse can be overt, meaning obvious, or covert, meaning subtle and harder to recognize. Covert abuse, or covert coercive control, involves the use of subtle tactics to control, intimidate, isolate or threaten an intimate partner. Because it typically does not leave forensic evidence behind, it’s challenging to prove, identify and defend against. Over time, covert abuse can make the victim lose their sense of identity and question their own sanity after being subjected to emotionally abusive tactics like gaslighting.
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While this workshop provides helpful guidance on how to document coercive control, please note that it is not intended to give or replace legal or therapeutic advice, and does not guarantee any specific outcome. Coercive control is notoriously challenging to prove. Gathering evidence and documenting the abuse in an organized, easily understandable format is an essential step toward the goal of proving coercive control.
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This course is self-paced, and the included videos are pre-recorded, not live. You can go through the course materials at your own pace, in any time frame that works best with your schedule.
There is no time limit to complete the course. You can take breaks at any time and your progress will be saved, so you can come back whenever you’re ready and pick up where you left off.
Lifetime access is included, so you can go back and revisit the course anytime you want.
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The information in this workshop will be helpful to anyone who experiences and / or supports survivors of coercive control. Like other forms of domestic violence, coercive control can occur across different relationship and gender dynamics. Men can be victims, women can be perpetrators, and children can suffer from coercive control by either parent.
Because coercive control is predominantly a gender-based crime, with the vast majority of victims being female and perpetrators male, this workshop uses “she/her” to refer to survivors and “he/him” to refer to perpetrators. The workshop’s introduction contains a reminder that these pronouns can be adjusted to fit your specific circumstances.
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Yes! We offer discounted rates for groups. If you are interested in enrolling your group / team, please let us know by emailing info@womensv.org.
Scholarships are available for students and survivors experiencing financial hardship.
Click here to apply for a scholarship. -
We accept all major credit cards, Apple Pay, ACH, PayPal, Klarna and Afterpay.
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When you sign up for the course:
You will be prompted to create an account and complete the checkout process.
After checkout, an Account panel will open on the right side of the screen.
Click on the course title in the Account panel to access the course content.
To access the course at any time after purchasing:
Log into your account by clicking LOGIN on the upper right corner of the site navigation.
Once you log in, an Account panel will open on your screen.
You can reopen the Account panel anytime (as long as you’re logged in) by clicking ACCOUNT in the upper right corner of the site navigation.Select the course title in the Account panel to access the course content.
Mobile access:
To access the course on your phone, tap the hamburger menu icon (looks like = ) in the upper right corner of your screen and click LOGIN.
You will also receive a welcome email with instructions to access the course when you sign up.
If you have any questions or need assistance, email info@womensv.org.
* Disclaimer: The information provided in this workshop does not constitute legal advice or therapeutic services. This workshop does not intend or claim to guarantee or influence any legal or therapeutic outcomes. WomenSV does not offer legal advice or therapy.
