Understanding Coercive Control starts with understanding Conversations
Many people sense something is wrong in their conversations, but can't quite explain why. This website is here to help you understand what is really happening and to give you language for it.
My work focuses on how conversations themselves can be used to control, confuse and overpower-what I call Conversational Control.
We often focus on behaviour, personality or conflict. But much of what goes wrong in relationships happens inside conversations-in tone, timing, framing and repetition.
I developed the concept of Conversational Control to make sense of these patterns, and how they underpin Coercive Control.
Here, you will find clear explanations, examples and tools to help you recognise whats happening and respond differently.
Hi, I'm Dr Torna Pitman.
For over twenty years, I’ve worked alongside people trying to make sense of complex and often painful relationships. Again and again, I saw how deeply people felt that something wasn’t right — but struggled to explain why.
What stood out to me was how much of this lived inside conversations. Not just what was said, but how things were said — the tone, the timing, the patterns that slowly left people feeling confused, silenced, or worn down.
That work led me to develop the concept of Conversational Control, and to explore how it connects to something more serious: Coercive Control.
My book, Tangled Web of Words, brings these ideas together in a way that is clear, practical, and grounded in real experience. It’s written for practitioners, and for anyone trying to untangle what has happened — or what still doesn’t sit right — in a relationship.
These days, I focus on teaching, writing, and sharing the tools and insights I’ve developed over the years. I no longer provide counselling, but I do offer workshops and lectures.
On this website, you’ll find guides, videos, and resources to help you understand what’s really happening in your conversations, and why certain patterns can be so difficult to shift.
I believe that when we can see clearly what is happening, something begins to change. We can name it, trust what we’re noticing, and start to respond differently.
