Trigger Warning: This post contains explicit descriptions of controlling and abusive behavior that could be triggering to someone with a history of emotional abuse. Please proceed gently, and feel free to stop reading and take a few deep breaths whenever you need to.
If you've been wondering whether a relationship in your life has quietly become toxic or controlling, this self-test can help you start putting words to what you may already sense. It can apply to any relationship: a partner, a parent, a relative, a friend, a colleague—anyone.
Nobody decides, in a single moment, to lose themselves in a relationship. It happens through hundreds of small accommodations—biting your tongue once, changing a plan once, letting one comment slide—until none of it feels like a choice anymore, just how things are.
As you go through the questions below, I'd invite you to do something beyond just answering them in your head. Notice what happens in your body as you read each one—a tightening in your chest, a drop in your stomach, a breath you're holding without realizing it. These physical reactions often arrive before your mind has fully decided how to answer, and they are rarely wrong. If your body reacts to a question before your thoughts catch up, trust that reaction as real information, even if some part of you wants to reason it away.
Behavioral Control
- Do I feel that I have to stick to a certain way of behaving in order to please this person or receive their approval? (Or do I do this automatically now, without even realizing it?)
- Do I find myself anticipating what they would say or how they'd react to something I do or say, and adjust my behavior in advance to avoid trouble?
- Do I know all of their likes and dislikes, and tend to make choices about my own life based on what would please them?
- Do I keep my behavior and words in constant check to avoid insults, negative comments, or making them angry?
- Do I change my mind, my plans, or myself after they've made a negative comment about something?
- Do I struggle to make decisions—especially when I want to do something, but can already predict everything negative they'll say about it?
- Are they a person who simply doesn't take no for an answer?
Surveillance and Privacy
- Have I ever caught them looking through my private things—my phone, my files, my diary—or suspected they had, because something felt moved or out of place?
- Do I find myself hiding or keeping personal things out of sight, out of fear they'll go through them if given the chance?
- Do they ask me to account for how I spend my money, or make pointed comments about my spending habits?
- If we live together, when I bring up a boundary they've crossed—nudity around the house, not flushing the toilet, anything that makes me uncomfortable—do they respond with something like "I'm in my own house, I'll do as I please"?
- Do I feel like they watch me the way someone tracks a thing, rather than simply noticing me the way people naturally notice each other?
- Do they seem to know things about me that I never told them, or specifically tried to keep private?
Control Over Your Body and Image
- In an intimate or family setting, do they walk in on me while I'm undressed or in the bathroom without knocking, and stay rather than excusing themselves and leaving?
- Do they tell me how to dress, ask me to send photos to approve my outfit when we're apart, or make subtly cutting comments about my appearance that leave me feeling ashamed?
- Do they criticize my voice, the way I speak, my facial expressions, my gestures, or how I walk—or explicitly ask me to talk, move, or express myself differently than comes naturally to me?
- Do they decide what I should eat, and struggle to accept it when I want something different?
- Do they comment on how often I shower, wash my hair, or brush my teeth, in a way that carries an unspoken accusation?
- Do they comment on me not being masculine or feminine "enough," by their own standards?
Blame, Denial, and Invalidation
- When we disagree, do they go to great lengths to change my perspective, rather than simply accepting that we see things differently?
- When I tell them something they did or said genuinely hurt me, do they deny it happened ("that never happened," "I don't remember that") or shift the blame onto me ("if I did or said that, it's because you did or said something first")?
- During an argument, do they lean on our relationship label to justify their behavior—things like "I'm your husband, so I can say this to you," or "I'm your mother, so I can do this"?
- Do they call me "too sensitive" whenever I bring up something that hurt me, whether about them or about something else entirely?
- Do they suggest I'll regret leaving because "no one will ever love me the way they do," or "no one else could put up with someone like me"?
- Do they regularly point out my weaknesses—physical, intellectual, emotional, or otherwise—as a way of implying something is fundamentally lacking in me, even in situations that have nothing to do with it?
- Do they make recurring comments about me being "peculiar," or otherwise subtly strange?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, you may be in a toxic or controlling relationship or dynamic.
If part of your mind is already trying to talk you out of your own answers—I feel this, but maybe I'm wrong; maybe I'm overreacting—that instinct to downplay is worth noticing too. It is often self-gaslighting: the residue of real gaslighting you received, still running on its own. Notice, too, which questions your body reacted to before your mind even finished reading them. That reaction is not a misinterpretation on your part.
Several of these questions are also simply factual—about what someone did, not about how you felt about it. Those answers can't be explained away as your perception being "wrong." Looking through someone's phone without permission, denying something you both know happened, refusing to respect a boundary in your own shared home—these are behaviors, not feelings, and they are not healthy, regardless of how they're framed to you.
If this test brought up more questions than answers, two other pieces might help you go further: You're Not Imagining It, and You're Not Incapable walks through the subtler, harder-to-name forms gaslighting can take day to day, and The Throat Area in Dynamics of Oppression looks at how these dynamics settle into the body long after a relationship has changed or ended.
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