Why do you think you have got it all wrong? What have you got all wrong?
Do you mean by having got it all wrong that your understanding that your partner has been abusive and controlling is wrong? Or do you mean that you have got it all wrong by not being the assertive person your counsellor suggests who nips it all in the bud? I think I need a bit more clarity on what you think you have got all wrong.
In the meantime, I am going to go back to your previous post which I did not reply to properly.
I am afraid I think your counsellor does not have a good understanding of how coercive control works. The point is, at the start, there is nothing obvious to nip in the bud. The patterns are not clear, and of course we are socialised to think that relationships are hearts and flowers. The roots of controlling behaviour are close to what society considers romantic. For example, boyfriend says he loves you and always wants to be with you - oooh, hearts and flowers until slowly you realise actually this means that it is difficult to see your own friends and family. Or he buys you clothes, because he loves you - with the subtext of this is what he wants you to wear. And maybe you should wear your hair a certain way because that he how he likes it. These examples might not be relevant to your circumstances but my point is that there is usually nothing obvious to nip in the bud. There will be things that made you think 
but at the time, you dismissed them because overall, the hearts and flowers won out.
And then let’s say there are some more overt attempts to control or there is more clear emotional manipulation. By this point you are pregnant, your friends and family know you as a couple, they think everything is fine. So you wonder if the little things which you are noticing matter, whether you are imagining them, whether there is something to be nipped in the bud or whether you are imagining it.
Then of course, you have a partner who spends his time see-sawing between more over emotional manipulation and abuse, and kindness, who is invested in you not nipping it in the bud. So of course you think the kind person is the real person, there are so many possible explanations for the negative behaviour, and then you are in the cycle you have described on here.
Which bit of that do you nip in the bud? Because it is not one thing. It is a web which has been woven. So the better metaphor is not nipping in the bud, which implies it can be sorted, done and dusted, with one action, but unwinding yourself and getting free of all the emotional manipulation and confusion, trying to get clarity and that cannot be done overnight.
Of course we all have roles but in the end, you are one person living one life and I prefer my life to have cohesion.
I also think (and this is not a criticism because I do it too) that there is still a big element in what you are saying of ‘if only I change how I feel or act about x, y or z, then things will be fine’. So if I stop putting myself last or I more easily make myself go for a walk, then the situation will improve. This implies the failing is in you. Whereas I think a) that is the wrong way around (if the situation was different you would find it much easier to put yourself first and go for a walk) and b) you are adding to the burden of how you should be/what you need to do.
What if I told you that you have not done anything wrong, that you do not need to be different, that there is nothing you could have done differently because you are who you are and that person is just lovely and fine the way they are? What if all that was true and it is the situation that you are in which is wrong? That you could not make the right decisions twenty or fifteen or ten or however many years ago because of the spider’s web being woven around you? Would you be kinder to yourself? Because all I see is you adding to the burdens of what you should be doing differently.
It is so much easier to think that if we do x, y or z then the situation will improve than to realise that no matter what we do, then some things will always be the same. Your partner will not change. You cannot change him. I also don’t think you can or should fundamentally change yourself either. You can change the way you react or what you do of course but that has to come from you because it is what you want to do. Spending all one’s time nipping entitled and emotionally manipulative behaviour in the bud is not really an attractive proposition.