The silent treatment is not only silent, but can be deadly. Deadly, that is, to relationships. Deadly, more specifically, to the trust, love, safety, communication and intimacy that preserve and nourish relationships.
The silent treatment (also known as stonewalling) entails a partner’s (the silencer) passive-aggressively refusing to communicate with the other (the silenced). Unlike avoidance (a conflict-aversion defense), the silencer deploys the silent treatment with toxic purposes in mind.
The silencer’s aim is, above all, to silence communication. More specifically, it is to render the other invisible and, in so doing, induce in the “other” feelings of powerlessness and shame. (Note that the experience of powerlessness often evokes shame.)
The silent treatment is a statement of contempt, relating, “You aren’t worth the energy it would take me to acknowledge your existence, let alone your feelings or needs.”
The silent treatment tactically communicates, You have done something wrong, seriously wrong—wrong enough to warrant my repudiation of your existence.
Its message is menacing and extortive—menacing in its implicit accusation of guilt, and extortive in the lose-lose proposition it makes: either you confess to a “crime” (against the silencer) you may be unaware of having committed (a degrading concession), or, if you don’t, the silencer continues to blot you out.
The silent treatment is a technique of torture. This may sound hyperbolic, but human beings need (on the most basic level) recognition of their existence. The withholding of this recognition, especially if protracted, can have soul-warping consequences on personality. (Just consult attachment theory for proof of this.)
It is deeply disturbing to be silenced (stonewalled), especially by someone you love, or someone you believe (or want to believe) loves you. The silent treatment aims, therefore, to exploit a very deep, elemental vulnerability.
Understandably it is the kind of vulnerability from which one desperately wants relief. And the controlling, abusive silencer holds the cards—he can provide relief by deciding if, and when, to reinstate his recognition of your existence.
However, like many abusers, he may require something of you first–namely, your capitulation. From the silencer’s perspective, “capitulation” may involve his metaphorically bringing you to your knees, meaning he may demand that you appeal to, plead for and/or beg his forgiveness as a condition of his readmitting you into his good graces.
As noted, you may feel coerced into admitting something you didn’t do, say or mean. This, after all, is how false confessions occur: the accused feels so exhausted, disempowered and helpless to be heard against the monolithic accuser that, simply to escape the hell of being disbelieved, she relents (and confesses).
Or else she may begin to wonder, under the prolonged, accusatory assault, whether she’s crazy; whether maybe she is, in fact, guilty of a crime that not too long ago she was mystified and/or outraged to be accused of.
As I suggested in The Pathological Self-Confidence of the Sociopath, it’s not so hard to jar the confidence of, and foment doubt in, others. While we invest some degree of trust in our perceptions, that trust can be surprisingly fragile. Because we tend to be built with more uncertainty than certainty, we are prone, especially facing another’s prolonged, implacable invalidation, to feel self-doubt rising like flood-waters.
The abusive individual, whether narcissistic or sociopathic, exploits this natural psychological frailty. For this reason (and others) he will prize the silent treatment for its capacity to sow insecurity, dread, even terror, in its intended target.
(My use of “he” throughout this, and other, posts is a convenience and not to suggest that women are incapable of the behaviors discussed. This article is copyrighted (c) 2009 by Steve Becker, LCSW.)
Sabrina,
I have no words of wisdom to offer you…..I sure do feel your pain though….
For you, I think it very IMPORTANT to consider your young daughter. And whats in her best interest.
As much as I have had times when I doubt my VERY strong intuition with my son….I have noticed recently that my dogs have reacted differently to him recently. Especially his own dog. The one that sleeps in his room with him at night. They both instinctively have a fear of him to. If he goes into that “angry” mode the dogs react. THIS speaks VOLUMES to me.
When my younger son and his brother used to horse play years ago, this same dog was SO TORN because he unconditionaly loved both his “boys” and as they tumbled on the floor, you could see the dogs instinctively go to the defense of the younger one. Trying to get between the two of them but overall protecting the younger son.
This was never ROUGH and tumble play because of the age differnce between my kids. Usually something the boys initiated to try and get the dog involved….
Now how I wish that dog could talk….
I guess my point is that we have got to follow instinct because that is really all we have.
Blueskies, My opinion, at least for myself is that it all comes down to boundaries.I didnt love myself enough to “fiercely” protect ME. I am learning at 43 that I have to fervently and actively protect ME. FIrst it was so sad to me and I rejected the idea, as I didnt want to confront others or “hurt their feelings”- even tho others were ripping mine apart.
AS i said southern ladies are raised to be somewhat mild mannered and accommodating. this IS NOT GOOD LIFE SKILLS- sorry! It worked for my lil Grandma on the farm having sunday dinner on the church grounds with her “10” Children. BUT no more!
I am a single female business owner (very much a minority in my line of work) and I am learning to be good with the reasoning of:
FRANKLY, my dear, I dont give a damn! My lifetime spent of trying to react without ‘stirring it up’ got me no where. I always marveled at how others could stand up for themselves, and not care if they got the raised eyebrows or the “not appropriate for a lady” look. Now i will still be true to my roots of treating others well but I pick and choose who gets the right to take up space in my head and my heart.
Sabrina…’you so totally rock’
hi sabrina,
thank you for your support and wisdom.
i would like to try and help you with your son if you are interested? mine is 27 now and not a n or s but i did have troubles when he was 17 and what i did worked and he thanks me for it. i did move him out of the house but in a loving way. i would love to share with you if you are interested? also i have a nephew that struggled and i found a wonderful christian place for him to go to for 9 months. each boy gets a puppy and they teach them how responsibility etc…
it’s a weird thing. i am very good at raising kids, even took in one of my sons friends and raised her, i think i can relate to their pain and confusion because i had so much of it. i had my son at 17 and all i knew was to NOT do what was done or said to me and to not be scary and just love him, and it worked, thank god!!! so if you are interested i would love to help.
i wonder why it is that i can raise children, be a good friend, understand others so well and yet i can not take care of or love myself? i thought about it all night and the concept is so foreign to me. i went to the meadows for “love addiction” and they said i need to re-parent myself. i would think that would be easy but it isn’t. i keep trying to imagine myself as a little girl and then love her as i would another child but it doesn’t work. it makes me cry because i know it’s sick. i know that i am a good person and deserve love but i don’t understand?
how do you do it? can anyone help me? i wish i could feel the love i give away towards myself but i don’t know how.
This post just hit me right in the head…lol. It is true to a T. This is what he does to me. Every time I try to talk about something important, he cuts me off and tells me its not important, but they are the big things that need to be adressed…because i cannot stay in a relatinoship not even knowing where he stands on the important things in life.
Its been hell the last two years. When things are good, they are really not good. The problems are just being ignored and its like playing “house” and “happy family.” He is totally passive aggressive…or aggressive aggressive.
the last straw came this past weekend. He accused my teenage son of touching his guitar. Then said he was going to kick his ass. He lunged forward at him a couple times like he was going to attack him. I Flipped! Not my children! I freaked and i attacked him….AND THIS IS NOT ME!!!! I’was losing myself…my peace of mind, my sanity. In the end, i looked like the crazy one. He didn’t want to break up, but was giving me this silent treatment…pissed off because i thought he was wrong for accusing my kids, and pissed off because he feels they do not respect him…and that i do not enforce this respect. ( they are great kids. He once thru a toilet seat on my sleeping son, telling him he peed on the toilet seat….my kids were my weapon against me). He woiuld say things about my parenting all the time, the house work wasent good enough.
Really i started to feel like i couldnt do anything good enough. Even if I did try harder, it wasent good enough…and i would give up trying. Then he would accuse me.
He once said he tested me (doing an experiment) to see how long it would take for me to do this, or that, around the house. I feel like he is a chauvenist pig, a hypocrite. I could feel his judgements against me with his silent treatments, and if i asked what was wrong he was accuse me of trying to start a fight.
I would get depressed and exhausted and sleep more and slack more because of it, which only fed his contempt for me, and his justification that i wasent good enough. He had a list of things that werent good enough, that he would tell me had, but then he would say he didnt want to tell me what they were, because it didnt matter. The only thing I new was on his list, was that i wasent a good enough housekeeper or parent. (I have been away from him for a day, and can feel my own energy building back up for the good again.)
I am on a mission today, to pack the rest of his things and set them safely out on the porch, wrapped safely in plastic…so he cant accuse me of being vindictive. I just want him gone. no more guilt, shame, passive aggressive guilt trips and shaming, the silent treatment, the self–righteous logic he uses, the projection-(the projection is the worst….according to him, I am defensive, insecure and irrational).
I’m going to go on a cleaning spree, and make my home feel alive and safe again for my children and I. I have alot of pieces to pick up, financial ruin, unfinished projects he started, back bills he paid or ran up, he screwed up my taxes and frauded them…and i am paying for this now.
Most of all, he made me aware of the things that i will no longer tolerate. How you feel is how you are being treated. I felt like my thoguhts, feelings, beliefs and values were being belittled and devalued. I was being swallowed up, and controlled in a very passive aggressive way, but yet it was no accident. it was calculated and planned, each step, each action, each piece of twisted logic that he used against me.
Me as a person, i believe in peoples rights and standing for what I believe in. I believe in God. I believe in learning from my mistakes. I believe in taking action everyday to be the best person that i can be. I believe in searching for truth, and living my life based on what is truth, not lies. the relationship was a lie, built on a foundation of his false illusion of good intentions. I got lost and confused in this illusion, and it was also my illusion. I’m, letting go of the illusion….of this faith i had in a person who devalued me on a daily basis. who refused to acknowledge anything I believed in, stood for, or searched for.
I wish him the best, and I am letting go and letting God. Because I cant fix him. i am not that powerful. I can’t show him that I was never out to win, I was out to live and share everything. Everything I had to share was nonsense to him. Everything that i am was unlikeable to him…but he didnt want me to break up with him? I can’t live like that. Strangers understand what he cant. my teenage son can understand things he cant. Or he does understand but it is a game to win to him?
Thank goodness for this site. it really helps me know that I am not alone. It is a place to start healing and become aware of the things that I do not need to tolerate.
He threatened me this past weekend, and said i would be sorry. I finally didnt care, and I said if he didnt pack his things and leave now, i would call the police, because i will no longer feel accused and broken in my own home. He said he wasent going anywhere…so i picked up the phone and called. So he started packing his clothes. He didn’t believe me. but he was in a panick because he has been driving without a liscence which he lost because of an O.U.I.
i will stop my rambling and get on to cleaning up my life. God Bless you all…God Bless him….haha
I’M FREEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
hey sabrina just read another of your posts and i am from the south too. hehe
It’s just nuts that the more I read everyone is trying to get away from their S and I want to get near my S…it doesn’t make any sense to me…I haven’t done anything, no email, just saying you’d think it would be easier…these are horror stories, especially when there are kids involved. Not sure why I still don’t feel a tremendous sense of relief. A little one, but the longing is still strong, the missing is still real strong
And as far as the eharmony thing goes, the 1st question that girl asked me was when and why did my last relationship end…ummmmm? not sure how to answer that one but I need to let her know I’m not ready I dont think…
Hello Meow,
First of all, let me reassure you that sociopaths generally waste little energy, and even less worry, wondering if they’re sociopaths.
I credit you for being so honest. Your self-awareneness and concern over how you handle your disappointment is also, I can assure you, extremely incompatible with sociopathy.
Also, reading your post, I sense that your tendency to withdraw is very defensive-based? That your withdrawal, your shutting-down, is very hurt-based? And so perhaps you’ve learned to withdraw and shut-down in self-protection? And so your curiosity to explore possible other ways to handle your hurt, and disappointment, is very noble and strikingly undefensive.
When I refer to “the silencer,” I am referring to a personality who uses silence and withdrawal less in hurt-based defensiveness, than the calculated desire to remind the other who’s boss, who holds the cards, who holds the power, and who uses that power anyway, and at any time, he likes.
This does not sound like your principle motive for withdrawing? As I said, reading your comments, it sounded as if your self-protectiveness, maybe stemming from hurt?, activates your shutting-down response?
I salute you for your openness and self-curiosity…I’m very confident that, perhaps with some support, you can successfully explore, and learn to widen, your repetoire of responses to hurt, vulnerability, and anger (if you like).
That’s not an easy thing for any of us to do, but you begin with the most potent weapon possible…your self-awareness.
Steve
I realised today I have been away from my tormentor for 3 years. I still dip in and read articles here, and saw this. It brought chills back up my spine to read the way you describe something I could never seem to convey to people. That having someone shut you out completely over something they were displeased about, and go about their daily life calmly and coolly, acting as if you are not present, is one of the most horrible experiences I have ever known. Complete communication denial. No recognition of you being in their world at all. Hung out to dry, I used to call it. I did not exist.
It could go on for days at a time, the longest stretch of total blanking was 4 days. I had moved abroad with him, so spent many hours during the day alone. As someone here said, just a morsel, just a word, just a gesture that I counted in some way would have made a difference. You get desperate for something from them. The more you do, the more coolly and calmly he would ignore you. It was horrible. On one occasion I actually do recall thinking I was going mad, I had no idea how to deal with it. He would finally relent, his typical method would be “lets just have a nice evening tonight” – the onus clearly upon me to ensure that after my punishment, I would make sure nothing interfered with our nice evening.
It makes me shudder now remembering how I endured this out of some sense of belief that underneath all this weirdness, he loved me.
Like hell he did.
Ellejay.
Blueskies, Thank you so much for your vote of confidence, especially today did I need a lift! and AWAKENING for your response. Cool that you are from the south.
My LATEST UPDATE on my S son living with me: It all came to a halt today as his raging manifest again last night. As you might have seen my desparate posts, I struggled to make a decision. Thanks to ALL of you guys that responded in my time of need.
I tried to sit him down and offered to pay some rent money (a pay off of sorts)for him to move out of here, giving him a buffer to keep the peace and make this less dramatic.
ALmost as if he NEVER heard my generous offer, he turned it into an ugly, scary argument. Pulling out all the crazy- making,lies, and put downs he could,.
Long story short I felt it necessary for my safety to call my father to come here to help remove my aggressive son from the house, I felt it necessary to pull out my tazer gun while telling him he had to leave immediately- as he said he wasnt leaving without a certain vehicle that I own that he feels entitled to.
He laughed cruelly as I fought back tears while shaking holding this stupid tazer gun, and he said shoot me with it- go ahead. He said hideous filty things to me that I would not even repeat. At that point it was like dealing with a demon.
I could feel that his anger was escalating to the point I was in possible danger. I repeated several times, step away from me please, You are in my Personal space – A DEAD RINGER CLUE THAT THIS PERSON IS ABUSIVE (when moving close to you/invading your space while anger escalates)
I backed away from him, never turning my back on him, dead bolted myself in my “safe room” (bedroom)and waited for him to remove his things from my house. He, before his grandfather even got here,
and his G.f. finally left, I let out all the crying I had in me, my father drove from 35 miles away (thank God for that support.) We sat on the back porch drinking coffee and I could breathe again. The stress in this household and eery tension is gone withmy son.
I have no regrets and know this had to be done. I feel somewhat empty at this moment, exhausted, but at peace that I have “fiercely” protected myself and my daughter.