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.)
GG and Tilly,
As I tell just about everyone who comes here
GO BACK TO THE ARCHIVED ARTICLES AND READ THEM ALL. EVERY ONE.
Don’t bother at first with the comments under them, just the articles themselves. They are listed on the screen to the left under “Monthly archives” and click on each month and go back wards until you are to the first articles. Print them out even and put them in a 3-ring binder to reread when you are not on the computer. They are the “Psychopath 101, 102 and 103 all the way up to 401. They are a PhD in psychopath and in HEALING OURSELVES. Learning about the psychopaths is not a benefit unless you can APPLY it. I KNEW about the psychopaths (I am a mental health professional) Dr. Leedom knew, Donna Knew, but we didn’t APPLY them, we got conned. Donna and Dr. Leedom are waaaay above me in knowledge yet they got conned because they didn’t apply the knowledge they had….they looked at the trees and did not see the FOREST! You need this knowledge, and you need to learn how to apply it to YOUR case,,,learn the red flags and how to spot them. WE ALL DO. It is a never endling learning and “self improvement”project. But once you get past the first few hurdles it gets EASIER and EASIER and new insights will come up and you can deal with them without a huge excess of pain.
Right now, especially you, GG, are in a tremendous amount of PAIN, and that pain and confusion blocks your views. Learning will help improve your vision, applying it will lessen the pain. Hang in there! It does get better. (((hugs)))) and always my prayers for every one’s healing!
Greenfern,
He said all this and more!!! My God – even in the divorce papers — word for word – I have no outside interests!!!!!!
How could I when i worked full time and was raising 2 kids basically alone?
Not to mention a sick mother…………
Greenfern, I swear – word for word…………I am speechless right now ….
Hysterical – stalking, can’t get over him, nuts, crazy, not out going or social, unstable, emotionally weak……
I have to print this to keep reading it –
are they all born with an “S” chip in their brain………….?????
newlife08,
Something happens in the process of living with the s. I think of it for me as sort of an implosion. I imploded during these seven years. Over and over I was hammered with discounting my old ways, my true self. I was being groomed and re-shaped. When I mourned my loss of old self and resisted this new shaping by the s, that’s when he started labeling me in these terms. Up to that point I was his super girl, smartest strongest and “with the biggest heart”. He said I made him a better man. Ha!
I have always been a person with wide interest. I always have so much I want to do. Some of my friends call me renaissance woman. I know, using renaissance woman sounds kinda un-modest but I love hearing this because it’s such a proof (anti-venom) to what the s said about me.
I always found ways to entertain myself. He never bothered making time for us, so after a while I gave up on that too. Although there were times when he would make plans with me only to call me 3 times telling me he was running late. Or when we made plans to eat lunch together, he refused to come out of his office because he was too busy. In the other hand he would get ultra pissed off if I was few minutes late or did not do as he wanted. This was ultimate control over time on his part.
Then I was a “wreck” in his eyes all of the sudden. This began when I started questioning him and his hypocritical behavior. He said that “his fiends thought he deserved a younger and better looking girlfriend”.
Before and after the s I have been a woman with many interest and curiousity. There is something to see, learn and enjoy every day, even though not every day is good. I am starting to realize that this is exactly what the s was trying to take away.
GG – Another lesson learned and known world-wide, but rarely practiced or absorbed by a victim of an S….
Make a fool of me once its on you…make a fool of me twice its on me…
Most of us here were not given the tools or insights or preparedness to deal with someone who is dysfunctional, disordered, toxic…we came into adulthood with the perception that we do our best, give our best, be our best even under extreme duress…and we are amazing people for being that way….but what we werent taught …is how and where to draw the line when it comes to someone we love or we thought loved us and then turns around and does a 360 on us….in fact many of us had such dysfunctional childhood situations that we found ourselves having to do just that…buck up…shut up…save face…make nice…keep the peace…survive…. there are people out there who dont find themselves in our shoes…simply because they were taught or have learned from experience how to PROTECT themselves from self-destructive habits of returning to the dysfunctional situation. Once the S leaves its up to us to do all the hard work on ourselves if we want to never find ourselves in this position again…meaning asking ourselves how could I have better handled the cell phone situation? Red Flag. Be Done with that treatment. How could I have better handled the birthcontrol situation? Red Flag..Be done with that person. How could I have beter handled the blatant lies to family members? Be done with that person. How could I have better handled feeling underappreciated? Acknowledge my feelings, value what my internal being is feeling, sensing…and say NO MORE… Instead we of are the ilk to discount our own true to self feelings, we have very little self-value, self-worth, or for some of us women we have found ourselves in a situation of needing to merely survive because they provided everything for us and we didnt see a way out…but the truth is…there is a door….and it can always be opened and walked through to lead you out and away. These toxic people arent really anybody worthwhile….they just lead us on a path …a poisonous path…and we get caught up in the eye of the storm not knowing which end is up….until we find ourselves wiped out on the floor across a room, not knowing what hit us….we didnt have the tools or knowledge or understanding that we dont ever have to accept bad treatment, degrading treatment, confusing treatment, or abuse — emotional or physical. The buck stops there as far as “love” — that is not “love” and we do not have to experience toxic “love”, unless we choose to.
God gave you yourself. God did not give her to you. She landed in your path…she misled you (they all have)…but at some point you tossed out along the way all of your self EVERYTHING…and she honed in on that at went with it. No boundaries, no cares, no worries, no reality…just going with the flow, as long as shes there and it feels like love to you enough, you are willing to stay. But more and more the percentage of good times, fun memories vs bad times, awful memories will be unbalanced…because she is unhealthy…and we all become unhealthy with them in our own way when we toss our self-respect, self-value, self-trust to the curb….we convince ourselves, and her and the powers to be that we really dont care so much about ourselves — just the picture.
The picture of our lives will only be beautiful and peaceful when we are — when weve found our self-worth, self-respect, self-trust. When we look in and find ourselves and create the balance we seek for ourselves so that when we meet someone bad for us we have the tools in place to say to ourselves…stop change direction…my core beauty and peace is being compromised, by myself if I dont protect love stand up for what god gave me. Myself.
GG….stop. change direction.
Learnthelesson said:
“in fact many of us had such dysfunctional childhood situations that we found ourselves having to do just that”buck up”shut up”save face”make nice”keep the peace”survive”.”
Yesterday I was thinking that I like to think that there is two major categories of coping mechanisms growing up in dysfunctional families.
1) Shut up, be “diplomatic”, live in fear, please your abuser, submit, roll over and do not cause waves, addictions. Care-taking. Taking care of everyone else but self. Take out anger on self. Passive survival.
2) Resist, act out, violent and agressive behaviors, take out anger on others, hurt others, addictions, trouble fitting in. Self-centered
They are both coping mechanism that a child would learn to survive a messed up family enviornment. Both of these mechanisms lead down destructive paths and bite one in the behind eventualy. But it can be understood why these coping mechanisms were necessary at one point.
Greenfern….
If there was one thing I would like to know…it would be what his (my x) childhood was. It wouldnt make a single thing different…it would just lend insight into what shaped him into the person he became and then eventually chose to be/remain.
I also feel that for some of them out there genetics is the predominant reason when mental illness and extreme personality disorders come into play. But always on the fence about the one we are not sure what category they fall into…perhaps number 2 above….still after enough “situations gone wrong” in their adult life they have the option to change, do something, work on themselves too….
Thanks for this comment of yours….it really hit home with my thoughts about growing up in dysfunctional families and the different ways individuals cope…come out of it…
newlife08:
What an asshole. Didn’t he just agree to you getting the shore house as part of the settlement?
Whether he did or not, ask your attorney if he can get a hearing from the judge right away to issue an order staying any sale of the shore property. Or, failing that, ask if your attorney can get the court to impose a constructive trust over the proceeds of any sale so that S can’t disburse the proceeds of the sale.
I’ll give it some more thought and see if I can come up with any other ideas.
GG and Tilly:
OxDrover said: “I KNEW about the psychopaths (I am a mental health professional) Dr. Leedom knew, Donna Knew, but we didn’t APPLY them, we got conned. Donna and Dr. Leedom are waaaay above me in knowledge yet they got conned because they didn’t apply the knowledge they had”.”
So true. I was a criminal defense attorney. I know what percentage of the prison population is sociopaths. Hell, I know that all ex-cons lie. And I still fell in love with a sociopathic ex-con.
There are moments I miss the naivete I had towards the human race. Unfortunately, after S flipped my life upside down and nearly destroyed me, I had no choice but to assume that the human race is out to get me until proven otherwise. Boy, am I a lot smarter now.
Matt,
I would also like to add, that part of what they did to CON us was to DISTRACT US and KEEP US OFF BALANCE.
Sort of like a magician doing tricks uses a DISTRACTION for you to look at while they pull the rabbit out of the hat, and presto! Ypu don’t see how they did it.
My P son kept me so upset that I was continually writing him letters 12-20 pages long, typed, telling him how I was suffering and how much stress my egg donor was putting on me and how much he was putting on me and begging him to stop! Of course he sent theletters where I complained about the egg donor to HER! showing her where I was crazy!@....... He even “diagnosed” (in all his medical knowledge) that he was SURE I must have a BRAIN TUMOR to have done such a “crazy” thing so unlike me—yea, it was crazy all right, I was trying to SET BOUNDARIES to protect myself! Now that IS CRAZY in the eyes of a psychopath! ROTFLMAO!!!!
I think (IMHO) [tilly that is “In my humble opinion”} they all use this distraction method to keep us so off balance and worrying over the unimportant things that assume monumental proportions under their crazymaking that we are totally unable to see the BIG PICTURE of what they are doing to us! When you get stressed enough to get PTSD you are UNABLE to think straight–we do become “crazy”—but we are NOT DISORDERED, THEY ARE!!!! I will aldmit to being crazy but I am NOT evil and disordered—-they are!
Matt, I went to social services and 48 hours later I am served with ex parte domestic violence charges and was forced to surrender my gun to the officer. I have been to the magistrate twice in the last six months for an order of protection and been denied but a dangerous ex con with convictions for domestic violence, armed robbery, kidnapping and assault with a deadly weapon can waltz in and get one because I threatened to make sure that I knew that his daughter was safe at any cost and would call the school, the courts, and social services whatever was needed to be sure that she was safe since she was reaching out to me by unblocking his private unlisted number abd calling me when she knows there would be hell to pay. I thought he had allowed her to call, naive stupid me thinking he could learn to care. What a joke. If I’m convicted or the order stands come Tuesday I will lose my nursing license. I don’t have the time to find or the money to afford a lawyer. Any suggests? I have notarized statements from my co workers who heard my side of the conversation with him in the break room at work and friends who are going to court to testify of the child’s desires to see me and her family and to my ongoing fears for her safety. Is that enough? Do I need more?