The Silent Treatment Can be a Form of Emotional Abuse. If someone Is Using It, They’re Trying to Control You. Here’s How to Deal With It, according to the Experts.
When a friend, colleague or loved one who is annoyed or angry with you tries to control the situation by giving you the silent treatment, it’s not a form of dialogue, but emotional abuse. This is the finding of researchers like Kipling Williams, who has studied the act of shunning, ostracizing, ghosting or shutting someone out – whatever you want to call it – for the better part of four decades.
Williams, whose work is the subject of an article in The Atlantic, has found that when parents shun a child or spouses stop speaking, cutting off communication suddenly and often for years on end, it can inflict physical and emotional distress and damage relationships irreparably. So before you inflict your own version of ghosting or the silent treatment, think about the long-term consequences, and whether the person you are shutting out is someone you actually want out of your life for good. The findings indicate that inflicting silence hurts both the giver and receiver over time.
No fewer than two-thirds of people admit to giving someone the silent treatment at some point in their lives, Williams found. Lowering the communications boom ends up causing hurt to both parties, in different ways. The silent one loses the opportunity to grow through communication and expressing how they feel, while the recipient of silence hurts because they can’t make amends and explain themselves or the actions that got them here in the first place.
Technology Makes Silence Even Louder
The silent treatment is more obvious than ever or at least when landlines meant you could miss a call or leave a voice mail, and perhaps it could take days to connect. due to one person being out, away from the phone or traveling. Now, when technology allows us to text, call, DM, Face Time, IM, WhatsApp, leave a comment or email someone any minute of the day, when the silent treatment ensues, the person on the other end can hear it loud and clear, as the deafening silence of a phone not pinging or vibrating.
While the silent treatment may be partial (monosyllabic answers, ignoring a wave from across the street, answering the concerns of others in a meeting but not yours) Williams explains that there one thing all these types of ostracism have in common: “People use the silent treatment because they can get away with it without looking abusive to others,” Williams told The Atlantic’s Daryl Austin in the piece first published in 2021. “And because it’s highly effective in making the targeted individual feel bad.”
The Silent Treatment and Abusive Relationships
The silent treatment can be so damaging to relationships that therapists at Relationship Australia, include it in the pantheon of abuse. Other types of abuse that are on the same level: Constantly judging and criticizing you or your behavior, dismissing your feelings as unimportant or invalid, or making you feel like you’re the problem and blaming you for their emotional unhappiness.
“While some people might think that being silent is taking the high road, it can actually be the worst thing you can do,” according to Gaby, a social worker with the New South Whales organization. “It can leave significant psychological and emotional repercussions on the person on the receiving end.”
The silent treatment doesn’t serve to move the conversation forward, it benefits neither the silent partner nor the one who is being ignored and shut out. Relationships are built on the word “relate” and communication is the root of all relationships. So the silent treatment can be damaging both for the controlling non-communicator and the person who is trying to reach out and talk.
The silent partner is trying to punish their friend, colleague, or partner (or sibling or other family member) but this takes effort and the brain wants to have the conversation. You may end up having it in your head over and over again, if you are the “silent” one, since the mental process of being silent can be loud, internally, as you ruminate and continue fantasizing about what you’d like to say to cause the most damage to the friend you are shutting out.
But eventually having the conversation is the healthier option. It’s like holding a beach ball underwater: It takes. effort and focus to keep the dialogue internalized, and NOT having it out it actually taking up more emotional space and energy than actually having the fight or conflict out in the open.
Abuse Takes Many Forms
Ultimately, how you resolve conflict and argue or express yourself during conflict is an indicator of the health of the relationship, since both parties benefit from a respectful airing of grievances. Hurt? Tell the person how their actions or words made you feel. If the relationship (whether a friendship, romantic bond or familial one) is to be saved, having it out, and telling the other person your feelings will help your both come to a new understanding. You have to be willing to express yourself.
Start by saying something like: “When you do X it makes me feel like ____. (Fill in the blanks.) You don’t care about my feelings… or I feel hurt, or I feel disrespected, or I feel as if I am not being heard.” The point is, your feelings are valid. Fill in this last half of how you feel however you wish. Your feelings are unimpeachable.
Try it in the past tense, “When you did such and such, I got the feeling you didn’t care about my feelings.” Or if there was an incident that set the silent treatment off because of something YOU did to hurt the other person, you may want to apologize first. If you think that you did something inconsiderate to spark this silence, reach out (by text, letter, email, or voice message) and explain that the relationship is important to you and you want to continue to work things out.
Try something heartfelt like: “I didn’t intend to hurt you, and I apologize. But when you blame me, or act like I did this to hurt you on purpose, and give me the silent treatment, it makes me feel like you don’t want to have the conversation and try to work things out.” Ultimately if they don’t reach back out in response, and continue to ghost you, then it’s on them. This is their choice and it’s not about you. Move on.
Taking Space is Often Healthy
The difference between the silent treatment and “taking space” is that it may be healthy to take a breath and gather your thoughts before responding to someone who has upset you. That can be smart if you worry you’re going to say something you would regret. You can even tell the person: “I am upset right now. I need a minute to think and then I want to speak when I calm down.”
That allows you to signal that you will respond but you want to do so when you have full control of your emotions and you want to choose your words carefully and with intention. We rarely take that moment to gather ourselves, but it can be useful and if you care about the relationship, it can show that you want to take care to react rationally.
Ultimately if you are the one given the silent treatment, especially by a romantic partner, you may want to decide whether they are trying to control you and be cruel or inflict pain, and if that is the case then you have to see this for what it is: A different type of emotional abuse, and one that you should not have to tolerate in a healthy relationship.
The first time I encountered it as an adult was when my young child decided that I had done something to annoy her and so would not be worthy of a response for a few hours. Luckily this treatment ultimately gave way to brief monosyllabic, then full-sentence conversation, tearful apologies,, forgiveness and ultimately hugs, kisses and being friends again. But it felt bad, even coming from a childish little person (then about age 6) whose behavior could be chalked up as emotional growing pains.
Later in life and more recently, I have experienced the silent treatment both in work situations and in social ones. Recently a friend told me she was being given the silent treatment by someone she worked with and it was hurting her hourly.
In each case, whether the ghosting was by someone I cared about or only someoneI had to put up with in certain work situations, it caused my chest to tighten and jaw to clench. You know it when it’s directed at you. And when that happens, I might be able to rationalize that the other person is just being immature, not willing to have a tough conversation, or acting out of their own sense of being hurt — but no matter what you try and tell yourself, being given the silent treatment never feels good.
I won’t do it to anyone ever again, and even when having a tough conversation is unpleasant, I make myself do it. Eventually, these conversations have to be had, if you ever want to have a relationship with that person again. And for the sake of everyone involved, the sooner the better. If they won’t relate, you have to end the relationship.
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