Being completely ignored is excruciating. Each of these thoughts show exactly how the silent treatment can work as a gaslighting technique. You are looking at yourself to blame, he is deciding the length of your punishment, and it increases the desire to return to normal.
In fact, silent treatment qualifies as abuse. The silent treatment sabotages you and your relationships by causing emotional trauma or stress, causing psychological stress, serious physical side effects, behavioral changes, and finally it can destroy relationships.
Over time, the use of the silent treatment can become emotionally abusive. Research has found that people who received the silent treatment experienced a threat to their needs of belonging, self-esteem, control, and meaningful existence.
One of the main issues with the silent treatment is that to the receiver, it can feel like a punishment or control. The receiver is shut out and left to wait until the person recovers. Sometimes they can talk them round, and sometimes not, so it can feel like they are at the silent person's mercy.
Using the silent treatment is an unproductive way of communicating within a relationship. It can sometimes be a form of self-protection, but at other times, it indicates emotional abuse. People who regularly use or experience the silent treatment should take steps to address it.
The silent treatment might be employed by passive personality types to avoid conflict and confrontation, while strong personality types use it to punish or control. Some people may not even consciously choose it at all.
By establishing boundaries, enforcing consequences if necessary, sharing emotions with others, and speaking up for yourself; you will take away their power, thus protecting yourself from the narcissist's silent treatment.
If someone displays unmanageable emotions and easily flies off the handle, this is a serious red flag. Responding with uncontrollable rage or the "silent treatment" could point to abusive (physical or emotional) behavior in the future, says Trombetti.
Silent treatment can be an immature way of dealing with situations and its practice should not be made a habit of. Imagine you have upset your loved one for some reason and they are angry with you.
When you give someone the silent treatment, you are showing them that they are insignificant, unworthy and unlovable. It can greatly deplete their self-esteem, leaving serious consequences. It can cause physical issues as well.
Silence intensifies the impact of trauma, and trauma that goes unspoken, un-witnessed, and unclaimed too often "outs itself" as more violence to self or others.
So, one clear answer to how long should the silent treatment last is to not let it stretch for days, weeks or months. If you hold off communication in a bid to get your partner to submit to your will or apologize, then you're venturing into the tricky territory of silent treatment and emotional abuse.
The silent treatment is a manipulative tactic that can be used in order to control a situation or person. It is often used as a way to punish someone for something that they have done in order to get them to change their behaviour.
Williams, Ph. D., a professor of psychological sciences at Purdue University, found that being ignored literally hurts—it triggers the same part of the brain that registers physical pain. Technically, you're experiencing ostracism.
When you're ignoring someone, you may think you are saying something by saying nothing, but really you are causing more problems by facing a problem in an unhealthy way. Freezing someone out isn't just harming them, but you as well. If you use silence as a punishment, it cuts you off as well.
Being ignored is especially difficult for a person who is isolated by abuse and coercive control, and depends on the abuser's approval to feel worthwhile and safe. Many abuse survivors say they hated the silent treatment more than the insults or yelling.
Communicating after the silent treatment is sensitive ground to cover, so keep it simple and state your boundaries and avoid emotional minefields. Often, the silent treatment is an indication that one or both people need a little bit of space to sort things out.
Narcissistic silent treatment is a type of narcissistic manipulation and narcissistic abuse. Narcissists may use the silent treatment to communicate they are unhappy with you, to control you, or as a form of punishment.
This behavior is ingrained long before a person's first romantic relationship. “It's a learned behavior,” George-Sturges said. The feelings associated with being ostracized, resulting from the silent treatment, are the foundation of what makes the well-known and widely-used “timeout” so effective with children.
The grey rock method is where you deliberately act unresponsive or unengaged so that an abusive person will lose interest in you. Abusive people thrive on emotions and drama. When you act indifferent and don't show your emotions, they may lose interest and stop bothering you. This is known as “grey rocking.”
Held, that silence in the face of pertinent and direct accusation of crime par- takes of the nature of a confession, and is admissible as a circumstance to be considered by the jury as tending to show guilt, even though the person accused is in custody on the charge.
Like gaslighting, the end goal of the silent treatment is to punish the recipient by blocking or withdrawing information to gain control. The motives of gaslighting are consistent with power and control struggles.
Like any other manipulative tactic, it will backfire if the victim becomes aware of it and decides to set up a firm boundary. In other words, if the target of, say, a “silent treatment” decides that they're not tolerating this type of behavior and decides that the relationship, whatever it was, is over.
Silence is a form of communicative power, which can be used beneficially or as a way to hurt someone else. When you choose not to respond to someone, you show that person that he or she does not have full control, and your actions are not dictated by anyone but yourself.
The silent treatment, even if it's brief, activates the anterior cingulate cortex – the part of the brain that detects physical pain.