Silent Treatment

[Rosa Rugosa]

Hello,

Has anyone experienced silent treatment that has lasted for many years?

A lot of what I read and watch seems to suggest that silent treatment/stonewalling are usually shorter term tactics of manipulation. If it is prolonged over years does that suggest I've been discarded as opposed to being stonewalled?

For context - My uNPD sister cut off all contact almost 4 years ago (She has done this many times, but not for this long). There was an episode of rage and lashing out after I had tried to create some boundaries and did a kind of grey rock (GR is the best way to describe it but it was coming from a place emotional exhaustion rather than knowlege). I could have handled things better than I did, I apologised for my part and tried to contact her a few times. Always silence. I messaged her to check in during the pandemic (I was worried about her as she works in a healthcare setting). She responded with some hurtful things, like she doesn't want me in her life and I am a toxic person, there was more but this hurt the most. I have stopped reaching out now. I don't want to harass her, she made herself clear and I will respect her choice to remove me from her life.

My uNPD Mother used the same tactics with her brothers and sisters, parents and in-laws, and me. She also held onto the silence for years and in some cases till the death of the family member. Because of this I don't really blame my sister, it was what we were taught. I was just lucky to decide that it was a lesson in what not to do - not what to do.

Does this sound more like discarding than stonewalling?

Maybe if it's the silent treatment there is hope for a future relationship. But if it's discarding I think I will grieve the end of the relationship all over again. Either way, I'm at the start of my journey and trying to understand these things feels really positive. I feel less  the more I learn.

Thanks in advance for any insight.

[escapingman]

In my experience with my uNPDxs family where EVERYONE is a PD I would say the silent treatment stops after a week or so and turn in to "stopped speaking to someone ". This could last for weeks, months, years, decades or until someone died. Very often it would be between 2 PDs and one stopped speaking to the other one for often a very minor issue,  the other one then retaliated by also stop speaking to the other. For me it was quite tricky at times to keep up with who speaks to who and who doesn't.

[Cat of the Canals]

I would say that once you're into counting months and years, I'd consider it discard vs. silent treatment. In my experience, ST is a tool to punish. To make it clear that you have done wrong and need to atone for your misdeeds. There's an end goal. When a PD is at the point of discarding, they have decided you are no longer a reliable source of narc supply and have washed their hands of you.

That isn't to say that they may try to restart a new cycle in the future. Lots of people who are No Contact here still receive calls, letters, gifts, unannounced visits, etc. from PDs that discarded them long ago. I suspect this is probably usually a result of losing some more recent source of narc supply. They start going through their Supply Rolodex, and family in particular never truly gets deleted from that. So they go fishing and hope you'll take the bait.

[escapingman]

Cat of, I think your explanation might fit in on my experience as well. It's just f-ing freaking me out when 2 people who have stopped speakingvto each others for years suddenly turns up pretending and acting as they are best friends, just to fall out again in weeks/months/years and then rinse wash repeat.

[Rosa Rugosa]

Thanks Cat of the Canals - That was a helpful explanation. 'Supply Rolodex' gave me a chuckle, it's a really good way to describe it. I think you are right, it's discarding. It still feels like a punishment but maybe she has moved on from punishing me and I am now just punishing myself.

Escapingman, thanks for sharing your experience. I find this a strange phenomenon too, like they have an On/Off/Pause button for relationships and love. I was trained in childhood to reciprocate in this sudden and fake return to happy families. If I showed I was still upset, not willing to play along, if I didn't match their enthusiasm, or capitulate/pander - the silent treatment and other mean things would start right back up. My nonBP Father encouraged it too, we were the 'peacekeepers' - enablers I guess.

[escapingman]

Just want to add to the discussion. I started to enjoy the silent treatment from uNPDx and completely ignored her and started doing fun things with the kids around her. She started to get very angry and accused me of giving her the silent treatment instead. After a couple of those sessions she stopped giving ke the silent treatment,  so it is very clear that the PD will stop as soon as they know it doesn't work anymore.

[NarcKiddo]

My theory is that it remains the silent treatment for as long as the "offender" keeps trying to make amends or make contact IF the PD responds to the attempts by the "offender". A total discard/NC decision would result in nothing from them in response to the "offender".

It may now have turned into a stalemate where the PD is not going to make the first move under any circumstances and if you are content to let things lie then the silence may continue. If you make contact again you may find they are prepared to be magnanimous and speak to you again or they may decide you have not grovelled enough and explode at you again.

[xredshoesx]

starboard song got me onto referring to the silent treatment as the 'silent treat' because it truly is. 

[LemonLime]

LOL at Supply Rolodex too.

It reminds me of "When Harry Met Sally".  Sally has broken up with her longterm boyfriend and her friend Carrie Fisher is trying to find her a new man.  So they are sitting at brunch and Carrie is going through her Man Rolodex.......this one is married, you say?  So she bends the corner of that card and puts it back in the Rolodex and keeps going....

Narcs, of course, are nefarious and Carrie Fisher's character isn't, but love the image!

[moglow]

...My uNPD sister cut off all contact almost 4 years ago (She has done this many times, but not for this long). There was an episode of rage and lashing out after I had tried to create some boundaries and did a kind of grey rock (GR is the best way to describe it but it was coming from a place emotional exhaustion rather than knowlege). I could have handled things better than I did, I apologised for my part and tried to contact her a few times. Always silence. ... She responded with some hurtful things, like she doesn't want me in her life and I am a toxic person...

Like the others, I see silent treat as a brief punitive thing, trying to prove a point and get a response as it were. What your sister chose isn't silent treatment in my eyes - that's full on statement of fact [hers] and she was done. Or she may pop back up at some point asking why you no longer contact her. No way to know really. However illogical and random it may seem to you, knowing there's a family history of same and it's what she knows will hopefully soften the journey for you somewhat. She made a choice, and even the choices that aren't well thought out have consequences.

What you have to do is accept that her actions were about her and her stuff, not personal, and nothing you could possibly do or say would/will change them unless she chooses otherwise. You said some things you wish you hadn't [or at least not in the way they came out], you admitted you were wrong and apologized. She gets to decide what she does with that, and sounds like she has. Acceptance is hard, no matter when or how we get there.

[easterncappy]

This is semi-related, but I'm reminded a lot of my mom's childhood. My mom will never, ever, ever admit that her mom was abusive ("everyone did that back then", "I refuse to be a victim", "I love my mom even if she wasn't perfect", "you don't have a heart if you judge her for this!", "it was a long time ago", blah blah, the whole nine yards)... but she definitely was. The woman was a monster compared to my mom, who was a terrible mother in her own right.

Apparently, my grandma would give my mom the silent treatment for days at a time when my mom was like... elementary school aged. I think she specifically said she was 8 years old one time that this happened. You know, the age where you definitely need to be communicating your needs to your parents every day because there is so much you can't do for yourself yet, the age where kids are super reliant on their parents' approval and not getting it results in long term psychological effects.

My grandma was always very full of herself and I remember her being very cruel to me when she used to live with us. Except, despite being raised into the dysfunctional dynamic of my joke of a family, I didn't really care when she gave me the silent treatment. I remember being like 10 years old and thinking "at least she's not going to be mean to me today". This made her angrier and made her end the silent treatment because she wasn't getting the intended reaction of me begging and asking what I did wrong.

It's quite different from needing to take a break from a conversation when you're angry, so you can calm down before talking about it. Or from being on the receiving end of NC from someone who you've abused. It's an abuse tactic in it's own right, even between two adults... although, if my bad relatives want to go NC for me, I invite them to. Mine are unfortunately on the clingy side of the PD spectrum and I'm finding it hard to let them go.

[Rosa Rugosa]

Thanks so much everyone! You've all given me a lot to think about - and a movie to check out 

I'm realising I should feel lucky that they went NC with me, that I'm not trapped in their dramas. There is still the little girl inside me that mourns the rejections. I'm looking into reparenting and transactional analysis - anyone have any tips on healing old and new(ish) ostracism wounds?

I'm thinking it started as ST. Then, when I only apologised for my part, not theirs, and didn't grovel - it became discarding. I'm ok with this, I thought it would hurt anew but it actually feels a little freeing.

Easterncappy, thanks for sharing your story, I see some similarities in mine. My earliest childhood memories (maybe 4 y/o) are of my Mother's and Sister's rages and silence. Silent, deathly, cold, menacing stares or happily pretending I wasn't there, e.g doing something together and excluding me. Usually, but not always, silence followed a rage episode. If they were displeased (ST) with each other I was a person again, until they made up and I went back down the food chain.
Interestingly, my Mother accepted there was abuse in her childhood but refused to be a victim too (I wonder if it is common for PD's to reject that label?) Like being a victim made her weak, but she would tell me to 'stop playing the victim and stop the crocodile tears' - projection maybe? She did point to her childhood abuse as a reason for discarding her FOO - but still decided(?) to be a torchbearer of generational abuse.

When I was small, I asked my Father if I was a ghost, he thought I was joking. As a young adult I told him it hurt when they stopped speaking to me, he said he hadn't realised they did this, but said I was brave to talk about it, then promptly changed topics. Now I'm a bit older, I'm starting to feel that in trying to keep the 'peace' he enabled them. He protected(?) them and maybe let me down. He didn't mean to, realistically he couldn't have forced them to speak to me. My Mother would still call me to the table for meals and wake me up for school, so maybe he really didn't notice.

[easterncappy]

I'm sorry if it sounded like I was telling you to feel lucky that they cut you off. That's not what I meant, I was being tongue-in-cheek about how I wish my own clingy family would leave me alone sometimes. Now I realize it may have been inappropriate to make a comment like that.

A lot of these PD people view others as tools and not people, to varying degrees and with other kinds of emotions sometimes meddling with that view. They're inconsistent people with a distorted view of reality. Don't ever waste your time trying to apply logical reasoning in an attempt to understand their actions, because while a little bit might be there, you'll go crazy trying to make it all make sense. NPD especially - if you don't do what they want, they don't need you. I understand that it hurts a lot because it translates to "I didn't really like you all that much, but I viewed you as a tool, and when you stopped being good at that, I didn't need you anymore". You can't wrap your mind around it because you're actually capable of loving people even if they're inconvenient or frustrate you at times.

I think my mom won't admit that she was abused out of shame - she would ridicule my attempts at making her realize that her FOO and marriage were bad and abusive with such obviously fake confidence and immediate dismissal of whatever I was trying to explain to her.

And I think that's why generational abuse goes on for as long as it does. No one wants to accept that they were born into an unfair situation with bad people who hurt them, and that they're going to have to work on themselves for the rest of their lives if they want to live like the average person. It takes a lot of strength of character to be able to admit to this and thus end up all alone, starting from scratch, without family to fall back on... while everyone else gets to have nice, normal parents who give them a healthy childhood that they remember fondly, who they call for advice and emotional support even well into adulthood, who they can celebrate holidays with. It hurts knowing that you're missing out on what most people take for granted. I don't mean to sound super jaded about it, but this is why my own family was able to reel me back in a bunch of times.

As for "stop playing the victim" type sentiments, that's common too... depending on the PD and the exact expression of said PD, it could be that they're so used to being manipulative that they just assume that everyone else is manipulative all of the time too. It recently occurred to me that my mom never took my medical emergencies seriously because every single one of her "medical emergencies" was a way to get off of work, avoid criticism, get attention, etc. So obviously, if I claimed to be sick, I just wanted to get something out of someone and she "saw right through it". On the other hand, you have parents who just won't take their child seriously because they don't care. Like, they don't think you're making claims for attention, but they really don't care that you're hurt. There could be a lot of things motivating this.

I don't know how familiar you are with the scapegoat dynamic, it's usually common in disordered families with multiple children (so I can't relate - only children usually fluctuate between scapegoats and golden children regularly lol). It sounds a lot like what you went through. I'm sure you probably read through the website before joining, but I figured I'd link these articles anyway:

https://outofthefog.website/top-100-trait-blog/2015/11/4/favoritism
https://outofthefog.website/top-100-trait-blog/2015/11/4/scapegoating

[Rosa Rugosa]

Please, no need to apologise, it was not inappropriate. My tongue was in cheek for the last words, so I think your sentiment came through clearly.
I really feel for people in the middle of the storm. I'm finding it challenging to work through these things under clear blue skies. I should be more grateful for the calm.

I'm seeing a lot of my story in your words again. If they were nice to me it was a safe bet that a request would follow. Once i'd done the task, things would usually return to normal. I was a tool.
I didn't want to go school one day. I lost consciousness in class and woke up in hospital. She had the same attitude to my childhood sicknesses - 'seeing right through it' or ignoring me completely. I think the explanation of projecting her own manipulation could fit here. (I also think she has terminal uniqueness - a long list of health concerns and a longer list of doctors who she doesn't respect.)

As for generational abuse, I come from a culture where people should be 'stoic'. It is changing now. Not showing strong emotion, not talking about private or impolite things, thinking poor mental health = crazy or lazy, was pretty common for my parents and grandparents generations. Until recently, I hoped my Sister and Mother could find some therapy - they know there is much less stigma now in receiving mental health care. But, now I know NPD people are unlikely to seek or engage with therapy. I can let this hope go. I will get some flea powder and check myself instead

Thanks for the links. I had skipped the scapegoat page. A while back I watched Dr Ramani explain SG in a video. I was like, Yes!.. And never revisited it.

I don't think you sound jaded. I wish I had normal parent/healthy childhood. Regardless, I still grieve being cut out of the dysfunctional family system. No FOO to fall back on. I remind myself they were a pretty useless safety net - a safety net with human size holes in it. Sometimes id' land on the net, often i'd fall through one of those holes. I'd better make my own, stronger net.

[easterncappy]

My mom generally had a weird relationship with medicine. She "didn't believe in allergies" because "people made those up for attention" (God forbid you ever eat at her house if you have a food allergy lol) but she got really personally offended if people didn't accept her entirely made up "post-COVID syndrome" diagnosis (this is not something any doctor can diagnose you with because it isn't like... a specific diagnosable illness, at all... she also didn't believe in COVID...) complete with ER trips that never actually happened and then privately admitting to me, "I don't get it, everyone lies, but when I do it, I get in trouble?". Everything is a tool, from people to medical events.

I also come from a culture where people are expected to play tough and pretend that they don't have normal human emotions. I always say that we live in the modern world, cultures evolve, you can keep the parts you like and discard the parts that sound like they came from the stone ages. I was supposed to be my parents' retirement plan and basically worship the ground they walk on for the rest of my life, as per my culture... nah. Everyone I know who followed that tradition is beyond miserable, even if they won't admit it. Multigenerational households are also somewhat common in our culture, and in my family, it seems to mean that no one ever gets a break from PD relatives. It allows the dysfunction to spread to every subsequent generation via fleas and C-PTSD. But I like our food, music, clothes, holidays... I keep those because they're nice and don't promote unhealthy dynamics.

And of course, therapy is off-limits. Don't you dare even suggest the idea to these people. Sometimes I feel like they're people from the middle ages who took a time machine to 2022 and are afraid of light bulbs. The aversion to any idea of "sometimes when bad things happen to you as a child, it looms over you for the rest of your life unless you confront it" is just mind boggling. Nope, mental health is just not real, and light bulbs are scary.

On the original topic (I have a habit of forking off onto different topics in these threads... it's all so interconnected to me ):
https://theinvisiblescar.wordpress.com/2014/02/16/the-silent-treatment-is-a-form-of-emotional-child-abuse/

[easterncappy]

When I was small, I asked my Father if I was a ghost, he thought I was joking. As a young adult I told him it hurt when they stopped speaking to me, he said he hadn't realised they did this, but said I was brave to talk about it, then promptly changed topics. Now I'm a bit older, I'm starting to feel that in trying to keep the 'peace' he enabled them. He protected(?) them and maybe let me down. He didn't mean to, realistically he couldn't have forced them to speak to me. My Mother would still call me to the table for meals and wake me up for school, so maybe he really didn't notice.

Emotionally Neglected Children May Feel Like They Are Ghosts https://theinvisiblescar.wordpress.com/2016/09/30/emotionally-neglected-children-may-feel-like-they-are-ghosts/

I'm going through some websites and blogs today and this article made me think of your post.

[Rosa Rugosa]

Thanks for the links Easterncappy.

Somehow, reading that it is real, has happened enough to others, to be studied and written about, makes it feel more real for me. Maybe it did happen as I remember. I have always had the doubt - that I am the problem because I am one and they are three (FOO), that I should stop playing the victim, that I'm melodramatic and more recently that I am uPD not them.

Actually, my Mother was emotionally abusive. I'm going to try to stop gaslighting myself.  ST is abuse. It doesn't matter that she could be nice, that she kept me fed and clothed and under a roof. That's not enough to cancel out the ST, the abuse. (I should join you on your thread about generational abuse because I'm finding it hard using the abuse label myself - edit - another day, I'm trying to work on people pleaser behaviour. So I'm going to go self care and recharge myself with forest bathing, sorry if that sounds boastful)

I like tangents, we can find unexpected things down the side roads.

I did a little searching too, goodtherapy website (sorry, can't post link) suggests ST and stonewalling are different. Anyone have any thoughts on this?

My understanding now is ST, stonewalling and discarding are all a similar way of communicating displeasure in you by withholding love and affection and/or causing ostracism through lack of attention. I wonder if they know how much it hurts and that's why its common tactics? Do PD people know they cause pain and don't care or can't see far enough outside themselves to realise they caused pain? Maybe that is applying the logical reasoning you said not to do?

Somewhere I read ostracism triggers our brains to feel pain - a study with a virtual ball game and brain scans. It could help explain my tendency for self medication/numbing over the years.

[escapingman]

I wonder if they know how much it hurts and that's why its common tactics? Do PD people know they cause pain and don't care or can't see far enough outside themselves to realise they caused pain? Maybe that is applying the logical reasoning you said not to do?

Oh yes, they know they are hurting people and that is the point of it. When my uNPDxw used the ST and I was in the FOG she really loved seeing me hurt, I could almost see the smirk in her face when I was begging her to tell me what I had done to deserve the ST this time. Looking back she always invented a reason, projected it on to me and then went up to her bedroom where she enjoyed watching TV whilst ignoring me. Just thinking about this gives me shivers.

[easterncappy]

Maybe it did happen as I remember. I have always had the doubt - that I am the problem because I am one and they are three (FOO), that I should stop playing the victim, that I'm melodramatic and more recently that I am uPD not them.

No offense but... duh. Of course it happened the way you remember. You're not experiencing psychosis, you haven't been diagnosed with any disorder that makes you lose touch with reality, you're not experiencing elder memory loss... why on earth would you be misremembering things? Your memory isn't as bad as your mom trained you to believe it is. In fact, it's probably much better than hers is, because PD's have this weird way of convincing themselves that things happened totally differently than they actually did (some say they are always purposely gaslighting but I think they can be so delusional that they sometimes really believe their own lies). Trust yourself a little bit more. You are not crazy or defective, you just feel like you are.

Actually, my Mother was emotionally abusive. I'm going to try to stop gaslighting myself.

Yes. Exactly. It doesn't need to look like a Hollywood production on child abuse, either. Real life is a lot more nuanced and unpredictable and people are more complicated.

she kept me fed and clothed and under a roof.

AKA the bare minimum to not get your kids taken away by the government. Not some sort of morally upstanding feat. Barely enough for a dog to have a good life much less a human child.

cancel out the ST, the abuse.

Nothing can cancel out abuse. Let's reframe this, since most people have a better understanding of spousal abuse than child abuse: If spouse A beats spouse B over spilling coffee on the rug, but then takes them out to a nice dinner to "make up for it", did spouse A magically unbeat spouse B? No. Your mom didn't unabuse you because sometimes she was pleasant, either.

Somewhere I read ostracism triggers our brains to feel pain - a study with a virtual ball game and brain scans. It could help explain my tendency for self medication/numbing over the years.

I can't speak for the ST/stonewalling/etc. stuff because I'm not very educated about it, but you're probably right on this. It's a viscious cycle. Your brain is programmed to make you feel bad when even benign things happen. Eventually you get used to feeling like this and you either ignore it or think you deserve it. Being aware of it is a good first step. I think this is what's responsible for a lot of my mom's problems, too. She had a rough childhood, a rough marriage, a rough life in general... but she numbs it all away and pretends this makes her strong and better than others. The healthier thing to do is to realize that things are bad, you deserve better, and you can change the outcome of your life starting today.

Sorry if anything I said sounded rude and short. The way you speak makes it sound like you're very unsure of yourself. It's good to catch yourself and nitpick these things when you say them. It was abuse, abuse can't be canceled out, your memory isn't bad, you are a victim. No explanations even needed. "Maybe it wasn't that bad, I mean, we did go to Disneyland that one time"... nope, cancel that thought, you were abused and are a victim. "She bought me a toy I wanted when I was a kid..."... okay, but like, you were abused. You see what I mean? It's obvious that you're a nice person because even though you think you're not doing it, you're giving your mom a lot of benefit of the doubt here. It's good to be a good person, just not when you're using it to gaslight yourself and make excuses for an abusive person.

[Rosa Rugosa]

Escapingman, it's interesting you said you could 'almost see the smirk' (sorry, haven't figured out how to do the blue quote bar yet). When my Sister was small she could be raging and crying - if she then hurt me (physical or emotional) and I cried, she would calm down and smile, like it soothed her. As she got older she didn't show this, she wore the same expression as my Mother instead. It's creepily similar. I know biological Mother and Daughter are going to look alike - but it's more than family resemblance. It's like they share a mask.

Cappy, don't worry, it wasn't rude or short. I like direct speech. I'm not good at this myself, yet. Maybe it's a response to growing up in a world of unspoken things, mind reading, triangulation, reading between the lines, egg shells etc. I don't need to hear or read only positive/happy things because I'm not looking for NPD style supply. Im trying to heal and healing isn't usually pain free and comfortable. Also, your humour, words and smiley faces help let the reader know that you're not rude. Your replies seem well thought through and generous so you don't come across as short. You mentioned eggshells on another thread.... I don't have eggshells 

So thank you for pointing things out to me. How can an anonymous person have more faith in my memory than myself or my FOO? And understand more about the mess in my head than my partner and friends? Because It's a pattern of symptoms, in us and the PD people we know. I know that's what this whole website is about. The forum part is helping me believe it. Not knowledge in the academic type way of the info pages, don't get me wrong it's a wonderful resource. But it's the humans sharing their stories and helping each other understand, somehow makes it more real.