Why the Silent Treatment is the Weapon of Choice for Narcissists
And how you can find your voice in the silence.
Trigger Warning: this article contains discussions of domestic abuse that may not be suitable for all readers. Fearless community, please read with care.
The day had come. I was finally going to watch the YouTube video I had saved for when I was feeling brave. My finger hovered over the red play arrow and I tried to remember to breathe.
It took me three months to pluck up the courage to watch Rosie Duffield’s UK Parliamentary speech about her personal experience with domestic abuse.
“Abuse is very often all about control and power.”
— Rosie Duffield, UK Member of Parliament
When she made the speech there was an immediate outpouring of public support. She inspired radio talk shows where people discussed the subject openly. Following Rosie’s lead, women finally felt brave enough to open up about their own abuse, after listening and recognizing that she was describing what they were also living through.
Rosie had experienced and escaped from abuse, was talking about it in the male-dominated bastion of the British government, and suddenly women everywhere felt able to tell their stories too.
One of the features of her abuse was the silent treatment, that so many women can relate to.
The silent treatment is the weapon of choice for the narcissist
I knew the general content of Rosie’s speech and that it would trigger an emotional response in me that I had to prepare myself for. When you have PTSD, a trigger takes you right back to the traumatic or abusive situation that you experienced. It feels as if you are reliving it all over again. Your cortisol and adrenaline levels rise rapidly and your body reacts to the stress as if it is happening in the present moment.
It changes you, facing that wall of determined silence.
The devastation of silent treatment should not be underestimated. It is identity-eroding. The pain and frustration of having the person you love most in the world stonewalling you and acting as if you don’t exist causes personality-level destruction. You change.
You can’t help but change psychologically in an atmosphere of such targeted hatred. It is systematic torture, and I do not use that word lightly. As many others have said before me, there were times when I almost wished my abuser would hit me instead. I might even have tried to provoke him to lash out sometimes, as any response was better than silence.
The silent treatment, even if it’s brief, activates the anterior cingulate cortex — the part of the brain that detects physical pain. The initial pain is the same, regardless of whether the exclusion is by strangers, close friends or enemies.
— Paul Schrodt, PhD, Professor of Communication Studies
Silence is a deliberate act
This specific part of his abuse involved a period of three days — it was always three days, which demonstrates how deliberate an act it was — of no replies to any questions, no eye contact, no greeting in the morning, no greeting or acknowledgement at any point of the day, including his return from work. No physical contact, no affection, no verbal interaction whatsoever.
The trigger for the silent treatment varied. If he was jealous because I had talked to another man, gone to a mixed-gender exercise class, or said something he didn’t like, that could start it off.
If I didn’t laugh at his joke or appreciate his cooking, he would subject me to the three-day punishment. The triggers were infinitely variable, so there was nothing I could do to prevent them from being initiated.
I was so deprived of affection in the early years of my marriage that I would ask him to hold me and accept him wrapping his arm tightly around my neck in response.
Being strangled was better than not being touched at all. That is how messed up your mind becomes. And that is why someone in that situation struggles to leave.
Your mind becomes locked in a battle to win them back
Your mind becomes locked in a battle to try to win back the love of the person who used to appear to love you, tells you that they still love you “with all their heart” and who you perhaps committed to spending the rest of your life with, if you were unfortunate enough to marry them.
If you have children they will not necessarily see or understand what is happening.
They might just think mummy is being particularly snappy or fractious at the moment, or sadder and more withdrawn than usual. The abuse is insidious and well-concealed which makes it so powerful.
The silent treatment should not be confused with taking time to cool down after heated or difficult exchange.
Silence can feel like a dignified, high road response but it’s not. It’s a way to inflict pain but without the physical marks.
— Paul Schrodt, PhD, Professor of Communication Studies
So how do you find your voice and break the silence?
It only has power over you if you let it. That took me a very long time to realize and acknowledge to myself.
There are coping strategies to prevent its impact on you.
Call it out. Just state calmly to your friends and loved ones, oh “Your Dad/John is not speaking to me at the moment, so I can’t ask him that.”
You can say to your husband or partner, “Go ahead and give me the silent treatment. Just don’t expect me to be here when you want to talk.”
*For your own safety, if your partner is likely to turn violent, do not confront them in this way.
Sometimes the victim is the only person who sees what is really happening, and even they don’t want to believe it’s abuse.
Keep records of everything that happens
- Keep everything in writing.
- Take copious notes and keep them all somewhere safe. Try to note down the date and time whenever anything noteworthy happens.
- Keep a record of the trigger for the silences and how long they last.
- Record the lies, the blame aimed at you, and evidence to disprove them.
Don’t rely on your memory
You have been so used to the gaslighting, and being presented with different versions of events, you forget how disorienting and confusing it can be. It may be an everyday occurrence for you but writing down his actual words and behavior can make it easier for someone else to see him for the abuser that he is. Record anything that makes you unhappy or uncomfortable.
What is normal daily life to you will immediately sound alarm bells to a therapist or relationship counselor. Try to find one who has experience of helping domestic abuse victims.
Being believed is vital
If your mental health is going to survive, you need to surround yourself with people who know that you are telling the truth, even if they haven’t seen any evidence of abuse. Find people who know you well enough to stand in your corner, no matter what.
Cut toxic people out of your life
This might even be your immediate family, but if they don’t believe what you’re telling them, they are siding with the abuser.
If they want to believe but don’t want to listen to you, just tell them there is always another side to any story, when they are ready to hear it and leave them to consider their views. Don’t try to argue your point if they have made up their minds.
The best resource I have found is Lundy Bancroft’s book “Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men”.
Lundy had 15 years of experience working with abusers and their families through a program called Emerge, at the time of writing this book. It is full of useful tools, strategies, and insight.
Don’t take any blame on yourself
This is the first mistake that an outside viewer is going to make, that it takes two to tango. They want to see both sides as equally valid emotional beings in the situation, as would happen in most other relationship breakdowns. But not so in the relationship situation with a narcissist.
They hate you and want to destroy you because everything good in you makes them hate themselves more. It gnaws at them when you are sweet and loving and caring. They want to pummel your love into the ground and leave it bleeding and open and broken.
They want to make you into nothing so that they can feel something.
They want to make you into a little, terrified nobody, so they can feel like Superman with the power to do mighty things.
Don’t accept anyone saying you must have done something to upset him. This simply shows a lack of understanding of the nature of abuse.
When you are in a relationship with a narcissist nothing makes sense. They throw you into a spin and then make you feel like the cause of your own confusion. You are not the cause of the confusion, they are.
Speak your truth
“How dare you speak to me like that?” he yelled at me down the driveway of our former marital home.
And in one rare, karmic moment, the right response came to me, “Because I am not afraid of you anymore.”
At that moment it was true and no matter what he managed to throw at me during our divorce proceedings in the months and years following, and in using our children against me, fear was not a feature.
Despite everything, I always have that perfect exchange of words to hang on to. And it’s true. I found my voice and I am not afraid of him anymore.
“Do you realize what this has cost you?” he yelled at me on another occasion, meaning the legal cost of our divorce.
“Yes, I can never get those 20 years back”, I replied.
Don’t wait as long as I did. I am incredibly grateful to the Internet because it was there that I discovered what I was experiencing had a name. When I searched endlessly in the small hours of the morning, my laptop on the floor in front of me, so the glow wouldn’t disturb my sleeping husband.
The question I finally found an answer to: “Why does my husband act like he hates me?”
I found my answers, I found my voice and the strength to use it.
And it’s true. I found my voice and I am not afraid of him anymore.
I can even feel a small satisfaction in finally finding the right words to tell him so.
Your voice is precious and deserves to be heard. You can use it to speak up for yourself and tell someone that your relationship causes you pain. If your partner is not prepared to listen and to talk to you, there are plenty of other people who will.
Stay strong, find your voice, and break through the silence.
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