Is this behavior harming your relationships?
- sciart0
- Apr 4
- 1 min read
Excerpt: "For the uninitiated, the silent treatment is when a person intentionally refuses to communicate with you — or in some cases, even acknowledge you. It’s a common maneuver that’s used in all sorts of relationships, said Kipling Williams, emeritus professor of psychological sciences at Purdue University who has studied the effects of the silent treatment for over 30 years.
The tactic I was using on Tom is one that researchers from the University of Sydney call “noisy silence.” That is when a person tries, in an obvious way, to show the target that he or she is being ignored — such as theatrically leaving the room when the other person enters.
...Some people think the silent treatment is a milder way of dealing with conflict, said Dr. Gail Saltz, clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.
But it isn’t, she explained. “The silent treatment is a punishment,” she said, “whether you are acknowledging that to yourself or not.”
For the person who is being frozen out, it creates “anxiety and fear, and feelings of abandonment,” Dr. Saltz said, and it often causes a “cascade of self-doubt, self-blame and self-criticism.”'