Real Talk

Dealing with the Silent Treatment: How to Respond, Cope, and Change

by Kevyn Gohu
December 4, 2024

Although considered a form of emotional abuse, the silent treatment is a generational pattern that’s been passed down from one member to another.

Whenever we get into a heated disagreement, our first instinct is to shut down and pull away. With emotions threatening to explode and increasingly aware of how destructive these are, we try to prevent them from leaking. We do this by staying silent, walking away, and not interacting with the person, object, and scenario that triggered us. While it’s easy to walk away from an object, a person and scenario are a lot more complex as it can lead to those involved calling us out for a kind of abuse they call the “silent treatment.”

Why do we often prefer to stay silent?

“Manahimik ka nalang. Kaunting tiis nalang.” – these words are sage advice from the elders that are passed to the younger generation in an effort “to not rock the boat.”

Confrontation is never an easy thing to navigate, let alone being known as the one who explodes. Despite the Filipinos being a passionate culture, exploding or letting out emotions is highly frowned upon if it disrupts the family’s harmony. Most of the elders find exploding or expressing rage “immature” or in worse, “stupid.” Thus, we often sit and “stew in our own juices” in silence.

Silent treatment is a generational tactic

When a child is unable to contain their rage, the blame usually falls on the parent. In a heated situation where shame and fear come in, we often respond by trying to silence our kids. Sometimes, we yell. But, we also ignore them. Disengaging is not the same as not responding; the former means retreating for a bit to find another angle. But usually, that comes with a period of silence – one that people often misunderstand as the Silent Treatment.

Silent Treatment: Usually Unintentional Abuse

Silent Treatment is when we withhold any form of interaction from a person. Talking, affection, and interactions, both online and offline, are put to a hard stop as the sight of the person triggers them.

While seen as a form of abuse, sometimes, we don’t mean to do so. It’s just, after weighing the options, we figure that keeping silent is a lot better than just lashing out. We know our temper better than anybody and years of dealing with people will have taught us that there are words we cannot take back. Especially if we just explode at our kids, those are words that will stay with them forever.

So, we choose to implode instead.

We do this and think, “At least the damage will just be inside me. The kids won’t get hurt.”

But that’s the tricky part about emotions. No matter our coping mechanisms, these emotions will leak and show. It’ll subtly show in our interactions and body language with them. Our quick “no, we’re fine” will be way too fast, almost jumpy even.

Silent Treatment only becomes abusive when we purposely refuse engagement as a form of punishment. When we start thinking like, “I won’t talk to them until they give me what I want,” that’s when it becomes abusive.

Kids learn how to do silent treatment from their parents

What can we do to soften the blow after Silent Treatment?

While we’re always preaching about how we don’t owe people explanations for anything we do, the Silent Treatment is one of those tactics that does. Staying silent leaves many unanswered questions, especially with kids, which can be highly confusing to navigate. “Is mommy/ daddy mad?” , “What do I do?”, “Does mommy/ daddy still love me?” – these are thoughts that we don’t want our kids to entertain yet the silent treatment causes their minds to think that way.

If not other adults, our kids are the ones who deserve an explanation. As their parent, it’s part of the job description to explain how we cope and most of all, provide a protocol on what they can do while we’re in a state of implosion. We don’t mean making them our therapists; we’re just giving them the tools on how to cope with people who are not expressive with their rage.

How to cope with Silent Treatment

Intentional or not, the Silent Treatment is not easy to deal with. Especially for anxious kids or adults who have catered to other people’s needs for the entirety of their childhood, it’s a form of emotional torture. The uncertainty drives them mad but the best way to deal with silent treatment is to not try to fix things right away. Easier said than done, we know. But here’s how parents and kids can cope with it:

1. Keep busy.

What drives us crazy is trying to predict people during the silent treatment. Are they angry? What do they want us to do? Now, unless we can read minds, we won’t know what they want. The best we can do is wait; they’ll tell us after they’re done processing. While waiting, keeping busy with our hobbies will hold off those intrusive thoughts.

2. Remind ourselves that not everyone processes at the same speed.

Especially for kids and parents who were raised to “anticipate ten steps ahead” or insist that “multi-tasking is normal,” we have to remind ourselves that not everyone can do the mental gymnastics we do at high speed. It’s kind of like laptops; some can handle the processing speed and weight of Windows 11 but, there are some still using IBM.

3. Confrontation doesn’t always happen right away.

We often want to settle emotions right away so it doesn’t hang over our heads. But nobody heals right away, especially if they have deep-seated trauma of a similar nature. So, if they suddenly start talking about it out of nowhere, that means they’ve just developed the confidence to talk about it.

Silent Treatment: The real damage comes from the fear of opening up

Time is actually the enemy in Silent Treatment. After we process things, sometimes, we wonder if we have taken too long to think about them. With the dust clearing and everyone settling down, it doesn’t make sense to bring up what can feel like an “old issue.” We may never completely predict or know; sometimes, the person who we hurt may need closure too. The important part is – acknowledging that our silence, which we used in our healing and processing, may have hurt others too.