“Dear Kathy,
My sister and I got angry with each other at her daughter’s graduation (this June). I thought she should have saved us seats, and she thought we should have come early and grabbed our own seats. We wound up having to sit in the back. In our family, we have what I am learning is a terrible habit when we are upset: we give the Silent Treatment. This is probably never good, but ours goes on for a long time. We need to learn something new, for sure. But, for now, she and I are stuck, and it’s almost October. We aren’t talking. What do you recommend?”
Upset, Lonely and Still a Little Mad
Dear Upset,
Growing up with the Silent Treatment did not give you and your sister a lot of options for what to say or do when you are angry. Ways you express anger are passed down in families, so it is not surprising that you are practicing what you learned. You feel this isn’t working for you, and that sounds spot on. But you don’t have other options at hand because you didn’t learn them growing up.
What Happens in the Silent Treatment?
Initially, the Silent Treatment gives us a cooling off period, and that can be helpful since we don’t continue to lob emotional grenades at each other. However, when we get frozen in the Silent Treatment, we often can’t find our way out. And, when we do thaw a little, sometimes all we can muster is an apology. Not a bad start, and certainly warms things up, but doesn’t offer dialogue that helps us understand each other, or prepare for future conflicts.
I think we can get stuck in our silences. It starts with a fight or flight response, and I think enacts both in turn. First we fight, and then we flee each other. Eventually, the fleeing, no longer really needed, becomes a freeze we don’t know how to thaw.
When your family member gives you the silent treatment, you can begin to feel disrespected, lonely, accused, and increasingly desperate. When will this be over? When can I feel loving feelings again with my mother/sister/child/friend? How long will this go on? Will we ever get out of the deep freeze?
We sometimes mistake the silent treatment as a communication. “I disapprove of you or your actions” or “I reject or condemn you”. This is how our feelings get hurt and makes it harder for us to overcome the barriers to reconnecting.
I heard of two sisters who got so angry and for such a prolonged period of time that they named it a “Mad Do”. They recognized this was what they did to one another but did not know how to get out of it, at least for quite a while.
The Biological Sting of the Silent Treatment
Why does a silent standoff hurt so deeply and drag on for months? The answer lies inside our nervous system. Brain scans show that social rejection and being “iced out” light up the exact same pain pathways in the brain as a physical injury. To our bodies, being shut out isn’t just an emotional disappointment, it registers as a literal, physical blow.
Because a silent standoff leaves things unresolved, your brain can treat it like an active emergency. It keeps your internal alarm system on alert. Your body can course with stress hormones, trapping you in a loop of tension. That is why time can get distorted during a long estrangement: months can pass, but your nervous system may remain stuck reacting as though the initial fight happened just yesterday. Or easily flare up again if you think about what happened.
Of Course We Get Frustrated with Each Other
Since we are all individuals, we will inevitably have different takes on things, and wind up not agreeing—even in conflict. I think it helps to make this assumption. We can’t avoid conflict, because that’s impossible. Yes, being flexible, understanding and forgiving go a long way, but closeness also requires what Priya Parker calls “Healthy Heat.”
If you grew up in a family where tension was handled by slamming doors or freezing people out, the idea of tolerating friction can sound abstract or terrifying. To make it more concrete, Priya Parker explains it this way:
“When conflict arises, we tend to take one of two stances. We either avoid and duck and hope it’ll pass, or we escalate and burn the house down. And yet so much of human relevance, connection, and the conversations that need to happen are actually in the in-between place, which is what I call healthy heat.” — Priya Parker
Instead of choosing between an explosion followed by an ice age, healthy heat is the willingness to stay in the room—to feel uncomfortable and messy without needing to sever the connection or win the argument.
In healthy heat, we aim to struggle more productively, because we have this as a goal. We are striving to learn to accept conflict and improve in our ways of pursuing understanding when we are frustrated with each other.
How to Emerge from the Silent Treatment
For Yourself:
Acknowledge the learning curve: Realize you are choosing to do something different from what your family has always done. That means this won’t be easy and that you and your sister are not prepared for it. You know how to do the silent treatment. You don’t know how to talk with each other. Be easy on yourself since doing something this new and hard will make you feel awkward at minimum and terrified at the maximum.
Lean on your support network: Do things you know to do for yourself when you are planning to do something hard and brave. Talk with loving others—friends, your religious leader if you have one, your support group—to get ideas of how to approach your sister in this new way.
Prioritize self-care: Make sure your self-care is in place. In particular, check in: are you rested, fed, exercised—ready in any particular way you prepare for tough moments?
Think about your approach: Give yourself some time to plan how you want to approach your loved one before you do it. Preparing should give you some solid ground to stand on.
For the Two of You:
Float the idea gently: Ask your loved one if they could join you in trying to have a productive, thawing conversation. Float this idea before proceeding.
Name the awkwardness: Let them know you two haven’t done this before and may not be very good at it, but you hope you can begin to approach these kinds of problems between the two of you differently.
Drop the old weapons: Acknowledge that you have said and done hurtful things in this process and that your plan is to not “go there” as you try to thaw this together.
Validate feelings without accusing: Acknowledge that you still have hurt feelings, and that you may want to talk about those, not in an accusatory way, but so that you both can see and acknowledge each other’s hurt.
Set a reliable rhythm: See if, together, you can identify small things, at first, that would help. A pair of siblings had tried to begin to reconnect following a period of the silent treatment by trying to reach each other on the phone. This system failed because they kept missing each other, and the missing without a returned call actually made them feel worse. Neither one felt secure enough to leave a message. What they figured out was they needed an agreed-upon time to talk. When they worked that out, they decided to continue to plan to talk at that time, and not to just “catch” each other. This meant they talked once a week, and were reassured by knowing the other would be there, wanting to talk, too.
Expect discomfort: Be prepared to accept a different perspective and the sting you may feel hearing how you have been experienced by your loved one. Leave time and space for yourself after your conversation to go on a walk or other calming experience you know works for you.
Keep the momentum going: Plan to talk again before too long, so things don’t freeze up, and the conversation keeps moving toward greater repair and connection.
After You Talk Together:
Soothe your nervous system: Use one of the calming exercises I have been posting weekly in my column. These are meant to be simple, quick, and to calm your nervous system.
De-brief with a friend: Ask a trusted friend to be available afterward by phone or even for a walk for a de-brief.
Do something you know you are good at: Remind yourself that the awkwardness of trying something new is awkward and hard, but there are other ways you are amazingly competent!
___________________________
So, Dear Upset,
I am recommending you try something hard—approaching your loved one can be painful, as can trying to talk with each other in a new way. I think you will feel better for trying to do something different, and that, if you can be compassionate and patient, you may find new ways to approach each other.
I wish you the best in warming the coldness between the two of you and finding your way back to your loving connection.
Best,
Kathy
Please reach out to me in the Chat, Comments Section or at ksinsheimermft@gmail.com
This is column #56