The Silent Treatment Hurts Both Sides

Holding back is usually rooted in emotional pain, and it spreads that pain to everyone on the receiving end.

What withholding looks like

Its best-known form is the silent treatment, but withholding covers any reluctance to show what you truly feel. It also includes holding back support, praise or warm attention from the people you love.

Most of us have known someone who is impossible to please, and many of us have suddenly found ourselves facing a cold silence with no explanation. At the same time, plenty of us will recognise the habit in ourselves: keeping our feelings locked away rather than saying them. Most people have been on both sides. It is an unhealthy pattern, and it breaks down communication and understanding.

If it is being done to you

Nobody deserves to be treated this way. Feeling ignored, disrespected or shut out, without knowing why, is awful. The first thing to remember is that you are not to blame. You have been caught up in someone else’s pattern of pain. This person does not know how to express feelings in a healthy way, probably because that is what they learned as a child.

The second thing to remember is that the withholder is acting out of their own hurt. They are stuck in a habitual response that defeats its own purpose and pushes away the very people they love. Keeping this in mind can help you feel compassion for the person hurting you.

Even so, if you have put up with the pattern for too long, you may need some distance. Take time to examine your own patterns and understand why you have played a part in this drama. If it is happening within your family, you can be the one who steps forward to break the chain.

If you are the one who withholds

Understand that withholding is a learned response, and anything learned can be unlearned. Find safe places to start expressing what you have been holding back. Make a deliberate effort to say what you are feeling and thinking. Praise someone you love. The more you practise, the healthier you and your relationships become.

Something learned over a lifetime will not change overnight. Take it one day at a time.

We keep piling up worries, anxieties, failures, frustrations, fears and disappointments that would be better thrown away and forgotten, and we turn the garden of our life into wasteland. Let the negative emotions go, and watch your life change.