Silent treatment

[notgoodatthis]

Me, that is

Not not talking, or sulking, but avoiding.

If someone hurts me I can't talk to them or see them or speak. I keep doing it and I despair. It creates a big log jam and I want to be able to do or say something but find myself avoiding. It can go on for years sometimes.

I don't want to be like this!

that is right cogito - clamming up. I snap shut, strong as a vice, locked in great fear and confusion. I would never put someone through it if I lived with them. I find it even hard to hear of anyone being put through that with someone they live with.

I am worried about being jeered at because that has been my repeated experience, particularly in my family. I am not outwardly too anxious for people to like me, I could do with being more circumspect (self-protecting) sometimes - as I previously said I can be outspoken and have a tendency to address the elephant in the room. That throws up it's own problems but I don't clam up in the way I can clam up in a one-to-one relationship. I can follow and back an argument but I am at sea when it comes to expressing my needs, desperately fearful I will be ridiculed for having needs. I also find it very hard (impossible) to express my needs without being emotional (and running the risk of being labelled manipulative).

But what's the worse can happen if you are ridiculed? You blush a little? Lose your train of thought? Embarrassed? My DM always used to tell me 'sticks and stones can break my bones but names will never hurt me'.

I think with things like this - fears - it mostly comes down to one big leap of faith and then lots of practise. The first time you say 'I'm not happy about this' it takes a lot of guts and you feel horrible for days. :) But the more practise you get, the less impact it has.

'sticks and stones can break my bones but names will never hurt me'

But that is rubbish isn't it? Of course emotional and verbal abuse is very painful and very harmful.

I agree that being ridiculed for having needs is not the end of the world, but it certainly feels like it. It is this that I would like to rob of its power - the lie that it is the end of the world, unbearable. I assume it is at the root of where a narcissist may be coming from - a severely damaged ego. I am not saying my ego is severely damaged but it is at least very poorly, very lacerated (by previous verbal and emotional abuse).

Verbal abuse is only as painful as you let it be. If you stated your needs and got met with a torrent of abuse then you'd be quite right to give that person a wide berth. But you're talking about avoiding people solely on the strength of the anticipation of that happening.... and not even having stated your needs either.

Saying 'I want' doesn't make someone a narcissist.

Verbal abuse is only as painful as you let it be

Verbal abuse is akin to physical abuse - for example, if someone hits you, it hurts. You may forgive the person, recognise that the problem was entirely with the hitter, but it still hurts. It can also traumatise.

Inherent in the idea that you only 'allow' abuse to hurt you is a belief in the power of 'strength', or mental power, like a cloak you put on. People sometimes have significant wounds under the surface which render that person 'weak' in certain areas. Exhorting them to 'be strong' is not fair and doesn't take into account what may have gone before which is so far unresolved.

i think I can safely say I don't agree with you cogito on this one!