Silent Treatment Appreciation – Part 2 ( of 3-Part Series)

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As we talked about in Part 1 of this 3-part article series on the narcissistic silent treatment, the narcissist, sociopath, or psychopath creates so much turmoil and chaos in our lives day to day that we either become immune to the static or co-dependent upon it.  We may not even pay much attention to it until the turmoil crosses a line or forces our hand (or both) but the fact is that the constant chaos is a narcissist’s very deliberate strategy to keep us off-balance so that the he can have his play time sight unseen.

When a narcissist begins a silent treatment, it usually catches us off-guard and this too is deliberate. Think about crucial these first few days must be for the N in his plan to ignore you. It is within these first days, while you’re still at home trying to determine the cause of the sudden silence, that he is quickly setting up shop with a new source of supply for this round. The last thing he wants is you running interference. After a few days has passed and he feels fairly secure in his new digs, he’ll be much better prepared mentally to deal with the fallout from the situation with you. Don’t forget, the N often knows you and how you will react to his actions better than you do!

No matter how it happens, a silent treatment feels just plain awful. I would literally feel instantly erased….as if I never meant a single thing to the asshole ever (which, of course, I surely didn’t). Sometimes my silent events would last up to six weeks and even longer and I would be absolutely consumed with getting him to break the silence.  This was, as I know now, the wrong reaction to take and the one that would waste the most time during that long 12-year ordeal.

What we need to learn to do is appreciate this awful silence and use the time to do some positive work on our battered psyche.  At the very least, the N will return as he always does, right? So, why stress over it? At the very worst, he won’t return. So, work on making yourself the much better person.

Like everything else in life, allowing yourself to wallow happily in silence appreciation after a discard from a narcissist begins with baby steps. Like many, when the silence begins, you:

probably haven’t the slightest idea why you are being ignored
feel extreme anxiety not knowing how long this one will last
will feel compelled to love-bomb him out of the silence even though he certainly doesn’t deserve anything even close to “love”
will feel compelled to apologize for the sole purpose of apologizing even though you know damn well you did nothing to deserve anything of this nature
are feeling completely out of place in your own environment without the usual daily bombardment of texts, phone calls, voice and emails
can’t stand having to be alone with your own horrible thoughts: What is he doing? Who is he with? How can he just blow you off like this….as if you meant nothing???

Just like a prisoner in solitary confinement who goes crazy after months of complete silence and without human contact, so can we go crazy in our own minds and hearts when the narcissist bastard that we love says – in unspoken words, of course – that we are about as important as the shit on his shoe. Again, the noise he creates right before is intended to distract you…..to divert your attention away from the fact that he’s quickly trying to hunker down somewhere else. You’ll find this tactic on page 63 in the strategy guide for the narcissist’s pathological relationship agenda   (not really, but it sure sounds true, doesn’t it?).

So, how can we fix ourselves and begin to move forward? By learning to appreciate the silence. Once you do that, the rest takes care of itself, I promise. In When Love Is a Lie, I talk about the series of mental shifts that began to occur for me out of nowhere once I got a grip on the big picture and started letting go. I started to relish the silence.  In Part 3 of this series coming very soon, I will talk about these shifts and how they began to happen naturally when I took the time to fix me instead of worrying about him….easier said than done but entirely possible!

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