Silent treatment: what to do
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Or read the blog below ☟
Are you being punished by someone’s silent treatment?
Not just a pause.
Not a cooling off.
I mean days. Weeks. Sometimes months.
Someone you love—gone quiet.
Their silence, heavy as stone.
You’re not imagining it.
The ache is real.
Silence can hurt
Let’s talk about it.
Not just as psychology.
As lived experience.
As the bruise you carry, invisible but always there.
This isn’t just theory.
It’s my story, too.
Years spent on the raw end of someone else’s silent treatment.
Years of shrinking, apologizing, replaying every word, every laugh, every breath.
Trying to decode the silence.
Trying to earn my way back into the room.
When silent treatment starts
It can start small.
A phone call, tense.
A joke that lands wrong.
A silence that swallows the conversation whole.
You send a text:
“I’m sorry if I upset you. Please talk to me.”
No reply.
Blocked.
Cut off.
This isn’t a one-off.
It’s a pattern.
Sometimes a weekend. Sometimes a month.
Sometimes so long, you forget what their voice sounds like.
The impact of silent treatment
You start to wonder:
Was I too much?
Too little?
Too honest?
You apologize for things you don’t understand.
You shrink, hoping to fit their idea of “enough.”
But here’s the truth:
You can’t earn love from someone who uses silence as a weapon.
You can only lose yourself trying.
Silent treatment patterns
It’s not just at home.
You see it at work.
With friends.
In love.
People who retreat into silence instead of conversation.
Every time, the impact is the same:
You feel small.
Anxious.
Desperate to make it right—even when you did nothing wrong.
An old wound
I remember being a young adult, new job, heart full of hope.
I called to share the news.
Silence.
Days. Weeks. No reply.
Suddenly, I was fourteen again, desperate to fix what I couldn’t name.
The worst part?
Not the silence itself.
But the uncertainty.
The walking on eggshells.
Never knowing what will trigger the next freeze-out.
And over time, you start to believe it’s you.
Maybe you are the problem.
Maybe if you’re quieter, softer, more invisible, you’ll finally be loved.
But you can’t win that game.
You just disappear.
Name it to release it
You notice the pattern everywhere.
People who can’t handle their own emotions, so they punish you with silence.
It’s not just their way of “processing.”
It’s a wall.
A punishment.
A power play.
The silent treatment lingers.
It scrambles your sense of reality.
You replay every conversation, every glance.
You apologize for things you never did.
You shrink, hoping not to trigger another round.
And if you grew up with it?
It becomes your normal.
Maybe you even use silence, too—without meaning to.
But that’s not love.
That’s not healthy conflict.
That’s emotional abuse, and it leaves scars you can’t see.
The truth about silent treatment
Silent treatment feels like a fog pressing against your skin.
Don’t spend years trying to earn connection from someone who only knows how to withhold it.
There’s grief in that realisation—a grief for the love you wanted, for the self you kept shrinking.
But there’s freedom, too.
Because when you name what’s happening, you can stop fighting for attention.
You can stop twisting yourself into knots, trying to decode someone else’s silence.
You can start coming home to yourself.
Silent treatment isn’t about needing space.
It’s not maturity.
It’s emotional withdrawal.
It’s a refusal to repair, to relate.
It’s a power play—conscious or not.
Their silence is not a reflection of your worth.
It’s a reflection of their limitations.
The real shift
The real shift comes when you realise:
You don’t have to play the game.
You don’t have to chase connection from someone who only knows how to withhold it.
You can choose yourself.
You can stop negotiating your worth.
You can stop waiting for someone else to validate your feelings.
Healing isn’t about getting them to talk.
It’s about listening to yourself.
Honoring your feelings—messy, inconvenient, real.
Giving yourself the validation you’ve been seeking from someone else.
Find people who meet you with presence, not punishment.
People who choose repair, not retreat.
People who know your worth is not up for debate.
Thank you for being brave enough to name the hard things.
To choose something different.
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You don’t have to accept emotional abuse—no matter who it’s from.
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