Hello my friends. Today in my path to healing from narcissistic parent abuse, I'm exploring how toxic parents use silent treatment to gaslight and confuse kids into thinking they've done something wrong when they haven't. It just occurred to me to today that I still, at 61, trauma respond to toxic behaviors like the silent treatment, with fawning and fixing. Silent treatment is not a healthy form of parenting. It's petulant pouting and sulking, used to coercively control a child by activating FOG (fear, obligation and guilt).
Narcissistic parent abuse isn't just physical or verbal emotional abuse, it's using scare tactics like the silent treatment (cold shoulder). This isn't the addition of negative consequences it's the removal of positive, called negative reinforcement. However, this is nothing like putting a toy away till a child learns to use it correctly. This type of negative reinforcement is the removal of what the child cannot live without: love, affection, human contact. Giving a child the cold shoulder is not different that starving them or locking them up.
Except in one vital way. The silent treatment is confusing as hell to children. Many times they have no clear idea of why they are being subjected to it. Because there is no good reason, ever, to do this. It's just a mind eff on the parent's part. BUT, the child, believing he's done something to cause it because what parent would wrongly punish a child, starts making up reasons why his parents are turning their backs on him.
And that's exactly what the malignant narcissist parent wants, is for the child to take on himself the burden of responsibility for what is a parent's FUBARED behavior. Instead of rationally talking to the child about what she may or may not have done wrong, the parent acts sullen, sulky, won't speak to the child, rebuffs her, and makes her feel like a lousy pile of shit. If you've even seen or experienced the silent treatment, you can see the crazy-making.
The parent sits glaring, arms crossed, lips pursed, jaws clamped shut in stony silence. She won't answer questions except with snippy rude answers. This is NOT grey rocking at all. In grey rocking you just stay small and quiet so as NOT to attract attention. The person engaging in silent treatment WANTS you to know she's furious. She's acting this way to make everyone notice.
If asked, she'll theatrically look daggers at the child. Or she'll say "nothing." To make it obvious that something very wrong. And that someone has done something unspeakable (which she never names, so they could actually defend themselves or try to resolve. She wants to make people think she's stoically being the bigger person. She does it goad the child into asking what's wrong. So she can further snub you. This is not adult behavior it's melodramatic attention-seeking.
My stepmother was masterful at the aggrieved but bigger person song and dance. She'd lower her voice to this disturbingly quiet menace. She'd whisper to my dad behind her hand to lather him all up. It was always me that had failed her. And then they'd both turn the silent treatment on me. EVEN AFTER I had rushed in with all my fawning trauma responses to fix it. They would retain this upper hand of clipped arm's length treatment, thawing at a glacial pace, bread crumbing with a few specks to keep me dancing. It was made clear that I had to work very hard to win back a modicum of love. And I was grateful for the teeniest of bread crumbs.
This happened at least once a week. And looking back, I see that it always came out of the blue. I can still feel their sickening sucker punches. I can feel myself spiraling into panicked freeze, fawn and fix trauma responses. I'd beg to be told how I'd offended and what I could do to fix it. And grudgingly, she'd "allow" me to do more chores for her, as if she was being generous and not an effing control freak dominatrix.
I used to tell myself I knew what I did wrong, but I never did. That was my survival instinct. Because it was safer than facing their wrath or admitting that I had rotten parents who would torture me on a whim, because it felt good to them. It took me 60 years to learn that. Now I see that these power plays are done strategically to get the child to that FOG state: fear of upsetting the parent, obligation to somehow "fix" it and guilt for causing it and not fixing it properly. And the bread crumbing and refusal to tell me what I did wrong was to keep me hopping.
Because the narcissist parent wants the child biddable and on her toes. He knows this shitshow makes the child uncomfortable, anxious and stressed out. He is doing it to MAKE his daughter feel that way. BUT his narcissistic entitlement, arrogant and malignancy is showing plain as day, too. People don't give the cold shoulder as a problem-solving method. They do it to make problems worse, offer no opportunity to correct and to keep the child in agonized torment. The parent is sending a malicious, cruel and spiteful message that "you have failed me and now you will pay. But I will not tell you what you have done nor will I allow you to make amends." It's the ultimate passive-aggressive power trip tool. And does it work.
Now, you might be tempted to ask what the child has done to merit this. If you are, please, seriously, stop and think about what you just asked. What could a child or anyone for that matter, do to warrant such behavior. Answer: nothing. Because like I said, the silent treatment is really about what the person did. No matter how bad it was, the offended person would either say what he didn't like or stay away from the offender. He wouldn't stage this pathetic, theatrical temper tantrum.
By the fact that she's throwing a game-playing pity party, shows she is not interested in resolution. She wants to humiliate the child and see him grovel in shame. She waiting for her to dance attendance, hop through hoops, do anything to get back in her good graces. Which leads me to say that this has nothing to do with what the child actually did or about it being wrong. IT. IS. ABOUT. CONTROL. It's gaslighting the child into THINKING she did something wrong and FEELING ashamed, without even knowing why.
Because that's another sign the silent treatment is a dick power move. Narcissist parents never say what they are upset about. They hint and throw out weird little innuendos. They make veiled accusations but it's all smoke and mirrors. They do not say what they are mad about because they cannot without showing their hands and looking stupid. Well, more stupid than they already do, with their little silly little pout games.
There might not even be anything wrong and the parent just feels like jerking the child around a bit. More often, the parent did something dumb and it was found out and she doesn't like that. So she throws shade on the child to distract attention from her own bad choices. Or she's mad at someone else, like a golden child, but takes it out on the scapegoat. Or the parents are mad at each other and triangulating the child to take the brunt of it.
And they called me the angry, manipulative, unforgiving, oversensitive, attention-seeking one.
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