Navigating silent treatment: A personal journey to understanding – Nicky Rennie

Receiving the silent treatment can feel like punishment, writes Nicky Rennie.

Deciding when to go or when to stay can be a defining moment in your life.

For example, I once knew it was time to exercise other career muscles when a co-worker didn’t talk to me for over a month.

I had no idea what was wrong or what I had done, but they simply refused to partake in what was a very close working relationship.

It turned me inside out and seeped into every other aspect of my life.

I would dread going to work and feel sick while I was there and didn’t know how to fix it when I didn’t know what I had done.

I was at a loss. They were my favourite person and suddenly became cold and distant.

Not long after I had left and taken up another offer, they came to visit me to beg me to come back to work – that they’d made a massive mistake and were incredibly sorry.

They had things going on in their own life and didn’t know how to cope.

Unfortunately, it broke our relationship and I did not go back there, but I felt like it didn’t need to happen if it had been handled better.

It was passive-aggressive behaviour at its utmost and it makes me feel so bad I want to be physically sick.

The reason that I can explain how I felt so vividly is that it’s happening again and it’s automatically brought up those same feelings.

Again, I have no idea what I have done, so in order to try and make sense of it, I have put my own behaviour under the microscope, to backtrack to things I have said or done to pinpoint when they decided I needed to be punished.

As someone who likes things to make sense, I have decided to unpack the silent treatment so I can feel less like vomiting. Here is the basic explanation.

People give the silent treatment to achieve control and inflict punishment, often as a way to end conflict, manipulate others or express anger in a passive-aggressive manner.

It can stem from fear of confrontation, a desire to avoid emotions or a learned behaviour from childhood where silence was a consequence or a method of control.

The goal is often to make the other person feel bad, change their behaviour or apologise to regain connection.

The why is always the question with me. What are they hoping to achieve?

For some, silence is a way to express their own feelings of hurt or overwhelm, though they lack the skills to communicate them directly.

The silent treatment is a powerful tool for asserting dominance and control over another person in a relationship.

It’s a common way to punish someone for their actions or words, especially when the person is angry.

Some individuals use silence to avoid conflict, confrontation or difficult conversations, especially if they have low emotional bandwidth or a low tolerance for conflict.

It’s used to manipulate someone into changing their behaviour or giving in to demands, often by exploiting the other person’s need for connection and validation.

If you think this all sounds very child-like, you’d be 100% right, because that’s where everything stems from.

To be honest, the hurt child in all of us needs a very big hug.

There is fallout from this punishment of choice, because it is emotional abuse.

It damages relationships (irreparably in some cases), it is a hindrance to resolution because it cuts off communication and stops the flow of information.

It erodes self-esteem, reduces a sense of belonging and can lead to feelings of abandonment and rejection.

Learning about what someone is hoping to achieve did help me feel slightly better about the fact that the desired result is as nasty as it’s intended.

There are reasons for sayings like “Silence is the ultimate weapon of power” or “Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn”, emphasising its manipulative or punitive nature.

I may be older and theoretically wiser than when it happened the first time, but clearly, I’m not.

I’ve mentioned it’s an issue – it hasn’t been broached at all and no mediation is forthcoming – so I don’t spend the entire day feeling ill.

I’ve removed myself from the proximity of the situation. Mature? Probably not. Necessary for my mental wellbeing? Without a doubt

Still, I look for the solution. In the meantime, I shall try to look on the bright side. Silence is golden.

Whanganui-based Nicky Rennie returned to her home town in 2018 while celebrating three decades in broadcasting. She has written a column for the Whanganui Chronicle since 2021.