The Silent Treatment in Childhood
In a Narcissistic Family system, the silent treatment is a weaponized tool for control that witholds love. A silent treatment is a generational pattern, ingrained into the fabric of a person’s being from their own childhood. They learned it was a form of communication and was their normal. For the person wielding the silent treatment, it’s a modeled pattern of protection. Steeped in their own shame, they were stuck in their own wounds of rejection and abandonment, masking unhealed attachment wounds at its core. If they didn’t have the capacity to develop emotional awareness, the pattern continued with their own children and/or other relationships. It felt safer to stare down a herd of wild ravenous Rhinos and face death rather than look in the mirror and ask, “How can I do it differently?”
The silent treatment isn’t just a tactic; it’s an emotional grenade designed to cause an internal blast, damaging the safety of attachment in childhood. Its detonation fragmented my world into rubble leaving a trail of confusion and hurt. The singeing smoke inside me whispering, “What did I do wrong?” In the aftermath of deafening silence experienced, I desperately fortified my walls to protect myself from the next attack of unpredictable emotional and psychological missiles. With every onslaught set to destroy, each blast blazed with intense flames of “I’m worthless.” “I’m unloveable.” “I’m bad.” “I don’t deserve to exist.” “I’m not safe.” It was a building of internalized beliefs and emotions, transforming into a relentless assault of self-doubt, guilt and shame, blasting my vulnerability and eroding any self-esteem into obliteration.
I was Invisible
Silent treatments lurked in the dark corners of my childhood. It cast illusive tendrils of darkness with its covert tactics. It ensared me in its trap, holding me prisoner. This was my mother’s most brutal weapon used against me. She was a General with a tactical precision to strike at any unsuspecting moment. One wrong look, mistake, or word activated her hairpin trigger to keep herself safe, while destroying me. Her soldiers were silent shadows that shackled me, squeezing out any safety, wrapped tightly in her shadows that suffocated any love that existed. It had a devastating impact how I learned to exist in my life. She didn’t shut down, she actively weaponized her silence. It was a series of damaging ruptures in our relationship with no repair.
I felt the emotional energetic cutoff. An invisible impenetrable wall erecting between us, while I was captive in her unresolved pain and trauma. I’d feel nothing from her. She’d talk through me to my dad or one of my siblings. I ceased to exist in those moments to her. “Tell Maria to pass you the peas and then hand them to me.” We weren’t sitting at a palatial dining table in some palace. We were crammed around the breakfast nook like sardines, listening to my dad chew his food. Just ask me to pass the fucking peas, woman!
I’d trip over myself to get her to engage, anticipating her needs, contorting myself to fix it, fawning, doing anything possible that could make her happy, to get her love back; to release me from the hold of her contempt. It was met with stony silence with no eye contact. She’d look in my direction, right past one of my shoulders into the distance, like I was too disgusting to acknowledge. At bedtime, I was expected to give her a kiss on the cheek, hug her and say, “I love you.” I’d get nothing in return but the humiliation of silence, while my family watched, probably relieved AF it wasn’t one of them. I’d try to skip the nighttime ritual because it was dehumanizing. I couldn’t escape it though. She was relentless in her cruelty. She’d address my dad to summon me; thereby getting her need of affection met, leaving me feeling untethered in my aloneness and shame. Or, she’d make a loud “AHEM” sound, until I complied. I was in a free fall in the dark abyss with nothing to anchor me. She was a statue cast in marble, sitting on the floor, immoveable. Impenetrable. It reinforced a budding set of beliefs that I was bad, worthless, and unlovable.
The Valuable Lesson of Seven Dollars
I was seven years old. My mother stormed into my room, urgently demanding to borrow money to pay the paperboy. I didn’t have much to my name at that age. I coveted any money that came my way and hid it in a drawer. I had seven dollars, crinkled single dollar bills, smoothed out and folded over, tucked away in my little night stand. To please her and excited to feel needed, I quickly opened the drawer and felt my heart plummet into my stomach, my body quaked in fear. I couldn’t find it. “Stop lying! I know you have it. I need it NOW!” I begged her to believe me. She refused to listen, too caught up in her own shame, her own money scarcity activated, taking it out on me. “You are such a selfish daughter that you can’t even help me. I can’t trust you to tell me the truth! I need to pay the paperboy, we are behind a few weeks. How dare you, Maria!” My panic at her words made my hands shake uncontrollably. I ripped apart my drawer, yanking it off the track, desperate to find it in order to please her. My heart pounded to the rythm of her footsteps stomping away to the front door while I searched. I threw half my body inside the nightstand and found it wedged in the tracks behind the drawer. Relief flooded my body. I bolted to the living room, clutching the seven dollars in my fist, like a victor with a trophy. “Mommy! I found it! It had gotten stuck behind the drawer. I wasn’t lying!” By then, she was sitting on the couch. She turned her head to me, her face blank, eyes a blackened void and in a lifeless voice said, “Don’t lie to me. You were selfish. Leave me alone.” The silence was a devastating Tsunami that crashed over me. No matter how much I begged her to hear me, she shut me out. She abandoned me; refused to speak to me, no matter how much my little body heaved with sobs, my voice hoarse. I slowly backed away, stumbled back into my room, curled into a ball on my bed and wept. I am a bad daughter. I wish I could die. I am nothing. It created a black hole inside of me that had far reaching consequences into my adult life and relationships, while I begged her to love me. It was one of the first of many silent treatments. I learned seven dollars held more value than I did to her.
I Learned I was Worthless
There was one time she could have changed the course of the trajectory for us since she was the parent with all the power. It could have changed how I saw myself, how I was primed for future relationships, and even for herself to experience something different that she didn’t get as a child. It would have required courage from her to make the shift. It was ONE TIME. It’s a snapshot of her face that resides in me of that moment. I don’t remember the age or the circumstances that initiated the silent treatment. She was sitting on the floor in the living room, doing her best rendition of human marble statue, and I was desperately sobbing over and over, “Do you even love me??” My hot tears rolled down my cheeks causing a fissure in her stony marble façade. Her humanity slithered its way out into the atmosphere in the room. I felt and saw the micro expression of pain flash across her face. Her eyes fighting back tears. She felt what she was inflicting and what it was doing to me. We were at the center of the vortex of our collective raw shame colliding and swirling around us in that room. I wanted her to save us, save me from drowning in it. And within seconds, she found a power stronger than I could have imagined and drew it all back in, sealing the emotional vault shut. That was a pivotal moment. Instead of turning towards me to make it better, she opted to shut me out. She chose herself over her own daughter. It was a defining moment for both of us. She learned to harness her power. I learned I was worthless.
The Complicit Parent
Where there is a narcissist, there is a complicit parent. My dad didn’t stop this. In fairness, he was often on the receiving end of some form of silent treatment. We were tag teamed; each of us secretly hoping it’d be the other one on the receiving end on her gift that kept on giving when it ended. He was an adult though. A grown ass man, who was a firefighter who worked his way up to Chief. I guess fires were safer than dealing with my mother. Send him into a billowing mass of flames and black smoke and he did the impossible to save lives. He was a hero in his work, respected and an incredible leader to his squadron. I can’t help chuckling that he’d rather have braved vicious fires and the real possibility of death than face the wrath of my mother. I was his daughter though.
Why couldn’t he be brave for me?
He was part of that abuse because he was complicit. In public, she was covert about it, all while having a look in her eye letting me know it wasn’t over. It was crushing that no one, not even my dad, was willing to stop her; to cast a shield over me in protection. My superpower was being the ultimate chameleon; constantly adapting to her needs and the environment. In public, we played the role of the ideal family. I was a perfect daughter with a token smile on my face who was quiet. The complicit parent is the maladaptive advocate. In my case, it was my dad. He was too busy saving himself and aligning to be on her good side, and I was left drowning in a rip tide pulling me under.
It never occurred to my dad to end it. Only my mother held the power. Like a flick of a switch, it was back to normal and never to be discussed. I wasn’t allowed to challenge or even share how it hurt or how confusing it felt. The older I got, I tried. Then I’d be gaslit by both parents with, “You deserved it.” “You’re so sensitive.” “You’re so emotional.” “You’re so dramatic.” The only apology occurring was the one she demanded from me. I had to literally apologize for causing her to give me the silent treatment. My dad backed her on this instead of stepping up to be the parent I needed. Who was protecting me? She was a mastermind at coercion, fully making me believe I was the party at fault. Maybe she had some guilt despite the lack of apology or explanation because sometimes there were little tokens of a gift; maybe a way of a silent apology without having to say the words. It’d be left on my bed or desk. That was the calling card, to let me know it was over. Then I’d have to go thank her for the trinket. It was my responsibility to get back into her good graces, no matter the cost to my worth. That was my normal.
Compound Interest of the Silent Treatment
There was devastation in this emotional and psychological abuse. Silent treatments in childhood felt like death by a thousand cuts to the psyche. It impacted our first experience of what love was and how we learned to exist to seek it out. Vulnerability was weaponized. It was safer to not have needs and instead meet the needs of others to show our value to be loved. Trusting ourselves was impossible when we didn’t have the space to develop a healthy sense of self, when we were busy trying to survive and grasp at the inconsistent drops of love.
It’s an agonizing experience of having love withheld with no explanation. We found ways to escape the pain of the repeated abandonments in childhood. Coping involved a need to escape and finding ways to control our environment in any way possible; excessive daydreaming to be rescued and loved, reading, sports, overfilling our schedules to avoid the emotional pain, looking for love in unhealthy ways, limerence, addictive behaviors to numb out; anything to let us flee the emotional wreckage that resided in us. We shoved it down. We exiled the pain to not feel.
It set the tone for future relationships, in every arena of life. Our inner child unconsciously sought out the most difficult person, desperately wanting to be chosen by them. If they chose us, maybe there was some value to us; no matter the cost of how we had to get it.
As children, we blamed ourselves. Our parents couldn’t be bad because we needed them. In turn, we learned that we were bad and protected them, kept their secrets, so we could be safe in our own logical way to survive. This experience was like compound interest in adulthood. It was a burden to carry trying to get out from under. It accrued in doing the emotional labor for others. It compounded how we perceived ourselves. We became extreme people pleasers, perfectionists, overachievers; hyper vigilant to any barometric emotional shift in the climate. Or we carried the accruing pain by continuing the generational trauma far into adulthood; with no awareness of the damage; stuck in our wounds, lashing out from our own hurt.
What happened to us wasn’t our fault; it’s our responsibility to heal from it. We can’t change the past. We can change the future of our next steps, shedding the toxic pattern.
I understand it wasn’t about me back then. I hold compassion for my mother and what she experienced growing up and like the rest of us, was trying to survive the best way she could with her own burdens. In her mind, I know she thought she did better than what she received; and she did. It doesn’t excuse her behavior.
She was so stuck in her own wounds she couldn’t handle and inflicted it onto me, her eldest daughter. I made it my responsibility and blamed myself. I believed I was the problem. Who wouldn’t if that was their experience of love by a parent?
How could she have compassion for me when she didn’t have it for herself?
It’s heartbreaking to think in that one moment, she could have chosen differently and broken a cycle. She could have become the cycle breaker. Instead, she chose what felt most safe for herself. She witnessed her daughter in deep pain she caused. It was safer for her to retreat inward and shut me out. No one wins with a silent treatment. It’s heartbreaking all around. In that space, vulnerability was dangerous.
I chose differently as an adult. I became the cycle breaker. I said NO MORE.
How to move forward
Grieve what you didn’t get and what you needed as a child. Context and understanding are important. The best way forward is to learn how to feel emotions and work through the painful emotions stuck in the body from those experiences.
Inner child work and reparenting.
Become the cycle breaker.
Practice compassion and be gentle with yourself.
It takes a fuck ton of therapy to work through the emotional and psychological abuse.
Learn how to set boundaries.
Journal: Write about the experiences to give yourself permission to acknowledge that this happened. It was real.
Find a therapist who is specialized in Narcissistic Abuse and understands the nuances.
EMDR, Internal Family Systems and Somatic are great treatment methods to healing.
Your thoughts and feelings deserve to be heard, not buried. You matter.
You deserve to heal from this pain and live a life that allows you to recover from Childhood Narcissistic Abuse and be the best version of you.