You cannot handle what you don’t understand.
Ignorance is not a blessing when it comes to manipulation tactics.
In fact, not understanding how manipulation tactics work will make you more vulnerable to them.
And you don’t want that.
Do you?
Understanding and handling silent treatment
The silent treatment is bloody toxic. And so is the guilt-tripping.
I personally believe both of them have a lot in common.
They derive their power from one of the most powerful human stimuli: uncertainty.
It’s intolerable and painful. So, it’s strong enough to manipulate you.
To be able to handle them, you need to understand what the other person is trying to achieve by using them.
Once you have an idea what that is, you can choose a course of action that serves and protects you.
And that’s what you’ll learn in this short article.
What do all manipulation tactics have in common?
The silent treatment is a manipulation tactic
And almost all manipulation tactics have one underlying goal.
The other person is trying to have more power than you so that you do what they want.
Manipulation tactics are the leverage tools they use to achieve their goals.
Those tactics are supposed to shake the power balance and tilt it a bit towards their side. He who has more power will have more options and resources.
Of course, this is a shitty way to manage relationships.
Healthy relationships should be pronounced by fairness and justice. But evil exists! Shit happens. And manipulation can work.
Don’t make it work against you and nip this shit in the bud.
How?
They can’t take power from you; you give it to them.
Well, they manipulate you to give it to them. Realize what power they trying to gain or leverage and hoard it.
The silent treatment manipulation is about deprivation and uncertainty and taking validation away
Those feelings are unbearable.
We would do anything to get something valuable back or to ease feelings of uncertainty.
That’s the power they want.
And you give it to them once you take an action.
Don’t take any action to handle the silent treatment.
I repeat. The way you handle the silent treatment is by simply doing nothing at all.
Just watch and observe.
See, the whole purpose of using the silent treatment is to make you take a certain action.
Don’t.
If you don’t, the power will remain as it is and maybe tilt a bit towards your side.
Face their silence with equal silence. Face their inertia with similar inertia. Get busy doing something meaningful and ignore them. Then watch them get more furious.
The sub-communication goes something like this:
“You are being a dick in a silent way to make me do something. Fuck that! Grow the fuck up and communicate as an adult or remain as you are. And I am not doing it for you!”
Given that that thing is important to them, they should, at least, change the tactic.
And even if they didn’t, by not doing anything at all you are refusing to play a toxic, childish game that is meaningless and immature.
Either way, the power balance is intact. You didn’t lose your power to them. And that’s what’s important.
But wait! If you do care about the person for whatever reason, then you might consider changing the way you handle this.
Confrontation
Period!
Face them and ask directly what’s going on.
They are acting in a passive-aggressive way.
Why is that?
They might deny.
Stand your ground and insist on getting an answer.
They might be unaware of their behavior, so you need to highlight it in an assertive manner.
Whatever you do, insist and face them with the reality of their behavior.
The alternative is that you will get involved in a toxic interaction with them where there’s passive aggression underneath the surface.
Who wants that, especially with someone they care about?
In simple words, confront and make them come to see the passive aggression they are harboring. And help them express it, for god’s sake. You care about them, don’t you?
If you don’t care about them, just do nothing. Ignore.
Ignore while being aware of the dynamics of wanting to shift the power balance for selfish gains. It’s amusing to watch such drama.
Reclaim your independence
Dependence isn’t a bad word.
Overdependence is.
Independence is not a bad word, too.
It becomes bad when it’s an obsession that’s driven by fear.
And interdependence is an amazing word that we don’t talk about often.
That said, the struggle between dependence and independence can be used to destroy characters and control people.
One of the malicious ways to control someone is by making them resourceles…
…and then making sure you are the source of what they need.
This way you can rest assured they won’t leave even if they want to (because they can’t).
You will rest assured they will do as you wish because they can’t make their own decisions.
They might be dependent on you financially or emotionally or in any other way.
They are overdependent on you, and they need you.
Some people have issues with independence and want someone to be their cornerstone.
Other people want to feel needed and important.
Both make a nice mix. Both can go from an end to the other quite surprisingly and indiscriminately.
The ones who want to feel needed usually work, consciously or subconsciously, on destroying the other party’s independence as much as their ego fancies and as much as the other person will allow them to.
Read that again, especially if it stings.
And some people don’t actually have issues with independence but meet someone who can crack that.
They slowly start sacrificing their independence and become overly dependent on whatever they are getting from that person.
And that person might be aware of what they are doing or not. They could have malicious intents or not. But the damage is done anyway.
A classic example is the parent who overprotects their children, even as adults.
They work on solving their problems, providing them with what they need, and never “allowing” them to have new experiences.
This might be done with good intentions, but it’s damaging.
They become overdependent on their parents and can’t create their own independence.
And here we have infant adults who resent their parents and who are resented by their parents as well.
Another painful example is the spouse who makes their partner dependent on them financially, so that they remain in control. Or the boyfriend who doesn’t allow his girlfriend to solve her problems by herself. Or the girlfriend who conveys to her boyfriend the idea that no one will accept and love him but her.
You have to be careful of anyone who tries to overly limit the “domain” of your independence.
And you have to be careful of any relationship that has the dynamic of making you overdependent on someone/something.
Healthy relationships foster independence and ultimately lead to interdependence, which is different.
As a reminder, it might be you who is tilting towards dependence and moving away from independence.
That’s not a wise thing to do.
And it could be that the other person is a master manipulator who is messing with the balance of power in the relationship by making you overdependent.
Or it could be both!
Either way, reclaim your independence.
An entire article can be written about how to do that, but one of the quickest ways is to realize what dependence is costing you.
And slowly but surely build your own independence by investing in yourself.
Give yourself the things that you desperately want others to give you.
Be aware, however, that you will probably upset that person on whom you are dependent.
They might even try to sabotage your efforts to be independent.
Well, what do you need to see more than this?
This’s a surefire sign you must be independent and free from that person and then see if the relationship makes sense anymore.
Don’t let them stop you and don’t be afraid of getting into fights and conflicts, for that’s a necessary sacrifice to reclaim things so valuable you’ll grow resentful without: your independence and power.
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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.
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