Stonewalling is a term that was first introduced by Gottman, a psychologist from the University of Washington and founder of the Gottman Institute. This term is used to describe the behavior of completely cutting off communication with someone.
Some people who have just heard the term may wonder about the difference between stonewalling and the silent treatment that is more familiar in public listening rooms.
Reporting from The Gottman Institute, the two terms do have some similarities. However, there are points that show a large enough difference between stonewalling behavior compared to silent treatment. Here's the review!
The Element of Deliberation
Although people who exhibit both stonewalling and silent treatment appear to both show withdrawing from an interaction, there are fundamental differences in terms of the internal intentions felt by the perpetrators.
Silent treatment is an action that a person takes intentionally when he is in conflict with the people around him. Meanwhile, stonewallers do not do that on purpose, even though they seem to ignore and assume the other person is not there.
Reason
As previously mentioned, silent treatment behavior is caused by the perpetrator's intentional intent to hurt the interlocutor or make him feel that he has won the conflict between himself and the other party.
Meanwhile, stonewalling is caused by a phenomenon called flooding or diffuse physiological arousal (DPA).
DPA is an automatic self-defense mechanism carried out by the body and aims to make the owner of the body survive in a crisis or emergency condition effectively.
Therefore, people who do stonewalling usually show a sudden silent response.
How to overcome
From the previous two points, we can conclude that it is difficult to distinguish stonewalling and silent treatment based solely on the expression and actions of the perpetrators.
Even so, these two conditions can be overcome by giving time for stonewalling and silent treatment perpetrators to calm down so that later they can be invited to talk more rationally.
If the stonewalling condition that the other person is talking to does not subside even after being given time to think and calm down, the next best step is to see a consultant or relationship therapist.
This is because sometimes someone needs a third party to help them regulate the flooding phenomenon they experience and develop communication about their feelings and needs.