The Silent Treatment: Trauma or Liberation?
Depends on the context. I just figured this out and I’m very excited to share this perspective…
Autistic people have undergone ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis) which uses silence as a form of discouraging unwanted behavior. This is still used on children to this day. However, we know that ignoring someone lights up the same circuits in their brain as physical pain.
The Impact of Silence
Therefore, it is useful for inflicting trauma and utilizing the silent treatment can trigger a trauma response later. Fight, flight, freeze, fawn. In an autistic person, the silent treatment while they are communicating a need is highly traumatic, especially for children who might interpret it as a sign they have done something wrong.
Adulthood and Learned Behavior
Autistic people become accustomed to intermittently receiving the silent treatment and understand it as a cue that they have done something wrong even into adulthood. This produces fawning behavior at times later in life. They then learn that it is not wrong to give someone the silent treatment and proceed to handle problems utilizing the same tool used on them.
The Impact on Social Behavior
Oh how people have been ENRAGED when I as an autistic person have held my tongue instead of speaking my mind as I was trained to do by people using the silent treatment on me! Now this has been baffling… no longer does the silent treatment cause me any harm whatsoever. I simply interpret it as “Wow they must not have liked something. Maybe I can ask if I bothered them in some way.” This isn’t always wise but that’s a different conversation. However, over many years I have come to understand that people take this as extraordinarily hostile.
ABA techniques actually train autistic people to be “narcissistic.” They learn “Adults get what they want by ignoring what they don’t want.” Some become completely numb to being ignored: it no longer hurts to be ignored. They have experienced it so many times it’s just part of life now. They become conditioned to it. Like breathing. So when they ignore someone else and that person responds by being really hurt and indignant, the autistic person’s reaction can be “How old are you 8? But you inhabit an adult body. How did you make it this far in life intact!”
But yes, ignoring the general population is considered socially unacceptable. Maybe we should just stop using it on children. “Ignore the autistic kids to get them to do what we want them to” is clearly impacting ALL of society. “Narcissists and victims of narcissists” is now totally feeling like a completely false dichotomy.
Narcissism is a shame-based disorder. Doesn’t shame accompany all trauma? Traumatized autistic kids later condemned for narcissism. The circle of life continues.
Not saying hurtful things are ok, but to really have a grasp on this feels so incredibly liberating.