Silent treatment is really hard bb12 – I internalized it and blamed myself for what I did or didn’t do. I lost my personal power and put the decision in his hands. This is all so reminiscent of my childhood. I always felt like I had no power and felt very unprotected. I saw my ex as a protector – even though he couldn’t provide it.
We need to find ways to protect ourselves and not base our personal worth on whether or not they call. This threw me into my faulty belief system of “not being good enough, being worthless, useless” – this of course is not true – I realize this now – at the time it floored me.
Its really helpful to look at how you would handle a situation like this with your new found knowledge – at the first sign of silent treatment or abuse, of any nature – I would walk – I wouldn’t wait for a round 2 or 3 – I value my worth way too much to give anyone my power.
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It will be so helpful to you that you know when you are triggered – this for me was 90% of the battle. Your bodies defence system, or protection mechanism will fly into fight or flight when triggered – this is that warm feeling or hot flush we feel – I also can feel it in my belly and heart sometimes.
How we process those triggers, when felt, is the other 5% of the battle. It helps at this point to pause to find where the feeling sits, begin to talk yourself through the emotion – it’s a valid emotion bb12 and you have every right to feel it – we can however process it in a way where it does not provide a deafening blow to our esteem, we negate the need to blame ourselves, we don’t feel the need to rescue.
The other 5% is realizing why we feel triggered at the hands of someone else’s actions – when it’s not ours to own. This is where our faulty belief system kicks – that voice in our heads that telling us we are to blame, it’s all our fault, how dumb am I, I stuffed up, I am hopeless, useless and then fall into a depression slump. Its important we find ways to “manage” this inner critic and find work with those faulty beliefs.
Where these beliefs come from has much to do with the learnt behaviors, childhood conditioning learnt as a child. And like you, I am sure there were moments of dysfunction. These beliefs are carried into childhood – we are continuing to “act” in adult life based on those childhood emotions.
The 3 P’s exercise starts to pull apart, break down the permissions, prescriptions and prohibitions taken on from childhood – reminding ourselves that at that age we had little choice – we do now.
Permissions, Prescriptions and ProhibitionsThere are other exercises too bb. Much of belief systems are self-defeating – we need to remind ourselves that we are now capable of protecting ourselves if threatened – unlike the feeling we had as children where many of us did not feel protected.
Often it’s the belief system that leads to twisted thinking – it’s the twisted thinking we need to work through:
“Ten Forms of Twisted Thinking”
adapted from David Burns: Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy book
1. All-or-nothing thinking (a.k.a. my brain and the Vatican’s): You look at things in absolute, black-and-white categories.
2. Overgeneralization (also a favorite): You view a negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.
3. Mental filter: You dwell on the negatives and ignore the positives.
4. Discounting the positives: You insist that your accomplishments or positive qualities don’t count (my college diploma was stroke of luck…really, it was).
5. Jumping to conclusions (loves alcoholic families): You conclude things are bad without any definite evidence. These include mind-reading (assuming that people are reacting negatively to you) and fortune-telling (predicting that things will turn out badly).
6. Magnification or minimization: You blow things way out of proportion or you shrink their importance.
7. Emotional reasoning: You reason from how you feel: “I feel like an idiot, so I must be one.”
8. “Should” statements (every other word for me): You criticize yourself or other people with “shoulds,” “shouldn’ts,” “musts,” “oughts,” and “have-tos.”
9. Labeling: Instead of saying, “I made a mistake,” you tell yourself, “I’m a jerk” or “I’m a loser.”
10. Blame: You blame yourself for something you weren’t entirely responsible for, or you blame other people and overlook ways that you contributed to a problem.
Thought monitoring can also help –
Thought Monitoring Record Sheet – there are plenty on the net – have a poke around.
Write down events that are triggering – use the thought monitoring form to work through what you would do now – I realize this is all in hindsight however what it does do is empower you – if the same were to happen you will be better equipped to protect yourself.
