Re: The Silent Treatment

[Anonymous]

Wolfshades: Yes, I tend to take what I hear fairly literally. I have a really bad habit of thinking I have to come up with an answer to every rhetorical question I hear. I really feel more comfortable with a concrete set of instructions. At least, when dealing with others. I am very conscious of trying not to displease or upset anyone (due mostly in part to past difficulties). On my own, I’m content to accept my own standards (though I still get upset when things sometimes don’t turn out as I imagined – I’m not comfortable with surprises, change or transitions – but that’s a story for another time).

As it so happens, this came up in cognitive therapy. Up til now I’ve been pretty much making my own assumptions – “filling in the blanks” when it comes to non-verbal communication and (based on a plethora of past mishaps) automatically assumed the worst. But in this new light, it’s no longer that I’m getting the silent treatment – it’s now that I am simply “deaf” to this form of communication. The silence is my own inability to hear.

My first step is to learn to stop fearing the silence – a little bit easier now that I understand that it is not automatically what I once thought it was – and learn to “stick my neck out” and explain that I simply do not understand and request clarification. I know I have a long way to go, but I feel heartened by this discovery. Keep your fingers crossed.

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