For the most part, it is much better to talk things out and ignore someone. At best, the silent treatment just delays helpful interactions that may actually fix your relationships. At worst, you could be genuinely causing someone trauma. This can honestly be a form of emotional abuse.
So, the answer to the question as to whether or not to confront is only if and when you are fully ready to deal with the possibility of a negative outcome. If you can't go in only looking for your own healing, it's not time to confront.
Sometimes it's both healthy and helpful to avoid giving attention in specific circumstances. Certain behaviors can drain you of your mental or emotional resources; you can choose not to spend your resources on them. Note, however, that it's behaviors that you ignore, not people.
You might ignore a text or email message that feels unduly confrontive. The sender, noting the lack of response, might clarify. Experience teaches that responding too quickly out of hurt or frustration puts a person in a position of having said something which is later regretted. “Always pause” is a great motto.
Ignoring someone can hurt if the person being ignored cares for or wants something from the one who ignores them. I have found that the true power of ignoring someone who hurts or bothers you is that it sets you free from them, enabling you to pursue your own happiness. Freedom comes when you learn to let go.
The silent treatment, or stonewalling, is a passive-aggressive form of manipulation and can be considered emotional abuse. It is a way to control another person by withholding communication, refusing to talk, or ignoring the person.
It can cause emotional trauma.
A person who is ignored feels a wide range of confusing emotions. They may feel anger, sadness, frustration, guilt, despair, and loneliness, all at once.
Yes, being ignored hurts, but remember that the individual ignoring you may be trying to achieve exactly that. Don't give them the satisfaction. Your partner may have some concerns about the relationship that they are afraid to bring up. Try speaking with them without anger or bitterness.
When used in relationships, silent treatment is a form of emotional abuse. Being ignored stimulates the part of the brain that detects physical pain, so silent treatment is very emotionally and physically painful. It can lead to negative emotions, like distress and anger.
“Just because someone didn't get back to you in a manner that you consider timely is not a good reason to ignore them as punishment. It is immature behavior that starts a cycle of toxicity,” warns Resnick. His advice if you want to prevent your relationship from being toxic is to always follow the golden rule.
But here's the thing about blatantly ignoring someone: not only is it rude, immature, inconsiderate, cruel, and petty, it's downright emotionally (and sometimes physically) damaging. Ignoring someone is not an act of love. In fact, silent treatment qualifies as abuse.
Being ignored creates feelings of self-doubt, feeling a lack of control, and feeling not worthy of attention. Knowing appropriate responses to people with whom you differ is helpful in managing tense relationships.
Overview of Law #36: Disdain Things You Cannot Have: Ignoring Them Is the Best Revenge. Sometimes it's better to ignore things. You'll make small problems worse, make yourself look bad, and give your enemy attention he doesn't deserve if you respond to a minor provocation.
If someone is threatening you or physically abusing you, don't ignore it! Even if you walk away from the situation, they might continue the behavior later or hurt someone else. Report the abusive behavior to someone in authority. If you have to be around the person again, try to bring somebody with you.
Is it okay to ignore someone? It's always okay to have a personal boundary but know that you cannot control whether or not someone gets hurt. It's okay to feel bad that you're ignoring someone, as well. Choosing to ignore someone is not an easy decision, but it sometimes needs to be done.
The silent treatment puts a man in heightened anticipation. It shows you aren't afraid of little distance or break in a relationship. He doesn't know your whereabouts or how you feel. As a result, he realizes what he has lost.
Sometimes people don't respond as a way of deliberately signaling they're annoyed, or that they don't want to continue a relationship. Turkle says sometimes taking a long time to write back is a way of establishing dominance in a relationship, by making yourself look simply too busy and important to reply.
The silent treatment might be employed by passive personality types to avoid conflict and confrontation, while strong personality types use it to punish or control. Some people may not even consciously choose it at all.
Ignoring a guy is one of the surefire ways to get his attention, as he would at most times try to win your attention back. However, ignoring alone doesn't put you at the forefront of his thoughts and make you desirable.
You might notice them look down at their feet or stand further away from you than they do other people, for example. If they won't meet your eyes, ask yourself whether that was something they used to do. If they used to make eye contact all the time and now they don't, that's another big sign they're avoiding you.
On this page you'll find 7 synonyms, antonyms, and words related to ignore someone, such as: blackballing, cold shoulder, ignoring, ostracism, ostracization, and sending to coventry.
It can include anything from ignoring texts and DMs to refusing face-to-face communications. The silent treatment is a form of social ostracization and a common tool used during conflict within many relationship types to inflict pain. It involves refusing to communicate with someone who is willing to communicate.
Research finds that feeling ignored can affect people's sensory perceptions, such as feeling that surroundings seem quieter. Being ignored creates feelings of self-doubt, feeling a lack of control, and feeling not worthy of attention.
Feeling ignored can trigger something very specific in a complex trauma survivor's nervous system. A lot of our woundedness tends to revolve around the feeling that we were unwanted or unimportant to the people who were supposed to want us, care for us, protect us, love us.