In simple terms, stonewalling is when someone completely shuts down in a conversation or is refusing to communicate with another person.
You're trying to work through an issue, but suddenly someone shuts down and goes unresponsive. This reaction is known as stonewalling. From the outside, it can feel like that person has shut down emotionally. If you're the one shutting down, however, you may be inwardly dysregulated.
Shutting down emotions can be a normal part of human experience, as a coping strategy in stressful situations. Under high stress, it allows your body and brain to protect itself from perceived threats or harm.
Some common stonewalling behaviors include:
Dismissing or belittling someone's concerns. Avoiding a person, situation, or uncomfortable topic. Refusing to engage in conversation. Acting busy to avoid engagement.
While stonewalling communicates to your partner that you are no longer willing to deal with the problem, taking a break can help them see that the problem is important to you and that you care enough to work it out under better circumstances when you can approach it less emotionally.
A break is usually short while stonewalling can last hours, days, or even longer. Stonewalling is considered a type of psychologically abusive behavior of the passive-aggressive kind. It involves entirely shutting the other person out and ignoring them, which causes them to feel like they are worthless and unimportant.
The Practice of Physiological Self-Soothing
The second step to counteracting stonewalling is to practice physiological self-soothing.
At its very heart, stonewalling is often a behavior born out of fear, anxiety, and frustration. Some reasons a person may resort to stonewalling include: Generalized avoidance of conflict (emotional passivity) Desire to reduce tension in an emotionally-charged situation.
Stonewalling Effects on Victim
In fact, Gottman and Levenson (2000) described the presence of stonewalling as one of the surest signs that a relationship might soon end. He observed that stonewalling sends the clear message that the stonewaller is not interested in trying to save, or even work on, the relationship.
On the other hand, unintentional stonewalling often occurs when a person feels overwhelmed, anxious, or powerless during a conversation. As a result, they might shut down and stop communicating as a fight or flight response because they feel they cannot handle the situation.
Trauma, prolonged stress, anxiety, depression and grief all contribute to feeling emotionally shut down. Nemmers says medication, while lifesaving for many, can also trigger a side effect of emotional numbness.
That's what PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) is—our body's overreaction to a small response, and either stuck in fight and flight or shut down. People who experience trauma and the shutdown response usually feel shame around their inability to act, when their body did not move.
The Four Horsemen: Criticism, Contempt, Defensiveness, and Stonewalling. Being able to identify the Four Horsemen in your conflict discussions is a necessary first step to eliminating them and replacing them with healthy, productive communication patterns.
The antidote to stonewalling is to learn to calm yourself down actively and then to re-engage in the conversation.
Stonewalling is the refusal to communicate with someone. This means that your spouse refuses to listen to you and your concerns. Stonewalling is one of the most prevalent narcissistic abuse techniques.
Emotional stonewalling can have serious consequences for relationships. It creates feelings of isolation, neglect, and frustration in the affected partner. It also makes it difficult to communicate effectively. This leads to further conflict or distance in the relationship.
The effects of stonewalling are disastrous for not only the receiver but also the partner who's stonewalling. For the person being stonewalled, it can leave them feeling confused, hurt and angry. It can wear down on their self-esteem, leading them to feel worthless or hopeless.
Gottman and Gottman describe stonewalling as a relationship red flag. Usually used as a direct response to contempt, stonewalling occurs when “the listener withdraws from interaction, shuts down, and stops responding to their partner.”
Stonewalling, which happens when someone stops communication altogether, is one of the most toxic forms of passive-aggressive behaviors, says Manly. It's also a leading predictor of divorce.
Acknowledge that the only way a stonewaller's patterns will change is if they are willing to change them. If you're the only one willing to work on the relationship, reconsider it. Aggressive stonewallers sometimes act like victims to protect themselves.
Self-isolation and loneliness. Getting stonewalled causes you to feel like you're being punished for God knows what. If only your partner could say something, you could get a chance to ask questions and get answers.