Jennifer: Okay, so I guess this one does make sense coming from a girl, but that gets very notorious for doing this, but the question Melody is, giving someone the silent treatment, I mean, can that be considered a form of a abuse?
Dan: From a guy's perspective, yeah.
Melody Brooke: Here's the thing. The silent treatment happens is as a self-protective measure. It's one of those trying to get control back, feeling scared, wanting to put up a wall so that you can feel safe and hiding behind the silence.
Jennifer: So is it the opposite of yelling and verbal abuse and attacking verbally?
Melody Brooke: Yeah, but it's kind of like the rescuer mode of an attack. I'm not going to tell you what's going on because I don't really want to admit what's going on, so I am just going to shut up and in that process, of course, what you're doing is that you are setting the other person out.
Dan: Yeah.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Melody Brooke: And you are denying them the emotional connection that we all need.
Jennifer: Yeah, you are literally cutting them off emotionally.
Melody Brooke: Exactly. So it's emotional. It's not physical abuse, it's not verbal abuse, it's emotional abuse.
Jennifer: You can still control. So how does that differ? Because I know, it is okay if everybody's fighting and it's just escalating to taking time out and not say, I need a few minutes to recompose myself, so that's not the same thing.
Melody Brooke: Saying, okay just give me two minutes to get myself back together and I will come back to this or let the topic -- at dinner tonight. make a date to talk about it later, better than just saying, I am not talking to you anymore and then, of course really, the silent treatment is about just going into that not ever responding, giving them no verbal connection at all, they ask you direct questions, you ignore them.
Dan: Yeah.
Jennifer: Yeah.
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