Written by: Javier Peñalba, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Understand why you withdraw emotionally by stonewalling and learn how to deal with it so that you can return to the present moment and reconnect to those around you, even if you have commitment phobia and an avoidant attachment style.
Stonewalling: The Walls that Protect You from Conflict
Has it happened to you that you are interacting with your partner or someone very close to you, and suddenly something triggers you? You may or may not be sure what it was or why it even affected you, but this trigger makes you go fully within yourself, creating an emotional wall between you and the other party. It can be that you consciously withdraw, or that it seems to happen on its own account. Then, your partner keeps talking or seeking interaction with you, but you are now fully gone, emotionally unavailable, adieu! You are now trapped in your own emotional cage, applying the unfamous silent treatment to your partner. And it is not that you don’t want to interact, but that it feels like if you simply can’t, as if these emotional bars of this cage were too rigid for you to break out. During that time, it can be that you are obsessively thinking about the issue that is bothering you, that you are void or absent-minded, or simply distracting yourself.
I, as someone that has dealt with commitment phobia for a big part of my life, have definitely gone through this too many times and know exactly how it feels. In the process of the intense inner work regarding my avoidant attachment style and my fear of commitment, I have noticed how the periods in which I stonewall decreased from hours in a row to just a couple of minutes or seconds, to the point of having pretty much eliminated it from my life. So, what worked for me that could also be of help to you?
To ease your way in this emotional liberation journey, it will be important to first understand the meaning of this behavior as well as its costs and benefits. We will then jump right into the powerful tips so that you can connect again to yourself and the world around you. Buckle up and let’s begin the ride!
What is Stonewalling in a Relationship?
Stonewalling, which is a form of emotional detachment or emotional withdrawal, is a strategy used especially by people with an avoidant attachment style to deal with unwanted emotions such as anger, disappointment or frustration arising from conflict by becoming emotionally unavailable to a perceived aggressor. It can look like going fully silent in a conversation, avoiding any interaction with the counterpart, or walking away entirely from a scene.
This type of coping mechanism is usually created as a child develops into an adult to become both a way to protect them from unwanted emotions but also to teach their parents or any aggressor a lesson. In many cases, parents of people that tend to showcase this behavior were very bossy, discouraged emotional expression, or could have been very sensitive or emotional when not obeyed. The kids usually then had practically no option but to blindly follow the orders without discussion. The frustration and powerlessness that they felt as they were growing up are definitely emotions that they do not ever want to experience again. When they become adults, stonewallers can thus exert back some power against the projection of their parents: their partners, allowing them to emotionally manipulate them while protecting them from the powerlessness of being told things that they don’t want to hear.
Do your best to check within yourself what part of this applies to you. Understanding the origin of a behavior can help you to recognize that this is simply something that you learned, and not a rule or the way things should be in the future.
The Benefits and Costs of Stonewalling in a Relationship
So we now know its origins, but what are its benefits and costs?
Benefits:
Protect you from unwanted emotions: whether it is that you believe that your partner is trying to control you or invade your privacy, or is criticizing you too much, the moment that you go within your little bubble, you are protected from the uncomfortable emotions that you feel when you feel attacked by effectively repressing them. Hence, in this sense, stonewalling acts as a protection or coping mechanism.
Attack the aggressor back with indifference: by stonewalling, you are neglecting your aggressor, which you know makes him or her feel ignored and probably bad or guilty for your reaction. This, in your eyes, teaches them a lesson for misbehaving, giving you back a little sense of power and control over the situation, shifting in turn the power balance in your favor. This feeling of power can be so seductive and even addictive, that it can make it hard to escape once you have given in to it.
Costs:
Damage your relationships: People can just take so much. After repeated episodes, it is normal for many partners to get tired of this behavior, so they may opt to also distance themselves from you and avoid being hurt emotionally. Consequently, you may end up lonelier, with less connections around you to share your life’s experiences.
Make you feel guilty: The moments in which you are trapped within your emotional bubble, you are not just teaching your partner a lesson. That has a big cost for yourself as well, since this comes accompanied by feelings of guilt that can also punish you for your own behavior indifference. You may try to repress this guilt and other emotions and focus on the perceived feelings of power. However, this emotional cocktail does have its costs, as it can create anxiety or emotional numbness and disconnection due to the emotional repression.
Disconnect you from life: Every time that you go into one of these episodes, it is possible that you withdraw emotionally not only from your partner or whoever triggered you, but in general from the world. As you are leading an internal fight against your thoughts about this person, the rest of the world disappears, making you also generally more distracted and less efficient in your tasks.
Become a habit: The more you let this emotional reflex fully control you, the more often it will happen. Suddenly, if you leave it unchecked, you can even find yourself doing it with friends or other people, becoming an almost chronical behavior.
Powerful Tips to Stop Stonewalling
What untapped potential do you think is hidden in your relationships if you didn’t need to withdraw emotionally by stonewalling, or at least not for so long? These powerful tips below will definitely help you to realize that potential!
1. Call your time-out!
This tip is especially useful if you are already entering a stonewalling period. It can take some time, practice, and deep self-understanding to reduce the frequency of these episodes, so as long as they are still happening, push yourself a bit outside of the comfort zone of your emotional cage by at least acknowledging your partner and letting him or her know that you need a bit of time for yourself. Add the cherry on top with words such like: “please don’t take it personally”. Doing this will already melt a piece of the ice that you create as you withdraw, since, by acknowledging your partner, you will decrease the guilt that can arise. This also serves to acknowledge your own need of space and time while you figure yourself out, reducing the thickness of the bars of your emotional cage.
2. Get out of your head!
Subconscious beliefs created as you were growing up are typically the cause behind the stonewalling behavior. These are things like: “no one should criticize me”, “no one should tell me how to live”, “no one should try to control me”, and “others should appreciate me or respect me more”. Therefore, the stonewalling can also be expressed in the form of recurrent thoughts in line with those beliefs that will attack back your partner and thus protect you from feeling whatever emotion that was so uncomfortable when you were triggered. Since the threat feels so real and the emotional bubble can be so addictive and feel so secure, these thoughts will also encourage you to stay there longer.
Now that you know the costs that this strategy is having in your life, it will thus help you to focus on how you are feeling by applying mindfulness or conscious awareness of yourself. You can do so by placing your attention fully on your body, including on your emotional walls. You can try to sit down during your time out, breathe deeply and focus how you feel. If you know of any meditation technique, then this is the moment to use it! I recommend you this one that I created called “Emotional Liberation Guided Meditation”, which can help you to ground you back and disidentify from that voice in your head.
Let your thoughts simply be and don’t chase them while you take curious note of them so that when you are more relaxed you can revisit them. If you do unwantedly chase a thought, simply come back to your body. If you are more of a sportsy person, you can instead do some exercise, like going for a walk or a run, or anything that you enjoy that will take your focus away from your thoughts. Little by little, your stonewalling period will subside and you will come back to the world.
3. Notice and question what really bothered you
Now that you feel either fully out of your emotional cage, or at least halfway out, you are in a clearer position to ask yourself: “What bothered me, really? And how true is it? How else could I see this that can be closer to the truth? How can I do it differently next time?”
This is your time to grow! Every time you fall into this pattern, if you inquire your thoughts in a clearer state of mind, it is an opportunity to demystify them and let the truth and associated inner peace behind them to arise.
Let’s take the example of your girlfriend telling you that you shouldn’t use your phone before going to bed. You felt the emotional bubble come up and suck you in. If you follow the advice above, you probably told her that you needed a time off and to please note take it personally. You meditated or did a bit of sports. Now, you ask yourself, “what bothered me?” And the following list comes from deep within you:
She is trying to control me
She is being mean to me
She is not respecting my autonomy and freedom of choice
For each of them, ask yourself with curiosity, “how true is it, really?” and “how else could I see it that is closer to the truth?” Go deep within you, and you will realize that apart from the interpretations above, it can also be seen as she simply caring for you and showing it to you in her own, unique manner, which she also probably learned somewhere. And finally, how can you do it differently next time, now that you know what bothered you? Hopefully, you can get some ideas on tip number 4 below!
4. Practice expressing yourself
One of the causes of emotional withdrawal is having not learned as a kid to express yourself and to negotiate. But as an adult, you now have a choice! Try, as calmly as possible, stating how you feel when your partner tells you certain things that at that point, you believe violate your boundaries. Take some deep breaths before you speak up, if it makes you feel more confident and relaxed.
Speaking up will open up a door for your partner to understand you better and for you to express those emotions while saying them out loud. You will also face your fear of conflict and the uncomfortable emotions that you associate with it. Express what bothers you about it, and you may even realize that your interpretations were fully in your head, which will further tumble those emotional walls to realize that the world is not as dangerous a place as you might have thought.
So there you have it! Understand yourself and use each triggering situation to practice, and you will see your confidence building up while your need to stonewall diminishes. In time, this will also help you to build a more secure attachment, which can foster more fulfilling relationships in your life.
If this article was of interest to you, then you will absolutely love this video about stonewalling in relationships from my YouTube Channel. Also, if you are interested in working to improve your relationships and overcome your fear of commitment or diminish limitations of your avoidant attachment style, I invite you to apply for coaching here and let me know more about your situation so that we can explore how I may be of help to you. I further invite you to subscribe to my newsletter by filling out the form on my website following this link. By subscribing you will receive my Free Gift where I provide 3 tips to overcome fear of commitment to create fulfilling relationships. You will also get updates from me occasionally including articles and videos about this topic.
Until next time!
Javier Peñalba
JOREavier Peñalba, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Javier Peñalba is an ICF certified life coach helping people with fear of commitment to create fulfilling relationships. Having dealt with anxiety for decades since the young age of 6 after the sudden suicide of his father some meters away from him, Javier has worked on a long journey of self-discovery, where he uncovered symptoms of commitment phobia, relationship OCD and anxiety. In particular, he could not stay in any intimate relationship for more than a few months without running away from it. Having dedicated the last years of his life to understand and overcome this issue, Javier is now happily married and is providing seminars and life coaching services to help people suffering fear of commitment.
