What Can Happen When We Feel Shut Out
Have you ever found yourself acting so escalated in the middle of a fight with your partner that you wonder what in the world is actually happening to you? You’re trying to get through to your partner and they’re shutting you out or they’re shut down and no longer present emotionally. You're getting nothing back, or they've left the room, refusing to speak to you. Maybe you follow them to the next room, really trying to get them to respond. This can feel like running into a brick wall, and it can produce a very specific emotional response when you hit that wall. Sometimes it can feel like we’re overtaken in a fight by some alien version of ourselves, one we hardly recognize when we’re calm, and one we’d be embarrassed about if the rest of our world saw.
This is very common topic in couples therapy, and it’s often relief to know you’re not the only one who feels so much more upset when your partner shuts you out. It’s an even greater relief when we can name what’s happening and map a way out with that information. We feel out of control when we find ourselves feeling such BIG feelings and behaving in this way. There is so much power in naming and understanding the dynamics in our relationships, and the good news is there is a name for this!
Research tells us that our primary relationships with our partner are very much structured like the primary relationships we had with our parents. That may sound strange, but stay with me for a minute. It doesn’t mean our partners are in a parental role, or that we have any sort of parental dynamic with them. It means that the role our partners play in our lives and the power they can have to effect our emotions is that BIG. Our attachment to our partners feels as vital as the relationship felt with our parents. We are wired for connection—to be close to others—and that primary attachment we feel as children gets transferred to our partners in adulthood.
When we are shut out by a shut down partner, we sometimes behave the way a baby responds to a mother who ignores her, by trying to get her attention and then finally melting down. When we feel walled out by our partners, it can trigger a behavior for us called an “attachment protest.” We are in a sense protesting the impression that our needs are not being met, that this important person is not reachable to connect with anymore. If we can understand that we are most upset about this important bond with our partner feeling threatened, we can help ourselves and our partners understand what we need in that moment is to reconnect (not necessarily solve what the fight was about at that moment).
So if your relationship with your partner carries the same emotional weight as those first relationships, what might happen inside you when you’re ignored or shut out? It can feel like little alarm bells going off in our brains. Our secure attachment to this very important person suddenly feels threatened. Therefore our sense of security may feel threatened, and so we start tying to make the hurt feel better, but not in productive ways. We don’t know all of this is happening, though. We’re just upset and trying to be heard.
If we’re able to understand what we’re feeling and why it’s so powerful, then we can start to change it. What we need when we feel walled out is to reconnect, but we won’t get there with our own version of an “attachment protest.” We have to be able to name it with our partners and ask for this reconnection. We can create a pathway for ourselves to name and eventually change this behavior by understanding what is happening for us individually and in our relationship.
Read More:
Love Sense, Dr. Sue Johnson
Hold Me Tight, Dr. Sue Johnson
Becoming Attached, Robert Karen, PhD.
5 Days to a New Marriage, Terry Hargrave, PhD. and Shawn Stoever, PhD.