Stonewalling is a common BPD conversational control tactic. What does that mean for all practical purposes as well as an academic and medical study of Forensic Psychology reasons? The following article is just a few of our staff writer’s candid thoughts on the subject.
Stonewalling is a common BPD tactic used to control the conversation and mood of targeted parties. Here are a few of our thoughts about what it is, why it happens, and how to spot it so you can choose whether to indulge or to stop it.
BPD is the acronym for Borderline Personality Disorder. Adding a hashtag to the term when looking for data about the condition on any social media platform like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, or Twitter will take you straight to a wealth of first-person source and first-person source data from BPD people’s unfortunate victims.
Borderline Personality Disorder is NURTURED. Not something likely to be created by any one individual’s specific core nature. Family units that nurture and cultivate children, adults, parents, and seniors to enable socially violent behavior management tactics to be applied to people who live in the home by the most selfish and narcissistic grandiose individuals in the home are what they are… medically as well as socially and psychologically toxic as well as arguable socially deplorable and abjectly defining the gist of moral dysfunction based on philosophic examination.
People with BPD tend to manufacture chaos or emotional harm in the lives of others when they are feeling anxious socially and/or are seeking attention. Rather than expressing clearly to an appropriate other than they are feeling like they are in need of social support or attention, they will create some kind of distraction or diversion that enabled them to avoid discussing the actual issue or problem that is making them feel — get this — NORMAL HUMAN EMOTIONS.
The BPD child nurtured to avoid feeling emotions apart from the pleasure of getting what they want on-demand or without needing to ask is also what it is…
Socially violent underparenting by the offspring’s primary caregivers and secondary exposed social support network. The child who learns that by throwing a temper tantrum, pouting, acting menacingly towards someone else to physically cause them to feel medical duress and fright, and or by acting out that they will be rewarded grow up to become the most unpleasant type of human beings and the ones most likely to end up in jail.
Someone with mild, non physically violent BPD might be angry at us for suggesting the aforementioned is true. We challenge them to do the academic research on their own condition, on the ranges of symptoms, and to do the real math before they choose to errantly personalize and to go on the attack.
To our point exactly —
When a person with BPD does not want to discuss an issue, their most common conversational control tactic is to stonewall and to refuse to discuss the issue that is in PEMDAS NLP line to solve first in any basic discussion or conversation with someone who seeks them to collaborate in order to succeed in creating or maintaining a healthy and pro-social relationship.
A BPD person who does not want to get caught or found out will do or say whatever it takes to avoid discussing the issue. They will argue they are NOT STONEWALLING while actively stonewalling then waiting to see if you are smart enough to notice what emotional trick they have done.
The BPD person will make false TOS reports to ban articles from social media that have titles they don’t want their families to read… titles like people with BPD use stonewalling to avoid dealing directly with their adult as well as inner child’s personal issues — probably because they don’t mechanically grasp how because their parents elected to buy them that toy or piece of candy they demanded in line at a store while mortifying their caregiver and deliberately and without care or regard for other people’s subjective experiences annoying the staff and shoppers throughout the entire mall, generic shopping super-center like Target or Wall of Mart, or at their local pharmacy or grocery store.
The BPD person will narrow in on whatever tiny incidental takes a conversation off-topic to avoid being forced to discuss what they want to avoid. Rather than risking saying…
LATHER, RINSE, REPEAT FORMULA:
This is what happened… this is what my body felt like physically to me at the time that it happened… then pairing the intellectual content with the physical to strive to learn to use BIG BOY or BIG GIRL words
… the BPD person will twist everyone’s words. They will refuse to discuss the actual issue and will try to con others into believing or pretending whatever Secondary, Tertiary, or Googleplex conversational deviation to throw the focus off themselves is the actual problem. By employing stonewalling coupled with distraction tactics, Avoidant Personality Disorder symptoms blend with BPD conversational control tactics blend seamlessly to allow the problem person to sabotage not only themselves and their personal mood but the emotional stability of others as it relates to involving them in a relationship.
Conversations about what triggered their behavior will be routinely avoided using stonewalling tactics. No person or therapist we have encountered who has dealt with a person who grew up BPD or imitating someone in their home who actually is or was will tell you the person with Borderline verbal skills has not skunked us into enabling their most toxic conversational control traps and ourselves been inadvertently turned into their willing Narcissistic Harem attendee if not their full-blown Enabler.
Wikipedia quite accurately states, “Stonewalling is a refusal to communicate or cooperate. Such [behavior] occurs in situations such as marriage guidance counseling, diplomatic negotiations, politics, and legal cases. Body language may indicate and reinforce this by avoiding contact and engagement with the other party.” It’s not your imagination someone posturing to intimidate is doing so to say look at me while giving off simultaneous mixed signals for others to back away.
Understand the man or woman who puffs up and starts banging cabinet doors, stomping around, huffing and puffing, and slamming doors to frighten a person who seeks communication with them into shutting up IS a physical form of stonewalling pre-posturing. It’s important to note when observing when people with nurtured BPD or overt Borderline Personality issues sidewinder conversations while stonewalling to avoid talking honestly or candidly about whatever subject of the conversation or day they are avoiding.
First, note the connection to learning the conversational control tactic from toxic elders.
- Did you grow up from birth to age 12 in a household where someone who was an alcoholic, problem drinker, or who consumed more than two cocktails a week lived or was present?
- Was anyone in the home violent, prone to using rage based speech, or compromised emotional or psychologically by an RX or illicit drug?
- Was the news or television on in the home when you were still in your mother’s womb up until the time you were four?
- Were you exposed to violence or any form of social crime or injustice when you were little that a parent, grandparent, step-parent, extended family member, older sibling, or a person of affection known to you chose to normalize, participate in the commission of, or to enable?
Watch that headspace in yourself and others. And all the parts to your personal life story on the side as well as in between whenever you are actively or passively engaging in self-reflection about things like what the word Love and being in a relationship means.
Next, realize the following “medisocial” inspired reality. People with BPD who struggle with addictions issues related to controlling their own or other people’s emotions tend to get physically bored and make mischief while seeking hyperadrenalization. Sober or on the wagon can be mind-numbing for someone who does not know how to use their words to let their social support network know that they are chemically feeling as if they are sinking into neural depression or some kind of anxiety disorder related dysfunction.
Victims of BPD people’s antics and or of stonewalling, in general, are likely to feel quite vexed and to suffer. Because they [we] love someone who is prone to engaging in self-destructive behavior, when they blow up their relationship or lines of communication with a person of affection… the collective we are their target as well as their only possible salvation.
Get caught between someone, say, with Dry Drunk issues and access to a person who is loving and devoted to their needs when they have had some kind of upset or bad day they don’t want to discuss, expect the moody behavior and menacing swinging around of body parts to begin while the person nurtured BPD blames everyone else for not pleasing them while they are throwing their attention-seeking, conversational control tactic infused, up to no good, real problem triggering their anxiety avoiding information.
Dr. Jekyll keeping secrets about emotional content from Missus Hyde is likely to send her to the moon with no alibi when he tries to deny.
Anyone caught in the verbal crossfire of a person with BPD and actively or passively stonewalling is likely to be made to feel helpless, confused, physically frustrated, emotionally as well as socially hurt, and offended that the person behaving badly won’t simply come out and say, “XYZ happened today, I don’t know how to feel about it, and it would be really nice if someone could just sit with me a while and not need to discuss it but who actually knows about it.”
Why offended? Because anyone who lives with a person who struggles with communication and addiction issues is already likely either an idiot or a saint. Either way, the relationship is going to require an element of codependent desire to ease the grief and stress for the problem person typically at the non-BPD person’s micro as well as macro expense.
Once people who enable Stonewallers figure out where their problematic person learned the control tactic, we tend to draw an emotional line in the sand with regard to how much conversation we take seriously from the person who we ask a direct question of only to have them refuse to answer by stonewalling, taking the discussion off course, or when they start blaming their victim(s). If you know someone is Stonewalling seeking some kind of power and control based, boredom or grief alleviating hit… understanding the difference between enabling a person to take time to process appropriately and acting as a willing punching bag for them to distress psychologically and emotionally while they contort striving to create havoc in the mind and body of others so they can avoid a topic while making themselves feel socially distracted and powerful starts to make the person whose hospitality is being abused feel like holey worn-out shoes…
Walked in, walked on, and plumb tuckered out. Conversation feels impossible when all you feel are air and pleading exhaustion coming out while begging the problem person to come ’round to listen with the intent to understand and or to stop avoiding dealing directly with the actual issue or problem that is causing the person creating social trauma for others with intent or collateral damage inadvertently.
People who struggle with Alcoholism and addictions issues of any sort like to use the tactic especially if they have gone dry from their other neurochemical delight inspiring high so be mindful if you happen to love or to work in close proximity to those types of folks that when they stage and pick fights or do things to upset or to frighten other people that they know exactly what they are doing and they are choosing to behave in ways that are abusive to self and others on purpose while seeking a neurochemical boost of toxic behavioral juice.
The Abuser — yes, the conversational control junkie is addicted to the rush and the neurochemical thrill of bullying, conning, and getting away with things in ways that net gain them a full-body rush of physical pleasure from Dupers Delight — is what they are… typically a full-grown toddler in a very adult body with access to words they don’t understand the meaning of on an intrinsic or sublime level when they parrot Big People’s vocabulary.
They are what they are. And their behavior is NEVER okay despite what you tell them or that they tell you.
It’s okay to acknowledge when someone acts poorly that they made a poor choice or to acknowledge that they were unable medically to respond better at a particularly medically stressful or physically challenging of times. What is NOT okay is to say that something someone says that is crappy or awful is alright… or that indulging a full-grown adult pitching a fit to get something they want or only vaguely demand of their loved ones or co-workers or housemates or friends on impulse that is to their detriment and everyone else’s is anything other than enabling a neurochemical junkie to self-harm while taking energetic siphon from others.
When in need, talk it out. When needing, tell.
Betterhelp.com notes, “Stonewalling occurs when someone refuses to cooperate or talk to you. When this happens in a relationship, it can be a good predictor of divorce, or one of many physiological and affective predictors of a problem within a relationship.”
When asked to participate in a conversation or relationship with others, have faith that striving for accuracy and appropriate disclosure of events and experiences in sequential time can help anyone — neurotypical, BPD, or even the most complex of high functioning and not naturally socially skilled Autistics — figure out not only what causes anxiety and why. Once you know why a trigger is actually a trigger, the ability to get a handle on processing complex emotions like fear, trauma exposure, and or grief can begin to happen without a bunch of mechanical force or effort.
As for anyone who is reading this article and thinking that our paragraph structure and or grammar are wrong, that we are too long-winded, or that we’re annoying… we are happy to ask you to smile and look straight at the camera on your laptop or smartphone because guess what is the ultimate Covert form of Stonewalling?
Grammar Nazi behavior. It’s a glaring red flag that someone has neuroplasticity freezing and or that they were not taught by adults when they were young how to think about difficult or complex social and emotional material in a way that was non-linear. By hiding the EQ learning disability under refusal to read with the intent to understand rather than to critique and invalidate using the Cluster B trick of stonewalling, the snot-nosed, emotionally compromised academic shows their own AI their microexpressions that confirm or deny what the person appears to understand when they are reading.
And with THAT, we refuse to discuss more today on this particular hot button issue in Behavioral Management of ACADEMICS and of our BPD family members, loved ones, and their typically C-PTSD addled relatives.
