According to Pierre, people can be smeared during conflicts as a protective mechanism for self-preservation. When this happens, this is what she says is happening in your body.
Once a conflict puts us in a state of struggle, flight, arson, or freezing, our ability to think comes out the window. This is because the prefrontal cortex (the area in front of your brain) is checked and the amygdala – the center of the brain’s fear or “alarm system” – takes over, signaling your body to escape the triggering situation.
You probably feel quite stressed, so your body activates, your blood pumps, and your heart rate increases. “If we don’t engage or ignore the other person, it can make us feel in control again,” says Pierre, “so the stone wall is often used to regain some semblance of justification, perhaps even strength.”
But this is not the only reason people resort to this behavior. Sometimes, she says, people stonewall to seek relief because they really “feel stuck and unable to engage with the other person in a meaningful and rational way.”
Herzog points out that wall construction “directly stops any contradiction” so that it can really provide a sense of relief to the dissatisfied person, even if it is to the detriment of his partner.
“[Stonewalling] it is not effective or sustainable and will destroy any relationship over time, ”says Pierre.
However, complex life experiences often make defensive behavior difficult to avoid. “It’s important to remember that when we don’t learn how to communicate properly in our relationships, we turn to the ‘skill’ we may have learned to survive in the past,” Herzog explains.
This is why she believes that Stonewalling usually occurs later in a relationship: If a couple has worked on long-term communication with little or no improvement, “stonewalling becomes the mechanism that either partner turns to during a dispute. to get out of the pain and stress of what they are feeling. “