Why Your Partner is Stonewalling You and the 90-second fix

In this video, I wanna show you why your partner is stonewalling you during conflict and how you should respond when it happens. Dr. John Gottman has studied thousands of couples and he was able to predict divorce with 90% accuracy based on the chronic presence of 4 traits during conflict, which are defensiveness, criticism, contempt, and last but not least, stonewalling. So this is really a big deal. But first, let's go over what stonewalling is. Stonewalling is when one person decides not to communicate during a conflict. They get quiet. They become avoidant. They don't communicate in any way and they don't signal anything. Their whole demeanor changes and they develop what's known as a flat affect. In other words, they don't show any emotion whatsoever. They might pull out their phone and act like they don't care anymore. And it doesn't matter what you do or say. They completely ignore you. They just go silent on you and they answer every question with, "I don't know," over and over again. It's infuriating and it makes any partner feel like they couldn't care less about me. So this really is a big deal. Now, if your partner sent you this video, Thank them and thank you for being mature enough to watch. I'm not here to judge you. I'm not here to label you as the problem. Most people would just call you emotionally unavailable, but I'm not going to do that. My job is to hold both of you accountable. If your partner starts an argument with disrespect and name-calling and you shut down, you're both wrong. But I also know that you can change this because I did, and I've taught thousands of others to do it too. So let's get started. Let's start off by talking about emotional shutdown. We've all seen it. People become conflict avoidant. They stop being with you in a passionate way. They don't look at you. They maybe leave the room when you walk in, or maybe they pick up their phone and look at their phone, and they're just not going to engage with you. And it's obvious that something is really bothering them, but they're not willing to talk about it. And anytime you try to broach the subject, they shut you down. The emotional impact of this is pretty bad. I mean, it's really hurtful. You feel abandoned, rejected, betrayed, unloved, unlovable, and you even start to get angry and frustrated because you don't know what to do about it. Well, the thing is that your partner is feeling exactly the same thing— unloved, abandoned, rejected, betrayed, frustrated, and angry. And your partner doesn't know what to do with it either. So you're both suffering from same pain, and yet you don't even know it because you're only focused on your own pain. The root cause of this is not indifference. It's not dislike. It's not knowing how to handle painful, shameful emotions. You see, in our brains, when we perceive a threat, even a social threat like a small insult or a little bit of disrespect, we go into fight or flight. And the moment we do that, our prefrontal cortex shuts down and we lose the ability to emotionally self-regulate. And so we start getting reactive, and when we go back to the behaviors that we learned in childhood— what happened when somebody yelled at you? What happened when you're told that you don't hurt when your knee is really scraped up and it does hurt? What do you feel when you're told not to cry? You shut down. And that becomes your reaction to protect yourself when you feel emotionally hurt by somebody else. And it started with your parents. And your partner suffered from her parents or his parents just like you did. It goes on from generation to generation to generation. So what happens is we have these old wounds that we received in childhood that never healed. And they get reopened in adulthood in a relationship. And we go back to the same patterns over and over and over again. And it gets even worse because now we're getting the patterns from somebody that we love, not just our parents. So let me tell you a quick story about a couple I worked with who had this problem. They became emotionally unavailable to each other. And I worked with them 1 hour a week for 8 weeks, teaching them what I'm going to teach you in this video, how to listen to each other, how to validate each other. And by the end of the 8 weeks, their relationship had completely changed. It was amazing to watch, and it happens every single time because the solution to this problem is really very simple. By the way, I run a community called the De-Escalate Academy where we practice these skills every day, and you can get all your questions answered about how to de-escalate people and bring back intimacy in your relationship. The link is in the description. All right, coming back to the video. So what emotional shutdown really communicates is not that I'm a bad person, but what it's really communicating is your partner's in pain. They're in fight or flight. They're afraid. They don't feel safe. And their shutdown becomes hurtful, not intentionally, but hurtful because you've lost the connection, the human connection that you value so much. And you're getting the signal you're not worth being heard, which makes you angry and frustrated too. And so it just escalates and escalates and escalates. Both of you feel abandoned. Neither of you feel safe. Explanations don't help. Words don't help. The only thing that helps is emotional validation, which we'll get to in just a minute. Every conflict, every fight is about one thing. Wanting to be heard, wanting to be seen, wanting to be understood. If you can meet those 3 needs, you will never have a fight or argument again in your life with anybody. So first of all, let me talk about the technique. It's really simple. 2 words. You feel. You feel angry. You feel frustrated. You feel upset. You feel lost and disconnected. You feel unhappy. You feel abandoned and betrayed. You don't feel loved. That's all you have to say. And watch for the body's yes, a nodding of the head, dropping of the shoulders, sigh of relief. And when that happens, you're going to notice a magical transformation in your partner. All of a sudden he or she is going to smile and say, "Yes, that's exactly how I feel. Thank you." And don't be surprised to see a lot of tears. That's the practice. That's all you have to do. It's counterintuitive. It's counter-normative. It's weird, but it works. And it works because of neuroscience. So back in 2007, a brain scanning study came out of Matthew Lieberman's lab at UCLA, and they scanned people naming the emotions of distressed faces. And what they saw was remarkable. As the emotions were named, the emotional centers of the brain associated with negative emotion were inhibited, they quieted down. And at the same time, the parts of the brain associated with self-regulation in the prefrontal regions activated. In plain English, naming emotions calmed the brain down. It restored people back to peace every single time. And it doesn't matter whether you're wrong or you mislabeled the emotion, it still works. And it doesn't matter if you interrupt somebody telling what they're feeling, it still works. It works even better, in fact. It goes completely against everything we've been taught about listening. And yet is the most powerful relationship skill there is. It's called affect labeling, naming what somebody feels by simply saying, "You feel..." So think of affect labeling or validating emotions as simply lending your prefrontal cortex to your partner for the 90 seconds it takes for their prefrontal cortex to come back online and come back to calm. All right, so how do you do this? It's a 3-step protocol, really. Step number 1, ignore the words. Just don't pay any attention to them whatsoever. Step number 2, read the emotions. Your brain knows what to do. It's exquisite at accurately and effectively and quickly identifying the emotions in another human being. So let it do its job and just sit in silence and wait until emotions come into your consciousness. Then tell your partner what the emotions are. You're angry. You're feeling frustrated. You don't feel loved. You feel all alone in this. And as I said, wait. Name some more emotions. And within about 90 to 120 seconds, they're going to shift. They're going to nod their head and say, "Yeah, that's exactly how I feel." Their shoulders are going to drop and you'll probably see a sigh of relief and maybe even some verbal a response like, "Yeah," or, "Exactly." The key here is to direct it to your partner from your partner's frame of reference. That's why you never want to use an I-statement. You don't want to say something like, "What I think you're feeling is anger." No, that's that old active listening stuff that doesn't work. And you don't want to use passive voice either. You don't want to say something like, "It seems like you're angry." It's too passive. You've got to be direct. "You're angry." Your partner won't be offended. They won't feel like you're being rude. They will be grateful that you're taking the time to listen them into existence. Existence. I remember one client, Jay, that I worked with, taught him these skills. He had severe PTSD because he had been sexually abused by adults when he was a young child, and his wife also suffered from PTSD, and they were just about ready to murder each other. I worked with him for 2 months, taught him these skills. He taught his wife these skills based on what I taught him, and today he can't believe the change in his marriage, and he can't believe the change that he's seen in his children. Instead of passing on the old patterns that he learned from his father and his grandfather, he's helping his children re-pattern into healthy children that have learned to manage their own emotions rather than be put down like Jay was put down or abused and like his wife was put down. It's incredible how it works. Now, before we go on, I want to give you something practical. If you're thinking, "Okay, this makes sense, but I need more than just a YouTube video or lesson to change this pattern," I wrote a book called "De-Escalate: How to Calm an Angry Person in 90 Seconds or Less." It takes you through the exact neuroscience-based patterns that I've proven over 2 decades to calm people down. It's basically the Bible of affect labeling. The link is in the description, so go check it out. What happens if you're the one that's shutting down? You're the one who becomes emotionally unavailable? Well, you've got to recognize that you are emotionally dysregulated. So you got— maybe you're racing hard, or your ears get hot, voice gets louder, or maybe you just shut down and crawl inside yourself and nobody can reach you. There's a mature alternative. First of all, if you have to take a break, say, "We need a 5-minute timeout," and all you're going to do is use that time to breathe and calm yourself down. Then what you're going to do is label your own feelings using an I statement. Remember I said no I statements? Well, that's only to the other person. When you're talking to yourself, you use an I statement. I'm feeling angry. I'm frustrated. I feel all alone. I'm lonely. Just say that to yourself silently and you'll calm down. No threats, no punishment, just emotional self-regulation. And when you calm down, which will take a minute or two, you can come back to the conversation and say, hey, I'm ready to talk. Can we start again? I've worked with people serving life sentences without possibility of parole in the darkest prisons in California, teaching them how to use these skills to stop prison violence. We've had hundreds of our students serving life sentences in California released on parole. Not one of them has reoffended. This is a powerful skill that never fails you. It works every single time. Let's talk about how to implement this in your relationship starting today. First of all, try to talk about what separates you, the conflict, when things are calm. Now, what could very easily happen is simply talking about conflict could trigger you. So use the skills. Just say, be prepared to say you're angry, you're frustrated, You're scared. Be prepared to say that. And when it comes up, say it. Reboot your partner's brain using this 3-step process. Ignore the words, listen to the emotions, reflect the emotions with a "you" statement, and then start over again. One thing you can do with your partner is to create a conflict plan. So you answer these questions: How are we going to bring up the fact that we feel hurt or disrespected or alone? What signal will we use when one of us needs a break? How long should the breaks be? How are we going to come back to the conversation? So that we feel safe and loved. Write it all out and have it handy when your next conflict comes up and follow your contract, follow your rules. You're on the same team and you can do this together to feel joy and intimacy and love in your relationship. So understand that the goal of all of this is not to avoid conflict. Conflict is inevitable. In fact, conflict is good. It's how we handle conflict is what gets us into trouble. The goal isn't perfection. What we want is incremental improvement. Direction towards emotional maturity. I guarantee if you do this work, you will never have a fight or argument again in your life, ever. That's how powerful this is. All right, if you made it this far, you're serious, and I want to help you go deeper. Here's the reality: watching this video is step one, but mastering this skill requires practice, support, coaching, and accountability. That's why I've created a comprehensive masterclass, the same training system I use with CEOs and lifers in maximum security prisons. If you want to explore this, I offer a free discovery call. Just join a conversation with me to see if it's right for you. The link to schedule a call is in the description. Click it, book a time, and let's talk. Thank you so much for watching. I'll catch you on the next one, and I hope this information transforms your life like it's transformed mine.