“Have the maturity to sometimes know that silence is more powerful than having the last word.” ~Thema Davis
It all started with the forks.
“You need to return my forks,” my roommate demanded one morning as I sat in the kitchen attempting to get some work done.
“I have already said that I don’t have them. We told you that the other roommate has been hiding them,” I replied.
She began raising her voice at me, “I can’t believe you would accuse her. You’re just a mean, nasty person!”
I slowly turned around and said calmly, “Today is my birthday, actually. So I don’t really want to have this conversation right now.”
She retorted, “I don’t care,” and then began to attack my character with a spiel of all the various other things I’ve ever done to upset her.
Perhaps she felt some kind of underlying hurt, but she would not share this with me. She was not telling me these problems so that we could work on them together to fix the hurt. Instead, she was insulting and attacking my very existence as a human so that I could feel hurt with her.
I could already foresee that nothing I could say was going to calm her down, so I chose to respond with silence. I suppose my silence pushed her over the edge, because she ended the conversation with “good luck with your miserable life treating people this way!” and stormed out of the room.
Well, that escalated quickly. All because of some missing forks. I continued on with my birthday as happily as I could.
Over the next few weeks, I waited for my roommate to come to me in a calm manner to resolve her issues with me, but she never did. Any chance she had, she continued to speak to me in a hateful manner, even though I didn’t engage her.
For some reason, my respectful silence made her angrier with me. I had held my tongue and kept my negative thoughts to myself, yet she still found a reason to hold on to her anger. This made it seem to me that she did not respect me or wish to resolve our issues.
One day she shoved me while coming in the front door at the same time as me. She went so far as to spread rumors that I was planning to break up with my boyfriend so that he would break up with me first. I remained silent and still as a tree.
Looking at things from her point of view, it seems that she was trapped in pain. A pain so severe she wanted someone else to feel it with her. She did not know another way to express her pain to me, so I will never know the true cause of it.
Luckily for me, she moved out shortly afterward. Though our relationship ended and our issues remained unsolved because of her lack of cooperation, I do not regret my silence for several reasons.
Silence shows that external factors cannot affect your self-esteem.
If you have hurt them, it is okay to acknowledge this and apologize. You are a human who makes mistakes. If they are unfoundedly attacking you, remember that they are speaking from a place of hurt that clouds their judgment.
In either situation, remind yourself that their negative view of you does not change your self-esteem and value as a person.
Oftentimes, flinging an insult is a reflection of their hidden insecurities and fears. True maturity comes from letting the hurtful words roll off your back without feeling the need to defend yourself, knowing that they are not a reflection of you.
Silence is not weakness.
Silence is harnessing your calm in a heated moment. Silence is a moment of Zen in which you can see the positive and negative coexisting together. Silence is the power to mindfully choose to stay out of the negative space, and not to say hurtful words back.
It takes true strength to hold your tongue and not succumb to negative energy. With time and practice, it will become easier and easier to ignore negative comments and continue on happily with your day.
Silence is not ignoring the problem.
Silence is the way to avoid saying things during a moment’s anger that you may later regret. Of course if the person has cooled off later on and wishes to speak to you calmly and respectfully regarding the matter, you should have a dialogue with them. Rational conversations are the only way to effective conflict resolution.
Silence is always in your toolbox.
When someone has an interpersonal problem that they genuinely wish to fix, they approach the other person from a place within their heart, a place of actual caring and love. If someone immediately attacks your integrity and character, they are not speaking out of love but out of hate. Hatred cannot solve problems, only love can.
When the other person is being intentionally hurtful, without regard for your feelings, you always have the choice to stay silent and walk away from the conversation. There is a point where no words will calm them down, and they simply want you to join in their anger. Reciprocating their anger and adding fuel to their fire will just make things worse.
Silence is always there for a moment of clarity.
About Taylor Linn
Taylor Linn is a Cinema and Media Art graduate of Vanderbilt University, currently based in beautiful San Francisco, CA. She obsessively collected movie stubs and collaged fashion magazines into celebrity shrines as a teenager. She is pretty sure she is going to be reincarnated as a meerkat in her next life, but who can be 100% sure? Visit Taylor and her artwork at taylorlinn.com.
Though I run this site, it is not mine. It's ours. It's not about me. It's about us. Your stories and your wisdom are just as meaningful as mine. 
Life with a Borderline.
Good for you Taylor for being willing to stay silent and not react. There are some times when words just won’t help.
There are instances where silence is the best thing to do. It’s difficult sometimes to know when I should say something and stay silent.
It doesn’t sound like silence was the best option in this situation, based on my understanding of what you wrote. Some empathy likely would have gone much farther. Something along the lines of, “I’m getting the sense you’re really hurt about something and my guess is that this isn’t about the forks. I will not respond to attacks but if you want to talk about this calmly so we can work through the problem, you know where to find me.” and then silence if the attacks continued would have been a reasonable response. Just my opinion, though 🙂
I have a simple rule that I follow:
1. If someone’s attack might affect me (even subconsciously), I come up with something witty to counter it. It works as a negativity filter.
2. If it is a harmless provocation, I ignore it and remain silent. It bothers the other person more.
Top notch article. Have a good day!
I agree, I would have first tried the approach of making her feel understood and offering to help her look for and find the forks. If she still attacked me or I could see that she wasn’t open to listening to anything I said, then I would have been silent and or said as little as possible.
I agree that people like her are deeply trapped in their pain, and not just their own pain, but their share of the collective pain of the world, and they are unconsciously about it. I used to be unaware and behaved like that. I’m getting better now as I’m becoming more aware. I know people who are deeply trapped in pain and totally unconscious. When their pain is triggered and they start verbal attacks, they won’t accept your silence, they keep trying to drag you into arguments. I find it helpful to remove myself from the situation when I can.
As of Victor Hugo would like to say “Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.”
Vincent Van Gogh said “If you hear voice within you say you cannot paint, then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.
This is a good article. Thank you. Yet, on this case, the accusation of as a fork theft is either serious or a funny crime. I should say, she should buy her a fork. Or a dozen of forks even.
Her endless anger, not really an anger, is just an expression of superiority and stupidity unfairness she only misleads herself there by chance of the right thing to do.
Words of wisdom! It took me a long time to learn how effective silence can be, but now I find that I use it more than ever. Someone trying to bait me into an argument? Silence. Someone trying to push me into doing something I don’t want to do? Silence. Someone who “ghosted” me texting out of the blue after months of nothing? Silence. Silence puts you in the position of power. The minute you open your mouth, you can lose an argument or be talked into something or even just waste your time and attention on someone who doesn’t deserve it. Silence–refusing to engage–shuts down the argument, the manipulation, or the attempt to use and abuse. It forces the other party into the weaker position, as THEY are the ones who want something (your response) and have to show their cards to get it. At some point, you may decide you like what you hear (an apology, a more reasonable attitude, etc.), and then you may be willing to respond. But until then, the choice is yours, and you can make it on your timetable and on your conditions. Silence is one of the best self-defense tactics in the world!
You are saying that she made you feel like she did not respect you. Now I don’t actually know wether you stole her forks or not, but I think you disrespected this short tempered chick even MORE than she disrespected you. Yes she flipped. But I am sure she would have apologized. But instead you accused another roomate of hiding the forks and then stated that it was your birthday and THEN to make things worse, you completely started ignoring the already ravingly mad roomate, as if she is not even there, as if she is dead AFTER you prioritized that it was your birthday. I mean: to be honest, it was narcissictical…As if she is lower than dirt and does not deserve a response of any kind. It seems to me that deep inside you actually enjoyed every part of it and waited untill she hits you in the face or just stabs you. Who knows how crazy mad people can be?! I know, maybe you thought you did the right thing or maybe you were silent because you took the forks and were feeling guilty and therefore had nothing to say, but treating someone with silence can be not good for you sometimes as it can drive another person insane and they can physically harm you. You should’ve said something along these lines: “I repeat I did NOT take your forks. And I don’t like to be treated this way. Stop shouting and then we will talk like civilized people.” You see the difference between a diplomatic reply and just pure silence? A diplomatic reply is a mature reply. A silence is another form of a victim mode.
It seems to me that she wasn’t in any pain. Okay? Lets not make any assumptions. She seems like a short tempered girl who just lost temper and does not know how to diplomatically communicate. And so doesn’t the author of this article. Silence is not a communication. It just lets the other person know that they are being thought as dead. Yikes! Come on! Who would wanna treat you with respect after that? She could also have assumed that the author did not want to cooperate.
You think so? Cause I always had and will view this “tactic” of yours as a victim mode. One can very well be silent just because they don’t know how to stand up for themselves or just simply have nothing to say from guilt or whatever.