Insights from a Top Couples Therapist in Dhaka!
There is a particular kind of silence that is not peaceful. It is a silence that is heavy, that is loud, and that can feel like a form of emotional starvation. It is the experience of reaching out for your partner, the person who is supposed to be your closest ally and your safest harbor, and being met with a wall. A wall of silence, of emotional distance, of a quiet, impenetrable retreat. You may try to talk, and your words are met with a one-word answer, or with nothing at all. You may feel a rising tide of panic, of loneliness, of a desperate and aching invisibility, as the person you love most in the world seems to have vanished behind a wall of glass. To live with a partner who regularly shuts down, who gives you the “silent treatment” or “stonewalls,” is to live in a state of profound and painful relational uncertainty.
If this is your reality, you are likely living in a world of deep confusion, of immense frustration, and of a heart-wrenching loneliness. If you are the one on the outside of the wall, you may feel a chaotic storm of emotions. There is the frantic, desperate panic of abandonment, a primal fear that you are losing them. There is a hot, righteous anger at being ignored, at being punished with their silence. And there is a deep, shaming, and often secret fear: “What did I do to cause this? Am I too much? Am I unlovable?”
And if you are the person inside the wall, the one who is shutting down, you are likely not in a place of calm, cold power, as your partner may believe. You are in your own private hell. You may be feeling a profound and terrifying sense of being overwhelmed, of being flooded by an intensity that feels like it could drown you. You may be hearing your partner’s words as a relentless confirmation of your own deepest fear: “I am failing. I can never get this right.” Your silence is not a weapon you are choosing to wield; it is a desperate, automatic, and often unconscious act of self-preservation. It is the only way you know how to stop the fight, to stop the feeling of failure, and to simply survive the moment.
If this painful, tragic, and repeating drama is the story of your marriage, I want to meet you both, in your separate, lonely prisons of pain, with a perspective that is as compassionate as it is revolutionary: The problem is not your “angry” partner. And the problem is not your “cold” partner. The problem is the invisible, self-perpetuating, and deeply painful pattern of interaction that has taken you both hostage. You are not enemies; you are two loving human beings who are caught in a vicious cycle, where each person’s desperate attempt to feel safe is the very thing that is triggering the deepest fear of the other.
This article is your comprehensive and deeply human guide to understanding and escaping this painful trap. We will explore, with immense compassion, the inner worlds of both the partner who pursues and the partner who withdraws. We will dismantle the blame and illuminate the blameless, logical, and heartbreaking nature of this cycle. And we will provide a clear and hopeful map to a new way of being together, a path that can lead you out of the silence and back into the warm, safe, and deeply connecting harbor of each other. With deep empathy and insights from the expert team at Mind to Heart, let’s explore this journey together. A Top Couples Therapist in Dhaka is a skilled and compassionate guide for this very journey.
To truly dismantle the blame and to begin to build a bridge of compassion between you, we must first journey into the deep, and often completely misunderstood, inner world of the partner who withdraws. This is a journey that requires a radical act of empathy from the pursuing partner. To the pursuer, the withdrawer’s silence looks and feels like a cold, calculated, and powerful act of aggression. It feels like indifference. It feels like punishment. It feels like they just don’t care. The truth, as the Top Couples Therapist in Dhaka know, is almost always the exact opposite.
The partner who withdraws is, in that moment, in a profound and terrifying state of neurobiological overwhelm. The brilliant researcher Dr. John Gottman has a powerful term for this: “flooding.” Think of your nervous system as an electrical circuit. It is designed to handle a certain amount of emotional current. But when the conflict with your partner becomes too intense, when you hear their words as a barrage of criticism, of disappointment, of anger, that circuit can become completely overloaded. This is flooding. It is a literal, physiological, fight-or-flight response. Your heart rate skyrockets, your body is flooded with adrenaline and cortisol, and the blood literally drains away from your prefrontal cortex—the logical, rational, and language-centered part of your brain.
In this moment, you are physiologically incapable of having a calm, rational, and constructive conversation. Your brain has been hijacked by its own ancient survival system. Your capacity for empathy, for creative problem-solving, and even for understanding the nuances of language, has gone completely offline. You are in a state of pure, primal, and often panicked survival. A Top Couples Therapist in Dhaka from Mind to Heart can help your partner to understand this biological reality.
For the person who is flooded, their silence, their withdrawal, is not a weapon; it is a desperate and often unconscious attempt to de-escalate. They are trying, in the only way their hijacked brain knows how, to stop the fight. They are trying to prevent themselves from saying something they will regret, or from completely breaking down. The silence is a shield. It is an attempt to protect themselves from the excruciating, shame-filled feeling of being a failure in the eyes of the person they love most. The internal monologue of a withdrawer is often not, “I don’t care about you.” It is, “I can’t do this right. Nothing I say will make this better. I am failing you. I need to escape before I make it even worse.” The retreat is not an act of power; it is an act of profound and painful powerlessness.
Now, let us turn with that same deep compassion to the inner world of the partner who pursues. Your experience is one of profound and terrifying abandonment. When the person who is your primary source of safety and connection in the world suddenly turns away from you, when they go silent, when they emotionally disappear behind a wall, it triggers a primal, life-or-death alarm bell in your own attachment system. This is not a psychological exaggeration. On a deep, nervous-system level, their emotional withdrawal can feel like an act of annihilation. The Top Couples Therapist in Dhaka are deeply trained in this science of attachment.
In this state of attachment panic, you are driven by a powerful and intelligent instinct: to protest the disconnection. Your anger, your criticism, your barrage of questions, your “nagging”—these are not character flaws. These are what a top couples therapist in Dhaka would call “protest behaviors.” They are the desperate, clumsy, and often loud attempts of a terrified person to get a response, any response, from their partner. In that moment of profound disconnection, even a fight feels better than the terrifying, deafening silence of being alone.
The underlying, vulnerable cry of your heart is not, “You are a terrible person.” The cry is, “Where are you? I’m scared. I can’t feel you. Do I still matter to you? Please, just turn back towards me. Show me that I’m not alone.” But because this vulnerable cry feels so terrifying to express, it comes out “sideways,” disguised in the protective armor of anger and criticism.
And here we arrive at the beautiful, tragic, and blameless architecture of the vicious cycle. It is a perfect and painful feedback loop. The pursuing partner, feeling the terror of disconnection, escalates their protest with criticism and anger. This intense, critical energy is the very thing that floods the withdrawing partner’s nervous system, confirming their deepest fear (“I am a failure”) and sending them into a state of self-protective shutdown. And the withdrawer’s silence and emotional retreat is the very thing that confirms the pursuer’s deepest fear (“You are abandoning me. I am alone.”), causing them to escalate their protest even further.
Can you see it? You are not enemies. You are two loving human beings, each trapped in a painful corner, and each person’s desperate attempt to find safety is the very thing that is creating the danger for the other. You are both victims of a powerful, invisible, and deeply destructive pattern. And the first, most life-altering, and most hopeful step in all of couples therapy is to have a skilled guide, like one of the Top Couples Therapist in Dhaka, help you to both see this cycle as the common enemy, so you can finally stop fighting each other and begin to fight for your relationship, together.
So, how do you begin to escape this silent and lonely prison? This is the courageous and hopeful work of couples therapy. The therapy room, with a Top Couples Therapist in Dhaka, becomes your safe laboratory. It is a place where you can slow down this lightning-fast, reactive pattern and, with the gentle guidance of your therapist, begin to learn a new, more loving way of being together.
The journey begins with the pursuing partner learning a new and more gentle way to start a conversation. A top psychologist in Bangladesh from Mind to Heart will often teach the powerful “gentle start-up” skill from the Gottman Method. This is the art of starting a difficult conversation not with a criticism (“You always…”), but with a vulnerable sharing of your own feelings and a positive need. It is the shift from “You are so distant!” to “I am feeling really lonely and I miss you. I would love to find some time for us to just connect.” This is a profound and de-escalating invitation.
The work for the pursuer is also to learn to soothe their own attachment panic. A therapist will help you to recognize the physical signs of your own rising anxiety and will teach you grounding skills so that when your partner does need to take a break, you do not experience it as a catastrophic abandonment, but as a temporary and necessary pause.
For the withdrawing partner, the courageous work is about learning to stay present just a little bit longer. It is about learning to recognize the first signs of your own internal flooding, before it becomes a complete tsunami. A therapist will teach you the art of the respectful time-out. Instead of just disappearing into silence, you will learn to say the most powerful and connecting words a withdrawer can learn: “I am feeling completely overwhelmed right now, and I am afraid I am going to shut down or say something I will regret. I need to take a twenty-minute break to calm my own body down. But I promise you that I will come back to this conversation with you in twenty minutes.” This is a revolutionary act. It is an act of profound care for yourself and for your partner. You are not abandoning them; you are taking a responsible break so that you can show up for them in a better way.
As you both become more skilled at these de-escalation strategies, the deep and transformative heart of the therapy can begin. This is the work of a therapy like Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT). This is where your therapist, a guide like theTop Couples Therapist in Dhaka at Mind to Heart, will help you to have the vulnerable conversation that has been hiding underneath all your fights. They will create a safe space for the pursuer to express their raw fear of abandonment, and for the withdrawer to express their deep shame and fear of failure. And in this sacred space, you will have the opportunity to hear each other’s tender hearts, perhaps for the very first time, and to respond not with reactivity, but with a new and profound empathy. This is the moment a new, secure, and loving cycle is born.
The journey out of the silent treatment is a journey back to each other. It is a path of profound courage and of deep, abiding love. If you are looking for the Top Couples Therapist in Dhaka to be your guide on this journey, you are making the most hopeful and life-affirming choice for your marriage. Mind to Heart has the Top Couples Therapist in Dhaka. Our top online and offline counsellors are passionately dedicated to the evidence-based and heart-centered work of helping couples to break free from these painful, silent prisons. The best psychologist in Bangladesh at our clinic, a top counselling psychologist at Mind to Heart, will not be a judge of your conflict, but a compassionate and skilled translator for your hearts. Let the Top Couples Therapist in Dhaka at Mind to Heart help you to break the silence and to find your way back to the beautiful, connecting, and life-giving conversation of your love