Part III: How to Take an Adult Timeout

Part III: How to Take an Adult Time-out

05/12/2013 Elizabeth Nyblade, Ph.D.

Continued from Part II

The abuser is in a time-out from you when you can no longer hear, see or pay attention to the abuser. Your goal is to take a time-out as rapidly and as consistently as possible when your partner says something that is verbally or emotionally abusive.

Steps to Take an Adult Time-out:

A Level-1 Time-out Consists of Leaving the Conversation. If the two of you are at home together, begin by turning your face away. Go out of the room and go about your business somewhere else in the house. If he tries to follow you, lock the door and turn on loud music or the TV so that you can’t hear him anymore. If you can’t block him from following you, put on earphones and tap into your iPod. Your goal is to take your attention somewhere else and to make him aware that you are not thinking about him or attending to his words. You have ended the abuse by ending your attention to the abuse. If the abuser breaks down the door or snatches the earphones out of your ears, then you are dealing with a batterer, not someone who is only a verbal abuser. If he demands attention by physically inserting himself into your space against your will, you are dealing with someone prepared to use physical force to hold on to you as an audience and a target. You are not safe with that person. Read about battering and talk to local resources for battered women. Get ready to call the police if he violates your state law and commits domestic violence. If you are on the phone with the abuser when he starts to verbally abuse you, first warn him, then hang up.
● Target: If you want to talk to me, lower your voice and don’t call me names. Otherwise, I’m hanging up.
● Target: I’m through with this conversation. Call back when you can talk without calling me names.
● Target: We can talk again when you aren’t drunk. Goodbye.
If the abuser will accept a timeout in the same space as you, that is, if he will let you go about your business without following you, then you have solved the problem for the moment. If the abuser promises to leave you alone in the house, you can believe him once, but if he doesn’t leave you alone after promising, even one time, don’t offer him the opportunity to promise again. Just leave. Exit all conversations when he gets abusive and you will train him not to call you names and not to get obnoxious. If you treat your companionship and your attention as privileges, he will recognize that he has to earn them by good behavior.

If the abuser continues to shout at you through the door, follows too closely to lock him out of your room, or manages to keep your attention, then you need to take a Level II timeout, by leaving the house. Tell your partner where you’re going and how long you’ll be there, then leave.

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Don’t answer a phone call or talk to him until you have returned to the house. If he sits down next to you in the booth at Denny’s or interrupts your timeout in some other way, let him know that if you ever have to give him a timeout again, you won’t tell him where you’re going.
If you drive somewhere and he tries to follow you, drive to a police station and ask the police to speak to him while you drive away out of sight. You should tell the abuser how long he’ll be in timeout so he understands how long the ‘punishment’ will last.
Open-ended timeouts and open-ended punishments don’t work. They cause unrelated anxiety. You are trying to give a specific duration of punishment related to the size of the offense. If you’re forced to leave the house for a timeout, two hours is a good starting time to stay gone.
If he doesn’t own the house and you do, or if his name is not on the lease, tell him to leave for at least that amount of time. Your company includes the use of your house, so you can forbid him the use of it while the timeout is occurring.
Avoid the situation that you often see parents getting into, namely, threatening a timeout then renegotiating and renegotiating until the child has had ten times as much attention just for misbehaving as he would have had if you hadn’t threatened the timeout.
Don’t ever threaten to leave more than once. If you threaten once and the behavior you’re objecting to doesn’t stop, leave immediately.
During your timeout, take the time to sort through your wishes and your needs and be prepared to promise (not threaten) what you will do in the future.

01
Why Take an Adult Timeout?
A timeout for an adult is meant to accomplish the same goals as a timeout for a child. You can only be in control of yourself.

02
When Not to Take an Adult Timeout.
It is possible to abuse someone by withdrawing from them just as it is possible to abuse someone by approaching them and calling them names.

03
How to Take an Adult Timeout?
The abuser is in a timeout from you when you can no longer hear, see or pay attention to the abuser.

Part III: How to Take an Adult Time-out

Part III: How to Take an Adult Time-out

Steps to Take an Adult Time-out:

A Level II Time-out Consists of Leaving the House.

Verbal Abuse:

Why Take an Adult Timeout?

When Not to Take an Adult Timeout.

How to Take an Adult Timeout?