Kitchen Sinking
When someone throws up the past, throwing everything in but the kitchen sink, there will be trouble
Are you familiar with term “kitchen sinking”?
This is a fairly common communication pattern intended to stack the deck against you and in favor of someone else. You might find yourself in the midst of a simple disagreement when your partner throws everything at you “ but the kitchen sink”.
A long laundry list of past grievances is rattled off - reminding you of all the times you fell short, didn’t meet expectations, when you caused emotional pain.
To be sure, kitchen sinking, will overwhelm you quickly. You will become so confused as you try to cognitively process past conflicts and how you resolved them, while trying to stay focused on the present disagreement. In short order, it will feel like every mistake you ever made is piled sky high. Your nervous system will be flooded.
The kitchen sink is full of dirty laundry and an assortment of stuff that got swept under the rug. The flooding is not from hot soapy water, but from a highly reactive nervous system and the inability to process all that is coming at you like a firehose.
Very recently, both John and Julie Gottman along with Charles Duhigg are bringing greater awareness to the problematic effects of kitchen sinking. The Gottmans, best known for their couples therapy work, see this destructive communication pattern quite often in marriages. It becomes the foundation for a continual losing battle. One small disagreement that should be easily resolved, devolves into too much, too fast. The partner who is on the receiving end of kitchen sinking, soon feels like they are drowning and defeated. No one wins when kitchen sinking is the last resort.
Charles Duhigg, the author of Supercommunicator, points out that kitchen sinking even shows us in friendships and the workplace. It will feel like you are working with people who hold grudges for a long time; or who are unwilling to let bygones be bygones. They will forever remind you of your shortcomings, while forgetting their own.
Baked into kitchen sinking is fundamental attribution error. This is when we hold others to a far higher standard than our own. We attribute mistakes that others make as who they are fundamentally. We are prone to say “you always or you never”. But when we mess things up, we chalk it up to a one-off. It is no big deal and we hope others will forgive us and get over it fast.
There is another integral attribute in the kitchen sinking communication pattern. It is meaningful conflict resolution. It is understandable that not all conflicts will be easy to get over. It takes time to rebuild trust.
How often do we experience situations where we are implored to get over it and move on? Easier said than done. Healing from our emotional and experiential disappointments takes time. We may feel bruised and vulnerable for quite a while. It is important to acknowledge this and take some ownership for our part in hurting others. A keen awareness that emotional healing takes tender love care and some time will go a long way. Why is it that we recognize this so readily with a physical bruise or laceration, but easily overlook emotional pain and recovery?
Kitchen sinking reveals a lot about the person who is prone to use this strategy to win an argument. What has been left unprocessed that they keep bringing up?
If there is something that happened two years ago and you thought it was resolved amicably, why does it keep resurfacing? What has been bottled up for too long? It could be resentment. It could also be that there is room for improvement with rupture and repair.
If couples, friends and work colleagues are not good at rupture and repair, there will be cracks in the relationships. The best apology is changed behavior. If people are prone to say “sorry” a lot but never change their behaviors, it becomes a breeding ground for that long list of past mistakes.
Dr. Dan Siegel and Dr. Becky Kennedy have spent decades teaching us that ruptures in our relationships are bound to happen, that they are normal. What we need to get better at is fixing those ruptures with superglue and not band-aid patch ups. The repair work is where we build stronger trust and consistency.
Repair is not just uttering “I’m sorry” or “my bad”. It is taking ownership for how we showed up, the confusion we caused, the emotional pain we inflicted, and making genuine, committed repairs.
Accountability and an apology that comes with a change in patterns of behavior, in our reactivity and unchecked emotionality — is a big step in the right direction to avoid kitchen sinking.
Pay close attention to how you are feeling after conflicts. How do you feel when someone sweeps things under the carpet? When someone tells you that disagreement was not a big deal, but you are still reeling from it — what do you need in order to regain trust?
Our patterns of behavior - especially in relationship conflicts - are often the root cause of repetitive battles over the same subject. They can lead to kitchen sinking and a lot of lumps under the carpet where you sweep unresolved conflicts.
We can’t keep bringing up the past if we are going to build healthy, trusting and secure relationships with each other. We can start by getting better at having hard conversations, by listening to understand and by attending to each other through the emotional healing after conflicts.
Take seriously the repair work that comes after ruptures. If you find yourself patching up the same problems over and over, what behavioral patterns and knee jerk emotional reactions are showing up on repeat?
Remember that real apologies come with a commitment to do better the next time. Ask for help from your partner, friend or co-worker to help you recognize the opportunity to practice changed behavior in the heat of the moment. This is how we break old patterns and habits. It takes time, self-awareness and often being called out on it in real time.
Be sure to check out Esther Perel, John & Julie Gottman and Charles Duhigg on Instagram and YouTube to learn more about Kitchen sinking.