Stonewalling

Stonewalling is a refusal to communicate or cooperate. Such behaviour occurs in situations such as interpersonal relationships, marriage counselling, diplomatic negotiations, politics and legal cases. Body language may indicate and reinforce this by avoiding contact and engagement with the other party. People use deflection in a conversation in order to render a conversation pointless and insignificant. Tactics in stonewalling include giving sparse, vague responses; refusing to answer questions; and responding to questions with additional questions. Stonewalling can be used as a stalling tactic rather than an avoidance tactic. In the original definition by John Gottman, in interpersonal relationships, it is an involuntary physiological condition where one's nervous system shuts down in response to being flooded, and it is part of the pursuer-withdrawer, or criticism-stonewalling cycle.