Relationshop > Brown’s Dictionary > Kitchen Sinking

kitchen sinking

an original definition by J. E. Brown

kitchen sinking

behavior.

1. A tactic of verbal fighting. A technique for delivering concentrated criticism and rapid-fire nitpicking. {Source: “Kitchen Sinking” by J. E. Brown.}
2. Reciting a “laundry list” of complaints during a disagreement or while delivering a scolding or reprimand.
3. Rapidly changing the subject during a disagreement, to create a list of the listener’s alleged faults, bad points, and offenses, even (or especially) those old complaints which occurred in the distant past but were not the cause or trigger of the complainer’s present bad mood. Failing to focus on the problem, because the goal of the complainer is not to fix the problem, but to air a list of grievances, for the purpose of communicating the complainer’s belief that the situation is hopeless.
   Examples: The rambling 30-minute chew-out.

Kitchen Sinking is uncontrolled motor-mouthing, with the only goal being to make one’s opponent look worse, to prove that one’s opponent is lazy or selfish or incompetent or ineffective, with no minimum standard for relevance and accuracy of the evidence cited. Kitchen Sinking is fighting dirty, in the sense of hurting the opponent’s feelings instead of hurting his case. {Source: “Kitchen Sinking” by J. E. Brown.}

Comparative Definitions:

Kitchen Sinking is one of many tactics (including the Context Defense, Gaslighting, and Gossip) in which the offender takes the attitude “I believe in widening the scope/context and adding unrelated information whenever it makes me look good or makes you look bad.”

Kitchen Sinking vs. Gossip: If you list all of your spouse’s or child’s bad points to a third person, that’s gossip. But if you recite a list of your spouse’s or child’s bad points back to your spouse or child as accusations, that’s kitchen sinking.

Kitchen Sinking vs. Mind Games: In a Mind Game, the victim is told “Ah, if only you had done one thing differently, everything would have worked out.” But in Kitchen Sinking, the message is “Everything is a mess and nothing you can do will fix it.” The complainer adopts the position that “You Can Do No Right. You should have done everything differently.”

Kitchen Sinking vs. Nagging: If offenders limit their kitchen sinking to the occasions of fights, that’s kitchen sinking. But if they turn complaining into a lifestyle, a thing done casually, nitpicking round the clock without waiting for anger to set them off, that’s nagging.

Kitchen Sinking vs. Outtalking: In a kitchen-sink fight, one or both parties may kitchen-sink; whether one partner is loud or both are loud, the term “kitchen-sink fight” applies in both situations. In cases where only one partner is using the KS weapon to bash the other partner into silence, the additional labels “learned helplessness” and “outtalking” apply.

Kitchen Sinking vs. Ranting: Ranting is similar to Gossiping. Ranting is Kitchen Sinking about a third person who is not present; in particular, ranting is complaining to an audience who neither needs nor wants nor cares about the information. (This is not necessarily the ranter’s fault — sometimes the audience adopts an attitude and decides not to be moved. So a diagnosis of “ranting” is not an objective characteristic of a speech behavior, but takes the audience’s unreceptiveness into account.) {Source: “Kitchen Sinking” by J. E. Brown.}

Kitchen Sinking vs. Single Complaints: A single off-topic dig might be excused; but if the complainer gives in to the urge to keep talking, and continues to hurl unrelated examples whose only purpose is to prove that the defendant lacks character, then the complainer is clearly kitchen-sinking. Two or more off-topic accusations prove kitchen-sinking; one occurrence is not a pattern.

Synonyms:

• laundry list of complaints; taking someone’s inventory.

Antonyms:

• apologizing; forgiveness; respect; Unconditional Positive Regard.

Related Concepts:

accusations, counter-accusations; arguing, fighting; attacking from all sides; Bad Boss Syndrome, criticizes easily; baffle, bewilder, boggle; bare weapons; boundaries; changing the subject to the past, changing the subject to anything other than the present issue; character assassination; the Context Defense; open disrespect; fault-finding; gossip; holding something over someone’s head, never letting someone live an error down; lack of inhibitions, loss of inhibitions; learned helplessness; nagging; nit-picking; off-topic, therefore uncalled-for; outtalking [someone]; overwhelming [someone]; perplex; rambling; ranting; talking down to people; topic jumping; trivial complaints; unfair fighting; verbal abuse; You Can Do No Right (YCDNR).

whataboutism: a habit or tendency to answer any charge with “Well, what about what YOU did?”

Etymology:

From the English idiom “everything but the kitchen sink”, meaning a hodge-podge, a random assortment or collection, unlimited by type.

The term “kitchen sinking” appeared in relationship counseling contexts by 1973 and went viral by the 1980s, according to Google Ngrams . The term “kitchen sink fight” seems to have first appeared in George Robert Bach & Peter Wyden’s book The Intimate Enemy: How to Fight Fair in Love and Marriage (1969).