The most common form of therapy today is often referred to as “talk therapy.” The client talks while the therapist listens then reflects and offers insights, tools, and guidance.
There is, indeed, a lot of talking happening.
While words are essential, I have found that it’s the space between the words where the greatest healing often happens. It’s when the client pauses, sometimes closes their eyes, and pays attention to the quiet beneath the words that a gem of wisdom rises up through the inner channel from the unconscious to consciousness.
When a client stops talking, there’s an impulse to speak, to rush to fill the gap. After all, isn’t the client here to receive my insights, which are communicated through words? Sometimes. Maybe. But mostly they’re here to receive their own soul, to learn to trust that the wisdom, clarity, and guidance they’re seeking exists within.
When we make room for silence. the wisdom of the soul emerges.
I don’t remember learning about the value of silence when I was in school for counseling. It was probably mentioned, but I doubt it was highlighted for we do place a very high premium on words (and, as therapists, an even higher premium on tears).
This is an oversight in training, for there is a cadence to sitting with a client, a musical rhythm between words and silence, and if we’re not guided to honor these spaces they can be easily missed.
There is an art and a skill to knowing when to speak and when to pause. When I listen closely to the silence – and it’s a listening that happens with my body and soul, not my ears – I am guided to speak when it’s time to speak and to continue to listen for what wants to emerge for the client in the next moment.
In therapy and in life, we are afraid of silence.
And yet, silence is where the soul hears its own quiet voice. This is not only in therapy, of course. In daily life if we don’t slow down enough to hear the soul tapping out its rhythm, we miss the subtle communications. It’s one of the greatest tragedies of our addiction to screens: the loss of silence and stillness, which is what happens when we turn to our screens to fill every empty space.
True fullness is birthed from emptiness.
True voice arises from silence.
When I walk without a device, I listen to windsong and birdsong. They speak the language of soul and when I listen to their songs, it’s easier to hear my own soul. But how easy it is to avoid subtle soul in this world of mass distraction!
That’s not to say that talking doesn’t have immense value. In case it’s not obvious: I am a great lover of words. That’s why I write and podcast and sit with others in sacred space. That’s why I love listening to audiobooks and talking to my friends while I walk. There is room for both words and silence, but in this increasingly loud world, the silence is harder and harder to find.
Alas, here I am sharing yet more words! My hope for you is that after you read them, you will put away your screen and allow yourself to dwell in your own silence. Be curious. Move toward whatever arises: grief, anxiety, boredom, loneliness. Trust that you have the capacity to meet whatever arises in the silence and that, no matter how briefly you meet your soul, you will have filled it with the sweet water of your attention.
Love this post. Silence is gold, so feminine, so subtle, and so mysterious, and it allows everything; it respects everything. So much wisdom behind.
Yes yes yes.
It took me some time, as someone who has been in psychotherapy for several years, to learn that it is not necessary to spend the entire session talking, specially my ordinary type of speech that is very rational. Initially, I had a somewhat utilitarian view, thinking, “I’m paying, so I have to talk about my problems in order to solve them.” But over time, I came to understand that the session was a space for other dimensions and parts to emerge, and that “resolution” is not as straightforward as I’ve thought initially. That doesn’t mean it’s easy, it is actually very hard.
Reading the blog post, I couldn’t help but remember that on the famous word association experiment that Jung developed, the key variable became the time between the word said by him and the response given by the person taking the test. In other term: the silence.
Jung and Freud exchanged richly on this aspect, as Freud was also researching free association. Silence and what is left unsaid (which I could say are matrices of discourse as much as words), were present in the theories that these two great names developed about the psique and the unconscious.
It is bad that such a fundamental aspect has been lost over time in some schools, because I imagine that every psychotherapist or counselor will face those elements in their practice.
There is so much wisdom in this comment, Marie. Thank you for sharing.
I certainly agree with this post. And I’ve long thought that (a) silence is undervalued in our culture, and (b) that most people probably talk too much!
Talking can be great, but it can also be very overrated. (I appreciate how strange this might sound, coming from someone who literally talks for a living.)
Yes to all!
I have been struggling with feeling overly sensitive, irritable but not angry lately. I’m taking a lot of what my partner says as judgement and reading into the tone of his voice. I hold onto the sadness and confusion of why I’m reacting that way for a long time.
When this happens I can feel in myself the words.. not good enough, not capable, not smart coming at me. He doesn’t say these things but it’s how I interpret it. I then spiral about us not getting along smoothly. Are these potentially intrusive thoughts or just my self esteem?
I always return to the importance of balance. Thank you for sharing!