Making Use of Silence in Therapy
“I don’t want a therapist who just sits there and says nothing.”
I hear you, prospective client. I have heard this desire many times.
I had that therapist. Long, long ago, before I understood that different therapists are grounded in different theories, my ex and I went to a therapist who I now understand was fairly traditionally psychoanalytic. We attended sessions with him for years.
I recall very little from those years with that therapist, though one session stands out. My ex and I described a conflict we’d had that week, and the therapist observed that my ex, having acted like a child, put me in the position of having to take on the role of “mother.” I think I remember this because 1) the therapist was squarely on my side, which was totally validating, and 2) his interpretation probably took him three sentences to fully flesh out. Three full sentences. On better days, out in the world, my ex and I would sometimes jokingly respond to events around us with a contemplative “Huh,” which we picked up from our therapist. It was his most comment response to anything we told him.
My ex and I obviously split up, which I’m grateful for. But it took far too long for us to get there, and when we did, it really wasn’t because of anything we worked through in therapy. Therapists should not tell people what to do, but I wish ours had been more active, more able to reframe and restate, more able to offer observations to help us see ourselves through a more objective lens. I wish he’d talked more.
Actually, back up. I kind of do wish that couple therapist had told me what to do. Something like: “Run! Run fast, run far! Don’t look back!”
That said, I know that either 1) people generally don’t like being told what to do (particularly with relationships) and/or 2) people generally don’t do what you tell them to do…unless they’re ready to do that thing.
But there is some sweet spot between “Huh” and “Run fast, run far!” And this, as a therapist, is often what I struggle to find, and I typically feel that struggle in the silence of the therapy room.
We — in our Western society — are not fans of silence. Clients often tell me they long for peace and quiet, but they don’t know how to achieve that. Or if they do, they don’t know what to do with it. We are not used to being alone with our own thoughts and feelings, so when we find ourselves in that situation, it is uncomfortable. We feel like we should be doing something, preferably something productive. For others, the fear is that thoughts and feelings will lead them into a spiral of anxiety or depression. And to ward off that fear, they drink or gamble or spend too much or work too much or ingest endless hours of media.
It is not surprising, then, that when some clients come into therapy and a silence opens up, they feel uncomfortable at best, and threatened at worst. I can feel when someone becomes anxious in the silence; I feel it in the form of pressure to say something…anything. And then I start to feel anxious and either fight to remain silent or succumb say something…anything…just to bring the anxiety in the room down.
I heard Jonathan Shedler once say that when prospective clients ask him, “How does this [therapy] work?” or “How do you work with clients?” he responds with: “You talk, I listen, and when I have something useful to say, I’ll say it.”
I love that. I want to live by that. I have totally stolen that when I talk to potential clients. The tricky bit is guessing, in this moment, what might be useful to say and what might not.
The specter of the silent, stoic therapist arose from classic psychoanalysis, wherein the therapist sits in a chair, out of sight of the client on the couch, muttering “Huh” or “Hmm” (or falls asleep, who knows!) while the client free-associates for forty-five minutes. This is not Freudian, by the way, not in the strictest sense. Very often what has become dogma in psychoanalysis bears only a vague resemblance to how Freud actually worked IRL. Freud could be pretty chatty, as it turns out.
But I digress.
My experience with my taciturn couple therapist was 20 years ago, and while I believe that type of therapist is harder to find these days, I know they still exist. I also understand that when a prospective client tells me, “My last therapist never said anything” what they sometimes mean is “My therapist allowed for silences and I couldn’t bear it.”
How, then, should we think about silence in the therapeutic space?
Well, to add on to Shedler, “You talk, I listen, and when I have something useful to say, I’ll say it. And when it feels like silence will be more useful for us, I will probably stay silent. Maybe you will, too.”
What I’ve actually said to new clients goes something like this: “Sometimes silence emerges between us, but don’t mistake silence for ‘nothing’s happening.’ Think of silence as an opportunity. Silence allows us to think deeply together, often about what one of us has just said. It allows us to sit with a feeling that might come up for you that maybe neither of us can make sense of yet. Silence allows us to learn each other’s’ non-verbal signals, to read each other’s expressions, to find connection without words. Quite the opposite of ‘nothing happening,’ so much can happen in the space of silence, if we allow it.”
A few clients get this right off the mark, but most of us have to learn how to make use of silence. So what of those clients who get anxious in the silence? Well, being able to tolerate some anxiety is a great goal. It’s also one of those things therapists say that might be met with a reasonable “Fuck you.”
Silence should never be used by the therapist alone. It shouldn’t be torture. It shouldn’t be dogma.
I’m actually pretty active in the therapy room. I once had a (somewhat dogmatic) consultant encourage me not to talk so much with a client, that understanding grows in the silence. I argued that understanding can arise in conversation between two people. I don’t believe there is only one way to achieve understanding.
Admittedly, I am sometimes too yakky. My “something, anything” usually comes out in the form of getting overly explain-y about some psychological theory or about the way the brain works. On good days, I notice that my client hasn’t said anything in several minutes, and I verbally acknowledge my brief spell of logorrhea. I almost never regret reining myself in so that a useful silence can settle in. And if I sense too much anxiety coming from my client, of course, I will talk. What I usually say is, “It’s hard sometimes to sit in silence, isn’t it?” And that opens up a door to exploration.
That is how we should think of silence when it comes to us in therapy — as a place to explore, a place to play, a place to connect, and even a place to find the peace and quiet we lack in the outside world.