This week we discussed the use of silence in counselling, how it can be used and what it could represent.
Silence is defined as the complete absence of sound.
Silence in counselling is harder to specifically pin down in a concise and succinct sentence. Silence can be used by a counsellor to demonstrate patience; it can also show their anticipation of additional information or further response from a client. When used with attentiveness and appropriate eye contact, it encourages further responses and conveys unconditional positive regard on the part of the counsellor.
From what we discussed in class, the negative aspects of silence in counselling all seem to revolve around uncomfortable silences and the awkwardness of how people feel when no-one is talking in a situation (counselling) where talking to the other person in the room is the central aspect. Some clients could feel like the counsellor isn’t doing their job properly if they are just sat there nodding, but I feel a good counsellor should be able to read a situation such as that and not be so laissez-faire as to let the client think they are just sitting there nodding.
The positive aspects of silence in counselling however, are numerous and diverse. A counsellor could refrain from talking to “keep the ball in the client’s court”, so to speak. Personally, when I had therapy I noticed when the therapist used silence as a tool. After I had said something, sometimes they would stay silent rather than asking me another question as if to suggest they knew I had more to say. And I felt I had to fill that silence, so I expanded on my last statement. Whether she used silence to this end purposefully or whether she was just weighing up what to say next, I don’t know. But regardless, in that context I felt I had to fill the silence by elaborating on my last point.
A counsellor could refrain from talking if they see that the client is thinking. This can be beneficial in that sometimes in life, we never really get to sit and think about something in particular. In this particular case, if a counsellor displays that they are comfortable in allowing the client the time to think, it may make the client feel more comfortable in sitting in silence. The counsellor’s sensitivity to the current situation in which the client needs time to think empowers the client with the time and safe space to dive deep inside themselves and explore their thoughts and feelings, reflecting on what has been said so far, or maybe having an epiphany. This is related to a nice little heuristic I have learned from studying body language which I have found mostly rings true in real life. If a person is looking up, they are visually imagining something or trying to remember an experience. If a person has lost focus and is staring forward, they are having a conversation with themselves or mentally processing what you have just said. If the person is looking down, they are reliving or experiencing deep emotions.
Sometimes a client could be silent for a while, looking up, looking down, and then suddenly looking at the counsellor with an expression on their face which indicates they have come to a stop. At this point it could go a number of ways. A counsellor could straight up ask what the client was thinking, or comment on the fact that they noticed the client was thinking deeply; these invite reflection on the silence by the client. A counsellor could also use immediacy and say something like “I feel like you are looking to me to say something now”, which would switch it back around and allow the client to take the lead.
Silence could also be used by a client to cool down from intense emotions that have been brought to the surface, or to centre themselves after an epiphany. In either of these last cases, the counsellor should intuit why the client is silent and honour it; allow the silence to last as long as the client needs it to. A key lesson here is to learn to be comfortable in silence.
