Why Do Counsellors... Stay Silent? Understanding Silence in Counselling

Why do counsellors stay silent?

For many people coming to therapy for the first time, this can feel confusing. You may share something personal or emotional and notice that your counsellor does not immediately respond. The silence can feel uncomfortable, leaving you wondering whether you have said something wrong, whether the counsellor has lost interest, or whether they simply do not know what to say.

In reality, silence is often a deliberate and thoughtful part of the counselling process.

This blog is the first in a short series exploring some of the skills counsellors use in therapy. Many of these skills can appear unusual from the outside, especially if you have never experienced counselling before. Over the coming articles I will explore questions such as why counsellors stay silent, why counsellors ask clients to agree a contract, why counsellors reflect feelings rather than give advice, and why grounding techniques are sometimes used in therapy.

Understanding these skills can help make the counselling process feel less mysterious and more collaborative.

I think in the world of counselling and psychotherapy silence is one of the most underrated skills. I also think it is one of the most misunderstood skills and, for clients, possibly one of the most confusing. The term that we heard from Simon and Garfunkel was “Hello darkness, my old friend” in their song The Sound of Silence, and yet we are also told that “silence is golden”.

As one of the most unusual skills in counselling and psychotherapy, I often wonder how people, as therapists, experience silence and how they use silence in therapy. I believe it is an underrated skill; however, initially I found it an unusual skill to use, and it also made me think about what it was like for the person on the other end, for the client, to experience silence.

Do they experience it as disinterest? Do they experience it as confusion? As counsellors, do we explain silence as a way of allowing the client to sit with a phrase, a thought, or an emerging feeling, allowing that internal process to begin to grow?

I have recently been thinking about my own difficulty with silence as an individual, which has led me to reflect on what silence means within the therapeutic space. In counselling, silence is often described in the UK as an advanced skill.

I remember my own experiences of silence within therapy when I was in my early training. It felt like a clunky thing that I would put into a role play or into actual client work, and I always knew why I was doing it. Sometimes I felt it was appropriate, and sometimes I was quite literally ticking a box.

In this blog I want to explore how that understanding has changed, but also consider what silence might be like for clients.

Learning to Sit With Silence

In my early training, my understanding of silence was somewhat hit and miss, although. It was an opportunity to allow the client to sit with feelings and emotions. It always felt a little bit clunky, and perhaps that was reflective of the fact that I was not someone who found counselling, or silence within counselling, particularly therapeutic or beneficial.

My understanding was limited when I was training. I often thought that silence was a space that needed to be filled by wisdom, knowledge, or acknowledgement.

Silence seems to be such a rarefied commodity in an age where we experience a constant influx of noise and distraction. I wonder if we become more fearful of silence as we have grown or delved deeper into the digital age.

Reflecting on the skill of silence now, the ability to sit and be with the client, and not feel the need to fill any lack of speech with a piece of wisdom or a meaningful reflection, feels increasingly important. There can be something powerful about trusting that the process in silence can be illuminating for clients who are willing to explore their own feelings.

It can also be used as a prompt, allowing clients to divulge something a little more or dig a little deeper.

Silence in the Digital Space

During the COVID pandemic, when we moved online, this was a skill that I largely found more uncomfortable. I became acutely aware of the possibility that a client might think there was a problem with my internet connection.

I found myself filling spaces where silence might naturally begin to emerge or flourish with words and comments in order to ensure that the client still felt there was a connection.

Now I find myself trying to lean into that uncomfortableness, that fear of how silence might be for the client. Trying not to assume that the client will think the worst, but again trusting in the process.

Our Personal Relationship With Silence

Silence is still something that I find I avoid. I equally find myself uncomfortable with noise, and I can find myself bouncing between the two.

Noise that I have no control over, such as being in a shopping centre, can be very overstimulating for me. Equally, if I try to sit with no noise or distraction, I become very aware of my own racing thoughts. The ability to dampen down those thoughts and those racing diversions can, at times, feel more difficult.

Even as I write this, I have music on in the background. When I go out and walk my dog, I can be in nature, but I will often have something playing in my ear, perhaps a podcast. Pure silence is not something that I experience on a regular basis.

There are times when I enjoy sitting by a pond in nature without any artificial distraction and can simply enjoy the sound of the wind, a bird, or the splash and ripple in the water of a fish breaking the surface. This can feel illuminating and calming.

This also leads me to wonder how silence might feel from the client’s perspective.

What Might Silence Feel Like for Clients?

Do you ever wonder what silence means for clients?

Does it leave them in an uncomfortable space? How does a neurodivergent individual experience silence? Is it something they feel naturally comfortable with?

Would silence for someone with attention and hyperactivity differences (ADHD) feel overwhelming, leaving them feeling pressured to say something? Does it mean that what they are saying is boring? Does it leave clients feeling as though the therapist is uninterested?

These are important questions when we consider how silence is experienced within the therapeutic relationship.

What Is the Therapist Doing During Silence?

I have started to notice that, for me, when a silence naturally occurs, I am trying to get a real sense of the client’s experience. I am thinking about what they have previously told me, maybe what they have just said, considering their past, their experiences, and their culture, and how those things might inform their current situation.

At times it might be that I leave them with a phrase they have just said, because I feel it might be quite poignant and beneficial to allow them to consider what they have expressed.

Silence can sometimes be handled in a clunky way. If I interrupt the silence, I may break an internal process that the client is experiencing. This is where attending to the silence and the space becomes important: observing changes in the client’s posture, their breathing, and the micro expressions that might suggest something is shifting.

Here, a thoughtful intervention such as, “I’m wondering what you’re thinking in this moment,” might allow the client to open more.

Silence is not merely the absence of sound. It can also be, as Carl Rogers described, “a useful device.” However, Rogers also noted that this is only true when “fundamental rapport is good” (Rogers, 1942). When there is trust and connection within the therapeutic relationship, silence can allow space for reflection, emotional processing, and the emergence of thoughts that might otherwise remain unspoken.

Without that foundation of rapport, however, silence may feel confusing or unsettling for a client.

The change in me from a trainee to what I hope has become a more intuitive counsellor has come about through mistakes and choices I have made where, on reflection, I have noticed those mistakes.

It is such a nuanced skill that is dependent on the counsellor and the relationship with the client.

I noted a couple of years ago when I revisited skills training that the lectures on counselling skills, presentations on empathy, paraphrasing, reflection, and silence, had something interesting about them. The presentation on silence was the longest one.

There was more to say about the unspoken skills than the spoken ones.

Silence can sometimes help the building of empathy and, in itself, be an empathic response that furthers the therapeutic relationship.

“Sometimes staying silent may be more responsive and empathic than an intrusive reflection.”
(BACP, 2022)

Silence in a Noisy World

Perhaps this is where the real value of silence in therapy begins to reveal itself.

Silence is a deeply relational experience where words do not always need to punctuate what is happening. Instead, silence can allow an unseen internal process to begin to take place.

In this modern world of noise and distraction, the helpful benefit of therapeutic silence grounded in respect, congruence, and empathy can validate and allow that internal process, which may previously have been suppressed or avoided, to come forward without the pressures, fears of judgement, or uncertainty.

Perhaps silence in therapy is not a sign that nothing is happening at all. Sometimes it is the very moment when something important is beginning to emerge.

References

Rogers, C. (1942). Counselling and Psychotherapy. Houghton Mifflin.

British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP). (2022). Good Practice in Action.

Counselling Tutor. (n.d.). Silence in counselling.
https://counsellingtutor.com/basic-counselling-skills/silence/

 

Sincerely Yours, Paul

Transparency notice:
This post was developed with the assistance of AI and carefully reviewed, edited, and approved by the author.