On Silence

On Silence
There's a moment that happens in therapy, usually early on, when the conversation pauses and both people sit with it. For most new patients, this is uncomfortable. The silence feels like a problem to be solved, a gap to be filled, evidence that something has gone wrong. People apologize for it. They rush to fill it with whatever comes next, even if what comes next isn't quite what they meant to say.

I've come to think of silence as one of the most valuable things that can happen in a session.

This runs against most people's experience of conversation, where silence signals awkwardness or disconnection. In ordinary social life, we're trained to keep things moving, to rescue each other from the quiet. Therapy asks something different. It asks you to stay with what just happened — to let it land, to feel its weight, to notice what arises in the space before the next thought.

What arises is often surprising. Sometimes it's an emotion that was just below the surface of the words. Sometimes it's a memory, or an image, or a bodily sensation that wouldn't have had room to surface if the talking had continued. Sometimes it's simply the recognition of how much has just been said, and how much it cost to say it. The silence after something true has been spoken has a particular quality — dense, clarifying, almost palpable. It deserves to be honored rather than hurried past.

Winnicott wrote about the capacity to be alone in the presence of another — the developmental achievement of being able to exist quietly alongside someone without needing to perform or produce. For many people, therapy is one of the few places where this becomes possible. Not because the therapist is absent, but because they're present in a particular way: not waiting to respond, not filling the space with reassurance, just accompanying. Bearing witness, without demand.

This kind of silence is anything but empty. It's a medium, like speech. Things move in it. Understanding forms. The body sometimes knows something in a silence that the mind hasn't caught up to yet.

Not all silences in therapy are productive. Some are defended — a patient going quiet because something feels too dangerous to approach, or because the relationship doesn't yet feel safe enough to go further. A good therapist can usually sense the difference, and knows when to wait and when to gently open a door. The work isn't to sit in silence for its own sake, but to be willing to let it be there when it's doing something.
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What I try to offer is a room where silence isn't a problem. Where you don't have to fill every moment with words. Where what goes unsaid is as welcome as what gets said — because sometimes the most important thing is the one that hasn't found its way to language yet, and it needs a little quiet to get there.

About the Author: Andrew Bertell is a licensed clinical social worker with over 15 years of experience in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. He practices in Ashland, Oregon and works with adults and young adults via telehealth throughout Oregon, Maryland, New York, and Idaho.