Let us say you were at a party and were having a great conversation with a person and all of sudden or gradually the conversation stopped and there is a lull between you.
You may feel ooh I have to say something but it is also just as plausible the other person is feeling the same. But let us say, you were comfortable feeling quiet maybe you like quietness and the other person is going crazy inside like say something or should I or vice versa.
You see both people are affected by the silence or not. But the silence is real.
Now you are in therapy and you are filling the silence. And it is never the job of therapist to fill the silence. The therapist must be comfortable in any situation. The reason this is because let us say you grew up where you were left alone for a long periods of time or you were ignored so much as a child that you find silence unbearable, then most likely you will bring this to the therapist. So the therapist should not be mixing what you bring but understand. It is like you are watching monkeys in their natural habitat to make a research, you would most likely not interfere with their daily lives right so you are not interfering. Otherwise, it would no longer be natural habitat but a habitat being interfered by the researcher! (I just watched Jane Goodall’s doc on Netflix). (-: quite interesting. So I borrow her life to illustrate yours.
So if you are sitting in silence is making you uncomfortable that is good. You are acknowledging a feeling now the next thing to do is say to the therapist, I feel uncomfortable in silence and then she or he may ask you tell me more and a conversation in born. If you are feeling truly more uncomfortable saying even that….acknowledge that especially in your body, where the discomfort sits, because this means it is from the past not from the therapist. Cause guess what? If you cannot say that in therapy, where else in the world can you say that? So it is a fundamental wound that needs to be bring up in the surface for real dissection with a therapist.
Of course you can always leave this therapist but that silence, the ability not to say its name in front of another person, the discomfort of expressing a feeling that you have, they all follow you to the next therapist. The difference is you may eventually meet a therapist that “fixes” this for you. Who fills up the space for you, who can tell you your feeling to you, who just as what happened in the past as a child, overrides your own self agency, and you may feel a relief, just like you did in the past as a child, but you do not change or learn to live through discomfort enough to say: This silence is deafening and why is it happening to me? And find the meaning behind it and move past it so you are not like you used to be in the past. You open a new door. It is scary! It is unknown. You could never say a feeling to another person. There are many repercussions in this like humiliation and fear and laughter and attack or ignoring. But, the beauty of therapy is this is the only place in the world you are allowed to test the water. You may feel a bam of negative feeling because this is your natural tendencies and THEN RIGHT AWAY REALIZE wow that was all me. The therapist is concerned for me and not laughing or telling me to shut up and sit there or ignoring me etc whatever else that may happened. And boom you are learning there is no fear here! That was so yesterday but your body carries it.
