In my Counseling Theory & Practice class for undergraduate psychology students, the first skills practice session focuses on the reflection of feelings. As such, many of the guidelines for this session spotlight what to say and how to say it. For example, I provide students with a list of “feeling” words to add to their reservoir of words to accurately identify the intensity of emotions communicated by another person.
Given the emphasis on what emerges out of the mouth (i.e., verbals), it is a notable moment in class when we get to the concept of silence as a valuable counseling skill. In contrast to the other skills, this way of connecting with another person requires an omission – an omission of words. To demonstrate how challenging it is to be silent in the middle of a conversation, especially in our cultural context, I abruptly stop talking while lecturing, without warning. It is striking to observe the students’ response to the few seconds of lull in the conversation – the nervous smiles and averted eyes give away their discomfort.
As I was further reflecting on the topic of silence in the counseling room, it occurred to me that there are some natural extensions of the clinical skill to other areas of life, such as the classroom (how might silence facilitate my interpersonal bond with students?). Moreover, silence has its merits, but it also comes with challenges. Clara E. Hill, Barbara J. Thompson, and Nicholas Ladany1 explored therapists’ perspectives regarding the use of silence in counseling, including the positives and negatives of using it. In this blog post, I wish to extend some of the findings from this study to reflect on the rewards and perils of silence in classroom conversations, with some examples from my own teaching. Additionally, I will provide a brief connection between the lessons learned in counseling and making sense of God’s silence.
First, when might silence help?
A salient finding is that silence can facilitate the processing of emotions. A masterful therapist will effectively pause to provide the client with space to think through their complicated emotions. Extending this to the classroom, I can think of many times when students disclosed an emotional experience to me. A few moments of silence, in response to the intensity of what has been shared, can assist the student further make sense of their feelings.
Related, silence is effectively used to communicate empathy. In various settings with students, I have relied on silence to convey empathy for challenging experiences. I recall a particularly distressing moment, many years ago, when I had to talk to my students following a campus shooting that occurred at my university. During this time of communal pain, I found that the most powerful communication tool at my disposal was to sit with the pain alongside my students, to use silence as an opportunity to lift up prayers to God communally, and to resist the temptation to fill the space with words that could not adequately capture our shared trauma.
But the effective use of silence as an empathy tool does not have to be confined to dramatic events. As professors, we regularly hear from students about unexpected setbacks and painful experiences in the lives of our students. I must confess that I am not always able to respond to these moments with the compassionate response for which they might call. But the lesson of silence in counseling is that there is much to be gained when we pause a few moments before responding. In doing so, we might allow silence to help us live into the biblical truth of grieving with those who are hurting (Romans 12:15).
But when might silence as a communication tool go awry?
When silence is used to disengage or disconnect, whether intended or not, it can lead to unfavorable outcomes. Put another way, sometimes silence is motivated by a desire to avoid.
Some time ago, during a class discussion, a student asked a question in class that came across to me as a statement closer to a personal attack. In that moment of scrambling to make sense of what had just occurred, I found myself at a loss for any kind of meaningful response, and it resulted in a few seconds of silence. Following those moments, I managed to redirect the student’s question to the larger class. In looking back at the interaction and how I ended up utilizing silence in that interaction, I Would describe it as an avoidance of a difficult dialogue. I wonder if I adequately served my students, including that particular student, on that day.
Here is another example, this time stretching the idea of silence a bit: when I choose not to address certain topics or events in class. That is, my “silence” about a specific topic (e.g., not covering a chapter in the textbook, not addressing a current event in class), no matter what the intention might be, can be construed differently by students, shaped by their own perspectives and passions. In particular, students sometimes perceive my silence as disengagement, invalidation, or minimalization. Why did you assign chapter X, but not chapter Y? Why did you take time in class to pray about this, but not about that? Of course, it is difficult to speak up on every single topic or teach every single chapter from the textbook, but for the purposes of this blog post, I simply want to assert that when students perceive this type of silence, there is a chance of the silence leading to a misunderstanding on the part of the students – namely, that I am avoiding or disconnecting. Awareness of this possibility can help me to recognize when it does happen, and to take corrective steps to address the misunderstanding (e.g., “Actually, these are the reasons I did not assign this chapter…”) or to ask for forgiveness for an oversight, whether intended or not (e.g., “I am sorry for not bringing this up the other day…”).
And finally, my musings on the connection between silence in counseling and God’s silence require me to briefly return to the earlier study by Clara Hill and colleagues. What is notable among the surveyed therapists in that study is that they described their silence as an active process. That is, when they utilized silence in counseling, therapists reported an internal process that was cognitively and emotionally involved, such as scanning the response of the client to the silence, reflecting on the therapy process, and so on. And all of this is for the benefit of the client. In other words, the use of silence in counseling is an incredibly deliberate one. Much is happening “behind the scenes,” and its use is driven by a desire to serve the client well.
Extending this notion of silence being an active process, I think about my Christian journey and how absurdly easy it is for me to conclude that God is passively silent – especially when the valleys of life seem without end. God, why are you so silent, is an exasperated prayer of what has come out of my mouth and heart so many times, and a prayer that some of you reading this blog might be able to relate to. The multifaceted lesson of silence in counseling gives me comfort by reminding me that when God is silent, he is not passive, detached, or lacking in love; Like the counselor who is constantly monitoring and making micro or macro adjustments for the benefit of the client, God, in his perfect and loving way—and to a far greater extent than the counselor—is orchestrating all things. Even if I am unable to decipher the why or what of my circumstances, I can better understand that the silence of God is not the same as the absence of God.
Footnotes
- Clara E. Hill, Barbara J. Thompson, and Nicholas Ladany. “Therapist Use of Silence in Therapy: A Survey.” Journal of Clinical Psychology 59, no. 4 (April 2003): 513–24. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.10155.
