Quote:
Originally Posted by ListenMoreTalkLess
This has been a valuable experience for me as well. But I think how much is too much silence and what is respectful patience if someone is working towards saying something is not a universal thing.
I explained my general discomfort with silence as it related to my history-- I felt that silence was used against me to enhance my anxiety and for an abuser to gather his resources to attack. I asked my T to break the silence more quickly than she had been, and she was happy to accommodate.
Like many things in therapy, it can be very helpful to communicate about the thing. For me it helped illuminate what I believed about silence, and helped me bring the past into consciousness in a way that I could play with it. Sometimes I even "shoosh" my T if she breaks the silence too quickly now.
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Silence was used against me to build anxiety, too. It's still sometimes hard for me to handle with T, but I am learning that sometimes our silent times can be caring, not fear-inducing.
My T rarely guides me and it has been the source of much consternation for me, but I've grown to appreciate the fact that I get to choose what we speak about, and how much. There are a lot of silent stuck times, though.