What happens when the room goes quiet?
Not just for your client. For the session.
Do you notice yourself leaning forward, searching for the next question?
Do you become aware of an awkward feeling in the room?
Do you find yourself staring at the client... or somewhere else... waiting for someone to break the silence?
Do you begin speaking before you've fully decided why?
If you slow the moment down, you'll often notice that the silence isn't empty at all. It quietly shifts what you're aware of.
Without realizing it, your attention can begin moving away from understanding the client's experience and toward your own experience.
You become more aware of your thoughts. Your body language. Your discomfort. Your urge to do something.
Before filling the silence, it may be worth asking another question: What's contributing to my experience right now? Am I worried the client expects me to speak? Am I trying to reduce my own discomfort? Am I concerned this silence reflects poorly on me as a clinician?
Or it could be that something important is still unfolding and simply needs more time.
Silence isn't the absence of therapeutic work. Often, it's where some of the deepest work begins.
A client may be organizing thoughts they've never spoken aloud.
They may be recognizing an emotion for the first time.
They may be deciding whether it feels safe enough to tell you what comes next.
Or they may simply be allowing themselves the time to fully experience something.
These moments rarely look dramatic from the outside. Sometimes they look like... nothing at all.
But internally, they can represent some of the most meaningful work of the session.
When we rush to fill the silence, we may unintentionally interrupt a process that's still unfolding.
As we begin to recognize what silence can offer the client, it becomes a little easier to stop experiencing it as an evaluation of ourselves.
The next time you notice the urge to speak, pause and ask yourself one question: Who am I speaking for right now?
If the answer is the client, perhaps it's the right moment.
If the answer is my own discomfort, perhaps the silence still has somewhere to go.
Supervision with room to think.