“Silence in Session” Comments, Page 1

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2 Comments on “Silence in Session”

  1. I think if all a counselor is doing is sitting there supposedly listening but not responding in some way, I don’t see how this can be helpful. If all I wanted was to talk, I could talk to anyone and just ask them not to respond. A person goes to a counselor for guidance. I had a terrible experience going to a counselor where all she did was sit there. I thought ‘what the heck am I paying this person for’?

  2. So about 8 years ago, I started therapy for the first time. I had been seeing this guy, Jeff, weekly for about 6 months I’d say at this point. Every week, he’d walk me into his office and then pretty much be like “so how was the week?” Or some prompt like that, to let me know where I should start. One week however, he walked me into his office, sat down and didn’t say a single thing…just stared at me…for THE ENTIRE SESSION. I’m talking 45 minutes of complete silence, just staring at me. I had absolutely no idea what was going on or when it would end. Then at the end of the session, he just said “how was that?”. And i basically told him that the silence was stressful at first but then I just stared at the wall. He never told me why he did that and never mentioned it again. I only saw him for a few months after that because he was graduating his program or whatever and was moving on to his own practice or whatever it’s called. I’ve had a couple therapists since then and have asked them what they think was the therapeutic purpose of him doing that and they said that they don’t know, it’s very strange. The only thing I can figure is that he wanted to see how I would react with the silence (would I eventually say something to fill the silence or would I keep my feelings to myself and wait for his direction, maybe?) but then again, is it necessary to waste the entire session to achieve that? It irritated me that the whole session was wasted because I only got to see him once a week based on my insurance and I was eager to improve my mental health. Anyway, I always wondered what the reason for that was, if you have any ideas. Perhaps this is a legitimate therapy technique?

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