Silence is a multi-faceted phenomenon. It is a form of communication, although not all silences are the same nor do they have the same meaning. The silence experienced by a deaf person is very different from the two minutes silence on a Commemorative occasion.
A silent loving hug is very different from the manipulative silence of marital disharmony. A silence of realisation in a counselling room is very different from the silence in a Library. The silence between the Lightning bolt and Thunder is very different from the silent gesture of a raised eyebrow. The silence of a spiritual retreat is very different from the silent railway carriage banning the use of mobile phones.
As I get older I am increasingly aware of the power of counselling to bring healing and hope for a variety of problems and to a wide ranging group of people. Yet the power within counselling remains something of a mystery. Body language can give us clues about how a person is experiencing the counselling process and the spoken responses an indication of their thinking. Yet even in Christian Counselling, we are never quite certain what God might be doing, yet we know that in the stillness and quietness of a therapeutic silence, something quite profound can be happening. In some parts of the wider and Universal Church these are sometimes referred to as Holy Mysteries. God moments, for which there is no tangible or obvious explanation, yet in the stillness of that moment, His presence is deeply apparent.
Silences in counselling have always intrigued me and I often wonder whether there is such a thing as absolute silence? By that I mean, not just a lack of sound but the complete absence of thought and activity too. Such is my fascination with silence that over the years I have collected a variety of quotes and sound bites, which you will find scattered throughout this article. Dictionary definitions, describe silence as; The condition or quality of being or keeping still and silent; The absence of sound; stillness. It isn’t surprising that most definitions of silence also include stillness. In Psalm 46 God tells us to, ‘Be still’, and in a book I read many years ago, I have this quote from Mother Teresa written down at the back of my Bible - We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature, trees, flowers, grass grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence. We need silence to be able to touch souls.
Yet I can remember a time in my own life when I found silences to be quite threatening, and often related to the acute loneliness I felt at the time. Silence to me then, meant the absence of family, friends, companionship and support. They were deep, painful silences, devoid of any meaning, value or sense of belonging. I suppose, looking back, what made these silences worse, was the total lack of empathy from those dealing with me. That lack of understanding made the silence seem deeper and darker and almost compelled me to lose myself and hide in my own internal shadows. I not only felt alone in my outer world, but in my inner world too.
There is a well-known American quotation; Silence is a text easy to misread. In family life, in the work place and in social situations I have my own collection of misread silences, all of them showing a complete lack, of both understanding and empathy! Yet in the counselling room, I have experienced, within the power of silence, that profound moment when words would have no meaning. Another quotation I wrote down was this one by Mark Twain; The Pause; that impressive silence, that eloquent silence which often achieves a desired affect where no combination of words, however so felicitous could accomplish it.
One of the more difficult aspects of counselling for me, has been in achieving accurate empathy within the stillness of silence. Sometimes within the Holy Mysteries of the church, amid all the flourish of denominational activity, it is in, ‘the still small voice’, where God’s revelation is heard and responded to. So it is in counselling. Many years ago I remember reading an analysis of one of Carl Roger’s counselling sessions, and was surprised by how much silence it contained – something like 60% of the session if my memory serves me right.
It spoke volumes to me about the level of empathy he was working at, and challenged me to strive for a higher skill base. Noting the age old saying of, ‘first do no harm’, I set about trying to understand empathy at a deeper level only to discover that I could not separate empathy from genuineness. So rather than starting to work at improving my empathy levels with other people, it seemed that the Lord was wanting me to start with myself! Isn’t it ironic how God uses all resources to get us moving in the right direction. I was reading through a booklet by Elisabeth Küblar-Ross, when I came across the following words; Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and know that everything in life has a purpose!
I have often reflected on that moment. ‘Be still and know that I am God’. If I thought achieving a deeper level of accurate empathy was going to be difficult, testing my genuineness proved even more challenging. I discovered that I had many securities outside my faith in God, and that sometimes I needed them more than I needed God! I had my own internal laws and values, my own way of doing things. I had, ‘No Go’ areas and sets of rules that it was OK to compromise on. I was a judgemental mess! Yet in the stillness and quietness of the next few painful soul searching months, I learned that genuineness was more about inner honesty than inner perfection. It was about being the real me, being open, being honest, being sincere in all I did and said – being vulnerable, having the grace to show transparency. The bench mark couldn’t have been higher, yet God gave all of us in the Philippi Trust the ground rules for good therapeutic relationships in the Philippi Charter, Philippians 2:1-5.
For me, the key to a good counselling process was not so much in trying to understand the emotion within the silence, but in trying to catch the changing emotions, and then staying with them on the counselling journey. Alfred Adler summarised empathy like this; Seeing with the eye of another, listening with the ears of another and feeling with the heart of another. Sometimes my empathic journey into the world of another person, encountered strange and challenging scenario’s.
I remember being invited to Northern Ireland to help with the counselling of Church leaders, one week after the Omagh Bombing in 1998. It was a profound and painful journey into a level of grief that I still struggle to fully comprehend. Carl Rogers, offers this reflection when he says: In some sense it means that you lay aside yourself and this can only be done by a person who is secure enough in himself that he knows he will not get lost in what may turn out to be the strange or bizarre world of the other, and can comfortably return to his own world when he wishes.
Standing on the Omagh Bridge, surrounded by wreaths and flowers, prior to beginning the first group counselling session, I was struck by the sheer weight of pain that was tangible in the atmosphere. Even in the sombre business of passing cars, lorries and buses, the silence was profound.
Yes, there was a stillness, and yes there was a silence, but it was a stillness and a silence in turmoil. There were fourteen ministers of all denominations united in their grief and bewilderment. They sat silently, heads bowed, the anguish clearly visible as they raised their heads to look up and I couldn’t think of a word to say to them. I felt completely out of my depth and there was a fear that I might even make matters worse. The silence in that room, although painful, had a unity to it and in the stillness there was a sense of mutual comfort. This was one of the silences that challenged me and increased my interest in the mystery of silence. I was confronted with Post Traumatic Stress and these Ministers needed an opportunity to, tell their story. Secular counselling was to be made available, yet convincing Northern Ireland Ministers that this would be the best route was the challenge. It seemed to question their belief in the sufficiency and supremacy of God. Yet they recognised that in the turmoil there were occasions when even the most devout Christians needed the services of the Fire Department, the Police and the Ambulance service. This was one of those occasions. Between them they had conducted the funeral services of twenty nine men, women and children and offered pastoral support and counselling to the extended families of all the victims and were still providing regular visits to the two hundred and twenty injured. In that room in Omagh, on that day, the silence was overwhelming. It was a profound silence, yet alive with Holy, comforting, healing activity.
I recognise too, that in recent years I have experienced that same bewildering silence on a global scale; the Twin Towers (2001) as well as the Tsunami’s in Indonesia (2004) and in Japan (March 2011). There was no place for words and no opportunity for action just a stunned silence that swept across many nations, and sometimes silence is all we have and all we need. It is one of the mysteries of the power of silence that remains with me, and still challenges me today. Negative silences can be cruel and destructive, yet within the power of a positive silence so much can be said without even speaking a word. It reminds me that when it comes to empathy, we have a God and Father who is not only in our world, but a living part of it and forever active within the silence of the moment. Be still and know . . . . . .
By Malcolm Worsley
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