March 13, 2025

Sitting with silence

I know the last few weeks have been patchy for newsletters, life has been a bit intense to be honest. I appreciate your patience and grace while I work through it and get myself back on track.

A coaching client this week complimented my ability to let a silence sit in sessions. This was lovely to hear, as that was a skill that took me a while to build.

It’s hard to let a silence sit. We want to fill the space, or provide solutions or questions, or contribute in some way, especially if it’s a session we’re facilitating in some way.

I have noticed how much more comfortable I am in being silent now. I can pause and just be in the moment with others without needing to speak. It’s often the case that people will allow a thought to fully form in the silence, one that may have been lost if we’d carried on talking. It also gives people permission to take up space and just sit in that space, which is something that again, can be quite powerful.

There’s also power in giving space to emotions. We so often don’t sit in silence with our feelings, especially the ones like sadness. We stop ourselves from spiralling or crying, or try to find the productive way out, without letting those feelings work themselves out.

For me, I often use action as a distraction. If I do something then I’m not sitting in my anxiety, and I can keep pushing it away.

Learning to sit in silence and feel those feelings was really important, and it’s something I keep re-learning.

Just this week I was sharing something in class that was very vulnerable. It was something I wouldn’t have shared previously, and I was anxious about it. My peers gave me time to sit in these feelings, to allow myself to feel anxious in a safe space without me needing to explain or deflect or distract.

It was a powerful moment for me. I’m becoming more open, more able to be with myself even when it’s scary, and more importantly, I can be like this with others who love and support me. This is important, because it means people are able to see me as I am, and accept me for it, which is empowering.

It also means clients are more likely to feel able to do the same in front of me, because I know what it means to be held and hold people in that space. If I can see and feel how powerful silence is for me, then I can give the same to people in counselling or coaching sessions.

While processing the aftermath of the sharing session (because the emotional hangover is real), I realised that I don’t really give myself silence. I give myself alone time, and stillness, but rarely silence in these moments. This is something for me to think about incorporating into my routine, maybe first thing in the morning I’ll allow myself a period of silence before I engage with the day. I wonder what I’ll learn. 

Do you often give yourself silence? How do you find it? Do you have trouble giving yourself and/or others silence?