One of the hardest messages for many of us to empathize with is silence. This is especially true when we’ve expressed ourselves vulnerably and need to know how others are reacting to our words. At such times, it’s easy to project our worst fears onto the lack of response and forget to connect with the feelings and needs being expressed through the silence.
One time when I was working with the staff of a business organization, I was talking about something deeply emotional and began to cry. When I looked up, I received a response from the organization’s director that was not easy for me to receive: silence. He turned his face from me with what I interpreted to be an expression of disgust. Fortunately, I remembered to put my attention on what might be going on within him, and said, “I’m sensing from your response to my crying that you’re feeling disgusted, and you’d prefer to have someone more in control of his feelings consulting with your staff.”
If he had answered yes, I would have been able to accept that we had different values around expressing emotions, without somehow thinking that I was wrong for having expressed my emotions as I did. But instead of “yes,” the director replied, “No, not at all. I was just thinking of how my wife wishes I could cry.” He went on to reveal that his wife, who was divorcing him, had been complaining that living with him was like living with a rock.
During my practice as a psychotherapist, I was contacted by the parents of a twenty-year-old woman under psychiatric care. She had been undergoing medication, hospitalization, and shock treatments for several months, and had become mute three months before her parents contacted me. When they brought her to my office, she had to be assisted because, left to herself, she didn’t move.
In my office, she crouched in her chair, shaking, her eyes on the floor. Trying to connect empathically with the feelings and needs being expressed through her nonverbal message, I said, “I’m sensing that you are frightened and would like to be sure that it’s safe to talk. Is that accurate?”
She showed no reaction, so I expressed my own feeling by saying, “I’m very concerned about you, and I’d like you to tell me if there’s something I could say or do to make you feel safer.” Still no response. For the next forty minutes, I continued to either reflect her feelings and needs or express my own. There was no visible response, nor even the slightest recognition that I was trying to communicate with her. Finally I expressed that I was tired, and that I wanted her to return the following day.
The next few days were like the first. I continued focusing my attention on her feelings and needs, sometimes verbally reflecting what I understood and sometimes doing so silently. From time to time I would express what was going on in myself. She sat shaking in her chair, saying nothing.
On the fourth day, when she still didn’t respond, I reached over and held her hand. Not knowing whether my words were communicating my concern, I hoped the physical contact might do so more effectively. At first contact, her muscles tensed and she shrank further back into her chair. I was about to release her hand when I sensed a slight yielding, so I kept my hold; after a few moments I noticed a progressive relaxation on her part. I held her hand for several minutes while I talked to her as I had the first few days. Still she said nothing.
When she arrived the next day, she appeared even more tense than before, but there was one difference: she extended a clenched fist toward me while turning her face away from me. I was at first confused by the gesture, but then sensed she had something in her hand she wanted me to have. Taking her fist in my hand, I pried open her fingers. In her palm was a crumpled note with the following message: “Please help me say what’s inside.”
I was elated to receive this sign of her desire to communicate. After another hour of encouragement, she finally expressed a first sentence, slowly and fearfully. When I reflected back what I had heard her saying, she appeared relieved and then continued, slowly and fearfully, to talk. A year later, she sent me a copy of the following entries from her journal:
I came out of the hospital, away from shock treatments and strong medicine. That was about April. The three months before that are completely blank in my mind, as well as the three and a half years before April.
They say that, after getting out of the hospital, I went through a time at home of not eating, not talking, and wanting to stay in bed all the time. Then I was referred to Dr. Rosenberg for counseling. I don’t remember much of those next two or three months other than being in Dr. Rosenberg’s office and talking with him.
I’d begun ‘waking up’ since that first session with him. I’d begun sharing with him things that bothered me—things that I would never have dreamed of telling anyone about. And I remember how much that meant to me. It was so hard to talk. But Dr. Rosenberg cared about me and showed it, and I wanted to talk with him. I was always glad afterwards that I had let something out. I remember counting the days, even the hours, until my next appointment with him.
I’ve also learned that facing reality is not all bad. I am realizing more and more of the things that I need to stand up to, things that I need to get out and do on my own.
This is scary. And it’s very hard. And it’s so discouraging that when I am trying really a lot, I can still fail so terribly. But the good part of reality is that I’ve been seeing that it includes wonderful things, too.
I’ve learned in the past year about how wonderful it can be to share myself with other people. I think it was mostly just one part that I learned, about the thrill of my talking to other people and having them actually listen—even really understand at times.
I continue to be amazed by the healing power of empathy. Time and again I have witnessed people transcend the paralyzing effects of psychological pain when they have sufficient contact with someone who can hear them empathically. As listeners, we don’t need insights into psychological dynamics or training in psychotherapy. What is essential is our ability to be present to what’s really going on within—to the unique feelings and needs a person is experiencing in that very moment.