A Mindful Moment - The Pause
The exercise from grad school that hasn't left me.
There’s power in the pause.
When I was in grad school getting my masters to become a counselor, we did an exercise that hasn’t left me.
It was a role play where one class member played a client and the other played a therapist.
The person playing the client was to bring a real life situation, as vulnerable as they were comfortable with, to work on during this “session.”
The main goal of this exercise was to show us baby therapists-in-training who were mostly anxious about learning the “right” things to say in session that silence can actually be more powerful than words.
Not the kind of avoidant silence where you don’t say what you’re thinking because you’re afraid of hurting someone's feelings, but rather the kind of intentional silence that acknowledges there’s more wisdom here than our reactive thoughts can muster, and if we slow down enough to listen, we might hear it.
At one point we were instructed to intentionally leave silent space, let’s say it was one minute, after the client seemed to finish what they were saying.
Now, one minute isn’t a long time given there is 1,440 of them in a day, but when you’re having an intimate conversation with someone, one minute feels like an eternity.
At the moment it felt nearly ridiculous.
Why would we be learning how to sit there and be quiet? Shouldn’t we be learning the correct feedback, or advice, or gold nugget, or connection to the persons past that will lead to some magical breakthrough?
Of course the exercise I thought was the most pointless is the one I recall almost weekly when sitting with real clients.
Why? It’s because there’s power in the pause.
The pause allows space for something else to surface that might not if more words were immediately spoken.
The pause allows us to notice what we’re feeling, not just what we’re thinking.
The pause allows us to pay attention to our bodies, which are our greatest communicators.
The pause gives us the opportunity to respond instead of react.
And typically, a regulated response leads to less conflict than a dysregulated reaction.
The Invitation:
What is one area where you can be more mindful of incorporating the pause and witnessing the power it can bring?
“We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence.” - Mother Teresa
I remember the same moment in my training! Pauses create wonderful opportunities to uncover so much that was never given the chance to be witnessed before!
I love this. Thanks, Blake!