Some pieces of writing are too beautiful to remain tucked away on a testimonial page.
The following poem, Silence, was written as a testimonial to the work of Des McVey. Yet it reaches far beyond testimonial. It speaks to something central to therapy itself: the healing potential of silence when it is held with care, steadiness, and attunement.
Before exploring silence as a therapeutic intervention, it is worth sitting with the poem in full.
Silence
Have you ever sat
in the power
of a pause?
I was like a mouse scurrying away
gnawing, on the edges
of silence.
Fleeing its danger.
I wrote conversation on my hand;
filling up fermata.
Unable to tolerate caesura
regain composure.
I scraped away at closeness
like a hand cupping water
unable, to contain it
You carry it in, like a harvest
set it on the table, like there’s plenty
hold me, like a toddler needing rest.
And I succumb to your strength
like a Guinness settling
after the pour.
You say
children are loved most in the stillness
I didn’t realise, I needed to bathe in it.
How much it said, without speaking.
How much intimacy, only the eyes held.
You drench me in attunement
the nothing of everything.
And I listen, caught in your steadiness;
the space between each raindrop
colliding with the earth
or how the building creaks.
The lines around your eyes
the safety without words
the gap between each breath.
The different ways it occupied the space
solid, slow and meaningful.
Have you ever sat in the power of a pause?
The poem opens with a simple but profound question: Have you ever sat in the power of a pause? It is a question that goes to the heart of therapy.
Silence is often misunderstood. In everyday life, many of us experience silence as awkwardness, distance, or absence. We are quick to fill gaps with conversation, explanation, humour, reassurance, or distraction. Silence can feel exposing. It can stir self-consciousness, anxiety, or the fear that something has gone wrong.
That is why silence in therapy can feel so significant.
A therapeutic silence is not the same as a social silence. It is not a blankness, a withdrawal, or a lack of response. At its best, silence in therapy is a meaningful intervention: a deliberate, sensitive use of space that allows something important to emerge. It offers room for feeling, reflection, memory, and recognition. It can help a person move beyond rehearsed narratives and closer to what is actually happening inside them.
For many clients, this does not feel comfortable at first. Silence may awaken old expectations or old injuries. It may evoke experiences of not being heard, of being left alone, of needing to perform, explain, or keep things moving in order to stay connected. The discomfort silence brings is not incidental; it can be deeply revealing. The ways people meet silence often tell us something about how they have learned to survive emotionally in relationships.
This is one reason silence can be so therapeutically important. When held well, it creates an opportunity not just to talk about oneself, but to experience oneself differently.
A good therapist does not use silence to retreat from the client. They use it to stay with the client in another way. Silence can communicate patience, trust, and emotional steadiness. It can say: there is no need to rush; nothing has to be forced; you do not have to fill this space alone.
Silence as a Relational Act
In that sense, silence is not passive. It is relational.
The poem expresses this with remarkable tenderness. It describes silence not as empty, but as something carried in abundance, something offered carefully, almost like nourishment. That image captures an essential truth about therapeutic work. Silence is healing not because there are no words, but because there is presence. A pause becomes bearable, and even transformative, when it is held by someone who remains grounded, attentive, and emotionally available.
This matters because therapy is not simply an exchange of words. It is also an experience of being with another person. Sometimes the most important shift happens not when a brilliant insight is spoken, but when a client realises they can be quiet, emotional, uncertain, or undone in the presence of another person and still feel met there. Silence can become a new kind of relational experience: not abandonment, but accompaniment.
This is especially powerful for people who have spent years defending themselves against vulnerability. Many of us learn to manage distress by talking quickly, intellectualising, minimising, or moving away from what feels too raw. Silence can interrupt those habits. It can make room for what lies beneath them: grief, fear, shame, longing, exhaustion, relief. Often these things arrive slowly. They need space more than explanation.
Silence can also support regulation. In the presence of a calm and attuned therapist, the nervous system may begin to settle. Breathing may slow. Defences may soften. A person may notice their body, their emotions, or the deeper meaning of what they are saying. In such moments, therapy is doing more than generating insight. It is creating the conditions in which a person can feel safe enough to remain present with themselves.
This is why silence can be one of the most compassionate interventions a therapist offers. It respects the pace of the client’s inner world. It resists the pressure to interpret too quickly or to tidy away what is difficult. It allows experience to unfold rather than be managed prematurely.
When Silence Isn’t Helpful
Of course, silence is not always helpful. If it is poorly timed, emotionally flat, or disconnected from the needs of the client, it can feel confusing or isolating. Therapeutic silence is not about saying less for the sake of it. It is about discernment. It depends on timing, trust, and the therapist’s capacity to remain fully present. Like every intervention in therapy, its value lies in how it is used and in the quality of the relationship that holds it.
At its most meaningful, silence becomes more than a pause between words. It becomes a place where something true can be felt. A place where emotion can surface without being rushed. A place where intimacy can deepen without needing to announce itself. A place where a person may discover that healing sometimes begins not in being told, but in being accompanied.
That is what makes this poem so resonant. Though written as a testimonial to the work of Des McVey, it speaks to something much larger than one person’s gratitude. It gives language to a part of therapy that can be difficult to describe but deeply felt: the quiet power of a steady, attuned silence.
In a world that often rewards speed, certainty, and constant expression, therapy can offer something rare and restorative – a pause that is not empty, but full. Full of presence. Full of care. Full of the possibility that, in the company of another, silence may become not something to fear, but something solid, slow and meaningful.
