{"id":32861,"date":"2016-09-15T06:00:46","date_gmt":"2016-09-15T13:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/?p=32861"},"modified":"2016-09-13T09:58:35","modified_gmt":"2016-09-13T16:58:35","slug":"when-you-come-to-therapy-with-nothing-to-talk-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/when-you-come-to-therapy-with-nothing-to-talk-about-0915164","title":{"rendered":"When You Come to Therapy with \u2018Nothing to Talk About\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Person\u201cI have nothing to talk about.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maybe two or three months after beginning therapy<\/a>\u2014maybe later, sometimes sooner\u2014a person might say this to me and perhaps look a little surprised or confused.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s nothing coming up for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Often the\u00a0person is\u00a0weirded out. Concerned, even. The\u00a0person will tell me how they usually have one, two, seven, eight things they really want to talk about and just don\u2019t know what to make of not having something ready to go.<\/p>\n

Coming to Therapy After a \u2018Good Week\u2019<\/h2>\n

Sometimes a person may need some prompting, but often within the first couple of weeks of therapy, with gentle encouragement, people tell what they think is their story. They talk about whatever has been causing them distress: communication problems<\/a>, feelings of isolation<\/a>, anger<\/a>-control issues, deep sadness<\/a>, etc.<\/p>\n

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Therapists are trained to help people talk about and process these things. And often, once people start, they keep right on going! We all hold a lot of stuff in, and sometimes we don\u2019t even realize what\u2019s in that backlog until we finally open up.<\/p>\n

So the door opens, the person speaks and … here\u2019s something interesting: things may seem a little worse at first. When you\u2019ve been very intentionally not<\/em> looking at distressing stuff for a long time, it\u2019s bound to bring up some difficult feelings once you start exploring.<\/p>\n

But eventually, with some work, compassion<\/a>, and patience<\/a>, there\u2019s generally some relief.<\/p>\n

Things don’t seem as pressing.<\/p>\n

And after a while, the person isn\u2019t itching to get to their therapy session so they can unpack, say, that incident at work or the uncomfortable time with the in-laws.<\/p>\n

They had an okay week. Maybe even a good one. Maybe not great, but \u2026 they have \u201cnothing to talk about.\u201d<\/p>\n

Peeling Back the Layers of Therapy<\/h2>\n

It used to be that therapy was viewed as an archaeological dig into the psyche<\/a> and the therapist held the shovel. The therapist’s job was to dig until they uncovered\u00a0what was buried underneath. But rarely is it so simple, and rarely does healing come from insight alone. Often we can discover a possible explanation to an issue, but that doesn\u2019t mean the issue is resolved.<\/p>\n

Therapy is done in layers, but unlike an onion, we don\u2019t simply peel off and discard layers once we look at them. <\/span><\/p>\n

Therapy is done in layers, but unlike an onion, we don\u2019t simply peel off and discard layers once we look at them. We take a layer, examine it, put it back, take another layer, leave it for later, skip a layer to see something else, then go back to the second layer and reexamine it with what we know now. Maybe along the way you fall back into an old habit<\/a> (remember, the layers don\u2019t disappear) and we spend some time just holding all the layers without processing or questioning them.<\/p>\n

Entering therapy with much to talk about\u2014that\u2019s the top layer, or maybe even the second or third.\u00a0Sometimes that top layer\u2014what we sometimes refer to in therapy circles as the \u201cpresenting problem\u201d\u2014has been getting all the attention for so long because it\u2019s the loudest or most painful. When that\u2019s peeled back for a moment, when it has received some attention, we need to take some time to see what else may be exposed. These may be\u00a0quieter parts of you but are no less important or meaningful.<\/p>\n

Letting the Little Thoughts Be Heard<\/h2>\n

Have you ever met a couple where one partner is a chatterbox and the other seems mute? Until, that is, you get some time alone with the quiet one who, it turns out, actually has some stuff to say, but it gets overshadowed by their partner.<\/p>\n

We all have stuff like this inside us. If the \u201cfires\u201d we seek\u00a0therapy<\/a> for are turned down a bit, even if just for the moment, then what seems insubstantial can be given more attention. It might not be so insubstantial after all. We just need to allow for the space, maybe even the silence, to give it permission to be heard.<\/p>\n

Once you get over your surprise at not having anything \u201cpressing\u201d to say in therapy, don\u2019t be afraid to say whatever you\u2019re thinking or feeling, no matter how inconsequential it may seem. What might seem like little thoughts or\u00a0feelings can lead to big breakthroughs, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once the presenting issue that brought you to therapy has been heard, it\u2019s not uncommon to feel like there\u2019s nothing to say. There may be more to your story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2883,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[542],"tags":[31,49],"class_list":["post-32861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured-articles","tag-psychotherapy-practice","tag-considering-psychotherapy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2883"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32861\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}