“I Don’t Know What to Talk About”

This is a common moment in therapy.  Patients will come to therapy and, often with at least a hint of self-admonition, announce that this session, unlike many, they “just don’t have anything to talk about.” 

I empathize with anyone feeling the anxiety of not knowing what to talk about, of being unsure what they will produce if they listen deeply to themselves.  Indeed, this unease/fear is, I believe, a large part of what fuels the many distractions we generate for ourselves in our lives.  (Note: I am in No Way immune from this, of course.  It’s one of the key reasons I am such a strong advocate for therapy for myself.  I have developed many paths to avoid the existential dread of being with myself deeply in the course of everyday life.  Therapy is the best way I’ve found to encourage myself to take the time and space and courage to go the other way in my relationship to myself.  I know, and so do the therapists I’ve seen over the years and still see, that I will fend off a deep, existential way of being with myself in the therapy room, like I do in everyday life. But therapy offers a holding environment that encourages me to pass through this resistance and achieve a deeper level of connection with myself, and from this deeper connection to myself flows benefits, in my view.)

So, to repeat, I Feel For clients when they are in discomfort over not knowing what to talk about.

Yet, at these same moments, I also feel a quite tangible interest and confidence arise as well!

One thought I have is:  this client has likely grown stronger inside in order to come to therapy without a pre-worked-through agenda. 

Another is: therapy really opens to a deeper turning whenever we are willing to listen to ourselves and see what might come up from within us if we don’t know what it is we can latch on to talk about.  Instead, we are facing something more unconscious, more free in facing ourselves. 

It is at this kind of moment that I will often encourage a client to consider laying down and closing their eyes or to look at the ceiling or find some way to focus on their inner stream of consciousness/free associations versus our usual social agreement to talk to one another and take in the other’s facial expressions and reactions. 

I well remember the first time I decided I would accept a therapist’s invitation to take a prone position and be more internal in my therapy work.  I took my shoes off, brought my legs over the couch, lay my head down on a pillow, looked up at the ceiling … and almost immediately, like a bolt of lightning went through my body, I snapped back up into a sitting position. My conscious, habituated resistance to a gentle, curious presence with myself could hardly have been more clearly demonstrated. So, again, I feel for patients who can hardly imagine a laying down, inwardly-focused therapy.

I’m thankful that I’ve persevered and spent many, many productive hours laying down in therapy and listening to myself as deeply as I am able. For me, this kind of work suits me. I like it. Even though I had an instinctive, reflexive resistance initially. 

When a client comes to one session, and especially when they have begun to notice a pattern of coming towards their session times “not knowing what to say,” it is often a clue to something exciting and life-affirming becoming increasingly available.