Silence is golden, they say. But is it really that simple? I think not.

I would contend that not all silences are created equal.

Let’s take a look at the different types of silence – both good silence and bad silence.

Silence as Reflection and Centering

Silence can indeed be profound and healing. It can be restorative. This type of silence gives us time to think, to understand our deepest desires and our greatest knowings. This silence is the type of silence experienced in nature or in meditation.

Reflective silence can be restorative.

Healthy, restorative silence is characterized by openness and light, rather than by closedness and darkness. This type of silence expands, rather than contracts.

Think of healthy silence as standing upright with your arms open, with your head up toward the sun, while unhealthy silence is hunched over and closed off, with clenched fists in a darkened room.

Let’s imagine that our interactions with people are like a game of tennis. We naturally hit the ball back and forth in our interactions with others. We miss sometimes, but by and large, we are intending to remain in the game.

In this imagined tennis game, this restorative type of silence would be as simple as deciding to not play the game that day.

Silence as Healthy Space

The next type of silence is motivated by a desire to center oneself. This silence that creates healthy space is characterized by an openness rather than a closed-offness. It is relatively brief in duration and gives us the space to see openly and clearly. It allows us to respond from our true self, rather than from our wounded self. When we use this type of silence we seek to respond rather than react.

Choosing this silence can prevent us from saying or doing something we would later regret.

Healthy-space silence is open and light.

We might find ourselves needing space to consider how we are really feeling. We might tend to react quickly and emotionally and the silence helps us to respond in a healthier way rather than reacting out of this initial impulse of emotion. When we make a conscious choice to create some space from a situation and we fill that space with considerate and chosen silence, the resulting silence is healthy, beautiful and healing.

We seek this type of silence, usually for a short time (from just 10 minutes to a day or so) and then we return to the interaction with openness to hearing more, seeking clarity.

The key is what we do with the silence, what our hearts are doing during the silent times. In this type of silence, we will be reflecting on our own actions and motivations.

I cannot overstate the importance of refraining from seething in anger and/or spinning stories and judgments about the other person during this quiet time. This time in silence is only valuable if you are reflecting on your own feelings and not telling yourself any version of a story that involves the other person’s intentions. Ruminating is not characteristic of this type of silence.

Seek this type of intentional silence openly and freely, and, importantly, if you need this type of silence, communicate it. Our world is filled with many instances of damaging silence, so let those around you know that you are taking a needed period of silence during which you will keep an open heart and after which you will return with curiosity.

In our imagined tennis game, this type of silence would be like needing a water break. A water break is healthy and important to continue playing the game well. You would obviously communicate why you were putting your racquet down and walking off the court, letting your partner know that you simply need to replenish yourself, to get some water. It’s important to do the same in any interaction – state the reason for your brief silence and then restore yourself, returning when you are feeling refreshed and ready to play again.

Personal Example – My Silence as Healthy Space

One time that I can recall using this type of silence well involved an argument I was having with my adult daughter. The details of the argument are irrelevant, but during a particularly heated part of the argument, I realized I had a choice. My choices were:

• Anti-Silence Option: I could fight back and say mean or hurtful things to her.
• Silence-as-Punishment Option: I could quit speaking to her.
• Silence-as-Avoidance Option: I could let go of whatever it was that was upsetting me and bury it deep inside myself.
• Silence-as-Healthy-Space Option: I could let her know that I needed some time to calm down and that we could then come back together to talk when we were not so adrenalized. When we did come back together, we would then be able to do so in a much clearer state of mind and hopefully state our wants and needs in a non-accusatory way.

I chose the Silence-as-Healthy-Space Option. I told her that I needed to take some space from the situation, and I successfully held loving space in my heart for her while I also take the alone time that I needed, which was less than a day. We then come back together and we were able to have a productive and healing conversation, seeking and providing clarity on each others’ boundaries and our own.

Silence as Avoidance

Silence can also be used as an attempt to avoid something. Perhaps somebody asks you a question that you don’t know the answer to. You choose to ignore them rather than letting them know that you don’t know the answer.

This silence is characterized by its intention, which is to avoid discomfort. This type of silence might not do immediate damage, but it does prevent closeness. In my post about turning on the light, I talk about how turning the situational light on is imperative to reach understanding and clarity. This type of silence, avoidance silence, is akin to keeping the light off.

Avoidance silence becomes the block that prevents mutual understanding and blocks the opportunity to work out differences. Nobody has ever actually worked out differences through silence. You can choose to ignore differences that way, but that precludes getting to know each other better and prevents gaining a deeper understanding of and appreciation for one another. Whether you want it to be or not, this type of silence is a divider. It controls a situation by preventing further dialogue where the relationship could deepen.

Avoidant silence prevents deeper understanding.

Or perhaps you are a person that is afraid of conflict, so you avoid bringing up topics that might inadvertently create tensions. This might even go so far as to avoid discussing very important and pressing matters with people who need to know the information, because you fear the response you might get from these people. If you are responsible for getting something done, but you are not able to complete the task and you don’t let anybody know, then the task will naturally remain incomplete. Depending on the importance of this task (i.e., paying a bill, picking the kids up from daycare, letting an employee know that they have breached company policy, etc.), the impacts of this silence can be profound.

This type of silence often results in worse damage than the damage you were trying to avoid in the first place. Trust is broken through this type of silence.

In our imagined tennis game, this would be letting most of the balls coming your way just go by without even attempting to hit them back. Maybe you are letting these balls go by because you don’t think you know how to hit them well. Or maybe you’re even afraid of being too good and upsetting your opponent. Either way, if you don’t even try to hit the balls, there is no game at all. Neither player improves their game. The tennis match is uninteresting and eventually fizzles out.

Personal Example – My Silence as Avoidance

I had a friend several years ago that would often make remarks about me that I didn’t like – they were remarks that appeared to be backhanded insults, such as, “You are so much better than you used to be.” Or “I’m so happy you have your husband, he made you such a better person.” She would say things like this even though she hadn’t even known me prior to my meeting my husband. So, the comments confused and hurt me.

So what were my options?

• Anti-Silence Option: Retort back immediately with something that would hurt her back. Or maybe just tell her to cut it out, snapping at her and telling her that I thought she was rude.
• Silence-as-Punishment Option: Stop answering her calls, refusing to engage with her again.
• Silence-as-Avoidance Option: Ignore her comments, pushing the irritation down and shaming myself for having felt irritated.
• Silence-as-Healthy-Space Option: Wait until I am feeling centered and non-reactive. At that point, I can initiate a conversation where I respond to her comments and let her know how they are impacting me. In this conversation, I can seek clarity on why she continues to make these remarks. I can use the outcome of this conversation to inform the direction of our continued connection: we might end up deepening our bond with a new understanding of each other; we might discover that we no longer choose to spend time together; or anywhere in between.

For several years with this particular friend, I chose the Silence-as-Avoidance Option. I didn’t want to jeopardize the friendship and I sensed that saying something might do so. I held in my frustration with those comments for years. One day I made the choice to speak up about them, shifting to something akin to the Silence-as-Healthy-Space Option . While I believe that I succeeded in communicating my concern, I had likely avoided it for too long. Now the situation was uncomfortable. Interestingly, soon thereafter, she opted for the Silence-as-Punishment Option, permanently leaving our friendship behind without explanation.

It is important to note that my silence about the situation for the years leading up to my eventual conversation with her was damagingly avoidant. Even though my reason for staying silent was the opposite – I was actively trying to not damage the friendship. However, the avoidance itself ended up contributing to its ultimate failure.

Silence as Punishment

The final type of silence is the punishing silence. The motivation behind using punishing silence is to dominate or control a situation. The silence is used as a powerful last word. This silence does usually “win” in the sense that it is impenetrable. Choosing silence and refusal to engage in a conversation, disagreement or argument not only blocks progress, but also hurts both the relationship and those around you.

Punishing silence damages relationships.

This type of silence is characterized by being closed and unwilling to listen. The silent one becomes a closed container, impervious to any attempts to deepen the relationship or seek to understand. You might say the silence goes both ways – no output, no input – no speaking, no listening.

When you choose this type of silence, you might be choosing this because you have been deeply wounded and you are, in essence, running away, self-protecting. You are fleeing to deep inside yourself. Or maybe you are angry and have the intention of inflicting suffering on the person you have chosen to shun. You refuse to respond, even when they repeatedly attempt to communicate with you. You might have made the unilateral decision that they don’t deserve your time or response. You might have judged them to be too needy or below you or just simply not worth your time.

This type of silence is often an outward sign of a seething anger.

This type of silence is used to silence others, to shut down conversations. As such, this type of silence is a powerful control tactic.
Silence coupled with seething anger is closed off and damaging. When we make this choice, we close our minds to any alternate view of the situation, we close off to apologies, we close off to allowing others to simply be different than we are, we close off to deep and meaningful relationships.

In our tennis game, this looks like one player suddenly refusing to hit the ball back over the net. Instead, they pocket the balls and leave them game with no explanation. They are clearly upset and you don’t know why, nor will you ever.
Stopping the game without any communication with the person you are playing with is controlling (you are making the unilateral choice to stop the game) and disrespectful (your tennis opponent deserves to know what is going on in this game).

The game stops.

Personal Example – My Silence as Punishment

One time, we had plans with some very good friends of ours to celebrate one of our young daughters’ birthdays. Mere hours before our plans were to take place, we received a voicemail saying that other friends of theirs had suggested an event that they were going to do instead.

I was livid.

My options were:

• Anti-Silence Option: Call this friend and give her a piece of my mind, telling her I didn’t want a friend that would cancel on me at the last minute for a better offer.
• Silence-as-Punishment Option: Don’t respond to the message. Seethe with anger. Quit speaking to her.
• Silence-as-Avoidance Option: Just let it go – I shouldn’t expect too much from my friends. It is obviously my reaction that is inappropriate here.
• Silence-as-Healthy-Space Option: Recognize that I am hurt, and acknowledge that my feelings are acceptable. When I am feeling centered, let her know that I would like to chat about the situation. In that conversation, let her know that canceling at the last minute is damaging to our friendship and seek more clarity on why she made that choice.

Unfortunately, I chose the Silence-as-Punishment Option. I gave her the silent treatment. We went silent for several months.

Several months into this silence, a close family member died very suddenly, which caused me to reconsider a lot of things in my life, including my priorities and actions as they related to this friendship. At that point, I recognized how damaging and unproductive my silence had been, so I drove to her house and apologized.

The relationship was damaged. I apologized for having chosen unhealthy, punishing silence, but the original reason for the silence was long forgotten and we did not address her actions – the sudden cancellation of our plans those months before.

I cannot go back and change how I chose to react those many years ago, but I repeatedly have the opportunity choose differently in current interactions. I now always try to choose the Silence-as-Healthy-Space Option. Choosing this option does not guarantee a strengthening of any particular friendship. In fact, sometimes the conversation itself precipitates the end of the friendship anyway. Regardless, that is the healthy, communicative option, and I am now committed to choosing it as often as possible.

Personal Example – Another’s Silence as Punishment

My interest in silence, and the havoc it can wreak on relationships, stems from my personal experience with it through the years, both my silence and others’ silence. So I will give you one final example of how another’s silence, in this case my mother’s, damaged our relationship.

When I was 21 years old, I had a confrontation with my mother. It wasn’t an objectively extreme confrontation – there was no yelling at all – but I was upset with her, and, as a new college graduate who was exploring independence, I let her know that I perceived her actions to be selfish. I had never done this before – in fact, this was considered taboo in my home.

As her go-to response was silence in many situations, she did go silent in this situation as well. Over the coming weeks, I noticed that she was not responding to my questions and refusing to even look at me. However, as this was fairly typical for her, and happened often enough that it didn’t seem out of the ordinary, I didn’t immediately draw the connection between our difficult conversation and this silence. In fact, in the absence of clarity, I made up a story in my head about what she was angry about which had to do with laundry, rather than my having called her selfish. It took several weeks and me moving back out to begin graduate school, but eventually, she would begin speaking to me again and the years would go on.

Fast forward to 32 years later – I was 53 years old, and my now-estranged mother said she had a question for me that she had always wanted to ask me. She asked if we could meet for coffee.

Yes. I always said yes.

But her question on this day really stunned me. It was this: “In December of 1990, you called me selfish. When did you decide I was the wrong mother for you?”

WHAT?! THAT was the question she had “always wanted to ask” me?!

I was able to answer her that day. And I then suggested that she might have asked me this question in December of 1990 rather than in May of 2022. I suggested that she could have asked me during that conversation, and, if not in that very moment, then the next day or the next week or month or year or decade. Instead, she held that silence for 32 years, and with the silence, she held the anger for 32 years.

What had her options been in December of 1990?

• Anti-Silence Option: She could have yelled back at me that I was selfish. She could have kicked me out of the house or declared that she was done with me.
• Silence-as-Punishment Option: She could have given me the silent treatment for a few weeks, and then continued to hold that anger in her heart.
• Silence-as-Avoidance Option: She could have just let it go and not remarked on it again.
• Silence-as-Healthy-Space Option: She could have taken a day or two to settle her reactivity, and then initiated a conversation. She could have stated that she was hurt by my calling her selfish, and, importantly, she could have asked me if I had decided that she was the wrong mother for me. (That answer would have been a resounding no.)

Unfortunately she chose the Silence-as-Punishment Option. I will never know how this affected our relationship through the subsequent years. And as this was not an isolated experience, many such silences contributed to our eventual estrangement. I suspect that if centered and clarifying conversations had been the norm, rather than silence and anger, we could have had a good-enough relationship.

I also want to acknowledge that she might have chosen this option due to her own pain and suffering. I have great empathy for this, and have indeed spent many years trying to understand her, both by asking her clarifying questions and by attempting to give her the benefit of the doubt. In the end, though, my attempts to understand her couldn’t dispel the deep-seeded anger she was holding toward me.

The silence devastated our relationship.

Choosing Silence

When you have the instinct to go silent, consider this: do you have anger in your heart toward the other person during your silence? Have you communicated at all that you are choosing silence? Do you intend to reconnect at the end of your silent period? Do you owe it to the relationship to seek clarity? Is it possible that you have misinterpreted something that was said or something that happened? Are you willing to remain open to hearing them out? If they did something to upset you, are you willing to consider the fact that they might have been simply having a bad day and would like to apologize? Have you ever hurt somebody out of negligence or exhaustion, and wanted to be given the chance to explain?

Many times, our interpretations of events do not represent an absolute truth. The more we seethe and tell ourselves (and often others) our version of the events, the more we cement in our interpretation of what happened. So stay open. You can combine your silence with staying open.
The key with any silence you choose is to remain open.

When you choose silence, you have stopped hitting the ball back. The only time this is healthy is when you have communicated that you need a break and when you return you will resume hitting the ball back over the net. Anything else is damaging to the relationship.

On the other hand, if your opponent is holding the ball and refusing to return it, thereby controlling the game, your choice is to leave that tennis game or to stay and wait it out. You can beg and plead for them to return the ball, to resume the game, but only they can choose whether they will do so. You no longer have the power to decide if the game is played or not. You can only choose whether to stay on the court or leave. Whichever side of the net you find yourself on, silence has the power to stop the game, and there is no hope of resuming the game until the silence is broken.

Any type of silence is powerful – silence can be powerfully good, as well as powerfully bad.

Only you have the choice to remain open and light in your silence.