Let silence do its job.
A mantra for listening to other people (and ourselves).
Inspired by an exchange I had with 360° Kindness—more on his work below.
This will be my last essay for 2025, though there will be one more Rooted Sunday chat this weekend.
I hope you have a wonderful, joy-filled holiday season with those you love. See you in 2026!
Let silence do its job.
- Kristen Warms
This is a mantra I share with every new group I facilitate, encouraging people to curtail their need to fill gaps between words. We all have this impulse—the strong desire to fill a pause with advice or perspective—but often this is more disruptive than it is helpful.
Because silence is purposeful.
Its job—much like that of the liver in the body—is to capture and metabolize what needs to be cleansed, so the person can move forward with more ease. When we deny silence—whether in group work or in our own lives—it’s like interrupting the metabolic function of our emotions. We’re denying the release of something important.
It is difficult to sit with the discomfort that is “the quiet”.
But it is necessary that we learn how.
When I think of words spoken in a group, particularly those with emotional weight, it’s best to think of them like another guest that has just joined the circle. When they are spoken, it’s as if that person’s feelings come to life—like blowing a bubble—and those feelings now live outside of them. They take their own shape and form.
When we pause, allowing those words to linger amidst the group, the emotions they carry can expand to their full size. So that when the words finally dissipate into the ether—like a bubble bursting—they take everything they were meant to, with them. It relieves the speaker of their weight.
When we interject with our thoughts—and break the silence—we stop that process. The energy that gets left behind, before the bubble could fully mature, must be carried once again by the person, or now by the group collectively.
Silence not only changes the speaker, but also the ones who listen. When we stretch our capacity to sit in a space we’ve not filled with our own voice, we grow in our ability to be present. We learn what it means to be a witness—to witness another person’s inner world, but also our own.
When people speak, and we take a beat before responding, we actually get to hear what our hearts want to feel, not just what our minds think we should say. We give ourselves permission to go deeper into our own inner landscape, perhaps even our own discomfort, to find what’s real.
So as we close out 2025, I will leave you with this:
The music is not in the notes, but in the silence between them.
—Claude Debussy
I hope that you will invite silence in, as the great metabolizer that it is. Gifting yourself the hidden melodies held between notes.
Meet Mark, of 360 Kindness
Mark is a a therapist, writer, and creator of 360° Kindness, where you can explore Peace as Progress, Kindness as Revolution, and practical tools for inner enjoyment. You can learn more about this bright-spot-of-a-Substack here!
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First of all, thank you so much for the 'shout out'. I really appreciate it. I love this blog. Silence is so necessary. I'm not sure if I mentioned I was a composer and former touring musician so I love the reference to music and how it emerges from the silence as well. We are wired to notice 'things'. But we simply couldn't were it not for the juxtaposing space and silence from which they (arguably) arise. It's so interesting how huge a perspective shift it is to notice silence. thank you for this lovely article. 🙏🏻 I wish you a peaceful holiday season with those you love.