Take our Generalized Anxiety Disorder Test

Find a therapist to overcome anxiety

Silence often feels threatening because it exposes avoided thoughts and emotions.

Building tolerance for silence is like muscle training—start small and increase gradually.

High-achievers may mistake constant input for productivity, when it's often avoidance.

A client of mine, a high-achiever I will call Dana, came into a session and announced a victory that would sound small to most people. She had driven in complete silence. There was no podcast, no playlist, no phone call, no audiobook playing. It was just her, the road, and her own thoughts for the length of a short drive to her therapy session. This was something that terrified her. In fact, just being solely in her own company had frightened her for as long as she could remember. So naturally, we made this a treatment goal.

When she first described the fear, it was vivid. She imagined that the moment she turned everything off, the thoughts she had spent years pushing down would come rushing back and crash into her like a tidal wave. So she kept the noise on. Every commute, every errand, and every quiet moment got filled. The stimulation felt like a preference, but it was actually a strategy.

This is the part most people miss. The constant input was not background noise. She was conditioning herself, and the distraction was doing a job. The podcasts and playlists were keeping difficult material at a distance, which meant that silence was never neutral for her. Silence could ignite discomfort and bring unwanted........

© Psychology Today