What to Talk About in Therapy: A Guide for When Your Mind Goes Blank
Running out of words in therapy? You're not alone. Here's why embracing the silence might be exactly what you need.
The Blank Mind Dilemma
You've booked your therapy session. You're sitting in that familiar chair, and your therapist asks the dreaded question: "What would you like to talk about today?"
Suddenly, your mind goes completely blank.
This scenario is far more common than you might think. Many clients find that their minds go completely blank the moment they sit down, where all your problems seem to vanish the moment you step into the counselling room. One moment you're overwhelmed by life's complexities, the next you're staring at your therapist wondering if you've somehow been miraculously cured overnight.
Spoiler alert: you haven't.
Why Your Mind Goes Blank in Therapy
The Pressure to Perform
There's an unspoken expectation that therapy sessions should be productive, meaningful, and full of breakthrough moments. This pressure can paradoxically make your mind shut down, much like when someone asks you to "tell a joke" and suddenly every funny thing you've ever heard disappears.
The Safety Paradox
Therapy rooms are designed to be safe spaces, but sometimes our minds interpret safety as permission to finally relax. When we're not in crisis mode, pressing issues can feel less urgent or even invisible. Your brain might be taking a well-deserved break from hypervigilance.
Overwhelm Shutdown
Sometimes we have so much going on that our minds simply can't prioritise what to discuss first. It's like having a cluttered room – you know it needs sorting, but you can't decide where to start, so you don't start at all.
The Art of Sitting with Not Knowing
Here's where conventional wisdom might surprise you: not knowing what to talk about is actually valuable therapeutic material.
Embracing Ambivalence
That uncomfortable feeling of not knowing? That's ambivalence, and it's worth exploring. In our achievement-oriented culture, we're conditioned to always have answers, plans, and clear directions. But life isn't always clear-cut, and neither is personal growth.
Learning to sit with uncertainty – to be genuinely okay with not knowing – is a profound skill that extends far beyond the therapy room. It's about developing tolerance for life's grey areas.
The Difficulty of "Just Being"
Let's be honest: staying present with ambivalence is bloody difficult. Our minds want to fill the silence, solve the puzzle, or at least appear like we're making progress. The urge to perform, even in therapy, can be overwhelming.
This difficulty isn't a personal failing – it's a very human response to uncertainty. Acknowledging this struggle, rather than fighting it, can be surprisingly liberating.
Practical Strategies for Wordless Sessions
Start with Your Body
When words fail, tune into physical sensations. Are your shoulders tense? Is your breathing shallow? Sometimes our bodies hold conversations our minds aren't ready to have yet.
Try saying: "I don't know what to talk about, but I notice my chest feels tight today."
Explore the Blankness
The absence of words is still information. You might explore:
What it feels like to not know what to say
Whether this blankness feels familiar from other areas of life
What you imagine you should be talking about
Use the Relationship
Your therapeutic relationship itself can be the topic. How does it feel to sit in silence with your therapist? What comes up when you're not performing or problem-solving?
Bring in the Mundane
Sometimes the most profound insights emerge from seemingly ordinary experiences. That argument with your partner about loading the dishwasher might reveal deeper patterns about control, appreciation, or communication.
The Therapeutic Value of Slow Moments
Processing Time
Not every session needs to be a revelation. Sometimes therapy is about integration – allowing previous insights to settle and develop roots. Your mind might be doing important background processing work.
Modelling Self-Acceptance
By accepting your own uncertainty in therapy, you're practising radical acceptance. You're learning that your worth isn't tied to your productivity or your ability to have profound insights on demand.
Breaking the Performance Cycle
Many of us spend our lives performing – at work, in relationships, even in our own heads. Therapy can be one of the few places where you're allowed to simply exist without an agenda.
Moving Forward with Patience
Remember that therapy isn't a performance or a test you can fail. It's a collaborative exploration, and sometimes exploration involves wandering rather than marching purposefully toward a destination.
Your therapist is trained to work with silence, uncertainty, and the spaces between words. They won't judge you for not having a prepared agenda or for feeling stuck.
The next time you find yourself staring blankly at your therapist, try this: "I don't know what to talk about today, and I'm noticing that feels uncomfortable."
That sentence alone might open doors you didn't even know existed.
The Courage to Not Know
In a world that demands constant clarity and decisive action, choosing to sit with uncertainty requires genuine courage. It means resisting the urge to fill space with words just for the sake of speaking. It means trusting that not all growth happens through dramatic breakthroughs – sometimes it happens in the quiet moments of simply being present with yourself.
Your therapy journey doesn't need to follow anyone else's timeline or format. Some sessions will be full of tears and revelations. Others will be quiet explorations of what it means to not know what comes next.
Both are equally valuable.
Struggling to find the right therapeutic approach for you? Remember that good therapy adapts to your needs, including your need for silence and uncertainty. Consider reaching out to explore how therapy might work for your unique situation.