A client arrives and plops herself on my couch.  “I don’t know what to talk about today.  While I was driving, I was thinking about it, and I really don’t have anything pressing.”

In my more-than-a-decade of practicing therapy, I’ve probably had 100 sessions start like this.  Some of them have turned into the most productive, insight-oriented sessions of my career.  Having nothing to talk about isn’t a sign that there’s something wrong with therapy; it’s an opportunity to peek under some unturned stones.

This is part and parcel to the way therapy is structured.  Therapy sessions are typically scheduled on a weekly, rather than “as needed”, basis.  That’s because it’s not about putting out fires as they emerge, and it’s not about crisis management.  It’s about learning to cope with the “tough stuff” better by developing deeper insight into yourself, your life, and your experiences.

Most people are propelled to come to therapy by a crisis, or a recognition that there’s an unsustainable pattern in their lives.  At the outset, there is usually a lot to talk about – the challenges that brought you in, the history that gives context to what you’re dealing with, and basic “getting to know you” stuff.

So what do you do when you realize a few months in, upon arriving for your scheduled session, that there isn’t really anything that feels pressing?

Focus on the week’s strengths.

Let’s say you’re going to therapy to work on your anxiety.  You go to 10 therapy sessions, many of which center around the ways anxiety has impacted you in the previous week.  You and your therapist delve into some combination of:

  1. Example of how anxiety showed up in the last week.
  2. Exploration of anxiety triggers, as well as how you managed that anxiety, and how you could have managed it better.
  3. Discussion about how this fits into the broader context of your experiences with anxiety.

But as you’re driving to therapy, you realize anxiety hasn’t really affected you very much in the previous week.  This presents an opportunity.  One of your goals is probably to decrease the frequency with which you feel anxious, and over the last week, that’s been the case.

So now you have the opportunity to focus on what made this week different.  Did you avoid triggers, or did you cope with them in a new way?  Did you try something your therapist suggested, and find it to be helpful or effective?  Did you discover something on your own that made your anxiety feel less potent?

In other words, how did you mobilize your own strengths to make this week feel better?

Focus on underlying themes.

One of my favorite therapist acronyms is COW, which stands for “crisis of the week”.  So a therapist might write in their progress note, “Focused on COW related to not wanting to go to a work function, as well as underlying theme of imposter syndrome.”

If you’re the client in that note, a week when you don’t have very much to say is an excellent opportunity to do a deep dive into your imposter syndrome.  When did you first notice this?  Can you remember a time in your childhood or adolescence when someone told you that you’re not good enough?  What fuels your fear that you’re just faking it?

If you’re mentally spinning on a COW, you don’t really have the capacity to consider the broader context.  Therapy sessions without a crisis are a great opportunity to zoom out and gain more insight.

Talk about why talking is hard

If you don’t have much to say, it could be that there isn’t much on your mind, or not much has happened.  But it could also be that something is standing in your way.  Here are a few things that could be a barrier to the usual easy flow of therapy:

  • You’re mentally elsewhere.  A few years ago, I was deeply immersed in a writing project when I looked at the clock and realized it was time to leave the house and meet with my therapist.  We started the session, and I spacily told her that I had been elbow-deep in a blog article.  I had trouble being present that day, and after a few minutes, she said, “in your head, you’re still sitting at your computer, aren’t you?”  She encouraged me to take a few deep breaths, ground myself in the room, and then we had a productive session.
  • You’re protecting yourself.  Did you let uncomfortable parts of yourself be seen at your last session?  Sometimes when you’ve shared a lot, it can be hard to sit with that vulnerability.  Maybe you’re feeling embarrassed or ashamed.  Try telling your therapist that it’s hard to talk to them because you feel weird that you told them so much in a previous session.  A good therapist will validate these feelings and support you in expressing them.
  • You’re upset with your therapist.  Check in with yourself.  How are you feeling about your therapist?  Did they say something at your last session that made you feel judged or misunderstood?  Therapy is a relationship, and all relationships have the potential to encounter rifts or uncomfortable moments.  If you realize you’re harboring negative feelings, say something about what’s upsetting you.  If your therapist handles it poorly, maybe you’ll decide to pursue support elsewhere… but if they express curiosity, apologize, and own what they’ve done wrong, it can be very healing to work through the conflict together.

Revisit your therapy goals

In our practice, during an early session, every client works with their therapist to build a list of therapy goals.  The point of this is to figure out what success would look like, so that you’re not coming in, week after week, with no “end game”.  We put the goals in your file, and for longer-term clients, we revisit them with you annually.

If you’ve been coming in for awhile and feel like you don’t have much to say, it can be helpful to review that list.  When your therapist goes through it with you, you may realize that one of the following things is true:

  • You’ve made a lot of great progress on your goals, and it’s time to start thinking about a break from therapy.
  • You’ve never really touched on something you identified as important when you started therapy.
  • In the preceding few weeks or months, you’ve been talking a lot about something that isn’t anywhere on your goals list, and you’d like to add a new goal.

Any of these realizations are wonderful grist for the therapy mill.

What if you’re working with a therapist outside of our practice who didn’t build a goal list with you at the beginning of therapy?  You can still ask them to look back at their progress notes from your first few sessions, and to tell you what you said you were hoping to get out of therapy.

When there’s nothing to talk about, there’s plenty to talk about.

Some clients panic at the realization that they don’t have anything to talk to their therapist about, and overcorrect by bringing up something minor and making a mountain out of a molehill.  Fifty minutes later, the therapist pats themself on the back.  “What a great session,” I might say to myself.  “I really helped him through that problem.”  But inevitably, the client leaves feeling a lot worse.

Why do people do this?  Sometimes it’s about people pleasing – the client wants their therapist to feel valued and important, and they’re worried that if they don’t bring a presenting concern into their session, the therapist will feel stuck.  Other times it’s about wanting to justify the time and expense of a therapy session.  It can also be an attachment reaction – a fear that if they say, “I don’t have much to talk about,” their therapist will declare them ready to “graduate” and the client will lose the stability of that relationship.

But there’s a lot to be done when there’s nothing immediately pressing.  Or, put otherwise, there’s a lot to talk about when there’s nothing to talk about.