Reflecting Through Silence and "I Don't Know"

Imagining yourself in a session, and you get the dreaded “I don’t know” from a client. You can also be met with plain old silence. If you work with adolescents, you are all too familiar with this predicament. Even if you only work with adults you still run into it occasionally. When we encounter silence or “I don’t know”, it feels like we’ve hit a wall. We are stuck either because we have no idea what is happening, or we might have a hunch but don’t want to alienate the client by guessing wrong. Solutions seem to be limited to sitting there in silence, asking another question, or changing the topic.

What if there was another option? Motivational Interviewing relies heavily on the skill of complex reflection. Reflections in MI are defined as a statement (Not a question) that offers a hypothesis of what the listener (Counselor) thinks the speaker (Client) means. Reflections are made complex when the counselor adds something to the conversation that was not there before.

When we get an “I don’t know” or silence at first glance there is nothing there however given your skills and training you can likely come up with hunch of what may be behind the “I don’t know”. You can work with this hunch through the use of complex reflection. Your hunch is a hypothesis of what the speaker (who is silent) means. By merely turning your hunch into a complex reflection you can help show that you are paying close attention to your client and get out of the “I don’t know” trap.

What about the risk of alienating your client if you end up being wrong, you might ask? The beauty in this is that if you are genuine in your reflection clients will just correct you if you get it wrong. Furthermore when you get it right (which you frequently will!) you have shown accurate empathy. Accurate Empathy is when we clearly see the world from the client’s perspective. This is an incredibly validating experience and goes a long way in making a client feel engaged in therapy.

Here’s an example: A teen who is an established client has been brought in by their parents and the parents have just left the room. You start talking and quickly get “I don’t know” and silence from the client. Your hunch is that the teen feels like you are talking to their parents about the contents of the sessions. A possible complex reflection could be “Not knowing what I am going to tell your parents is weighing heavily on you”. Note that the teen did not say that they were concerned about their privacy, but the counselor can use their hunch to test the waters and keep the conversation flowing.

Can you think of a complex reflection for the following scenarios?

-You have a new client who has come in for problems with anxiety. You notice they will start to say I don’t know when you ask them about feared situations. You hunch is that they are avoiding conversation that makes them anxious. What are some possible complex reflections?

You have an established adult client who will shut down when you start to talk about their depression. Your hunch is that the feel shame about being depressed. What are some possible complex reflections?