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Areas › Low mood and hard feelings › Emotions as signals
You will feel the pull to summarise, to check they are alright, to bring the other person back in. All of it lands as an interruption. Give it a few slow breaths of nothing at all. If you do speak, keep it small and low, something like 'take your time'. When people come back up from there they usually bring something they had not said before.
'We know what his soul whispers to him' (Quran 50:16). Someone who has gone quiet inside is not alone in there, which is a reason you can afford to wait.
ق
وَلَقَدۡ خَلَقۡنَا ٱلۡإِنسَٰنَ وَنَعۡلَمُ مَا تُوَسۡوِسُ بِهِۦ نَفۡسُهُۥۖ وَنَحۡنُ أَقۡرَبُ إِلَيۡهِ مِنۡ حَبۡلِ ٱلۡوَرِيدِ
We created man––We know what his soul whispers to him: We are closer to him than his jugular vein––
Qur’an 50:16read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A meta-analytic review of 114 studies found that rumination, avoidance and suppression had large associations with psychological difficulty, while acceptance and reappraisal had only small to medium ones. The authors' reading was that habitually turning away from an emotion mattered more than which particular way of turning toward it a person chose. These are associations across existing studies rather than proof of cause, but they do support giving the turning toward some room.
Aldao A, Nolen-Hoeksema S, Schweizer S. (2010). Emotion-regulation strategies across psychopathology: A meta-analytic review.. Clinical psychology review doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Staying with a feeling long enough is what lets it move, and talking pulls a person straight back out of it.
If the quiet looks like panic or dissociation rather than depth, bring them gently back to the room instead of waiting it out.
Watch for the swerve. Right after something tender gets said, along comes a story about a brother or a colleague or a thing from years ago, and the tender part quietly gets left behind.
Go back to the second before you reacted. Not the argument, not the history, just that one second and what crossed you in it.
When someone pours out a lot at once, catch the two or three words carrying the weight and give those back to them, in order.