Why Is Silence Scaring Us?

You go to the car and turn on the radio. You come home and turn on the TV. You put music on your phone when you take a shower, sing or think. We fear silence and show it in thousands of different ways. That vacuum that suggests a lack of noise haunts us; and because of this fear, we lose important opportunities. Perhaps, if we knew the value of silence, we would stop escaping it as if it were our worst enemy.

When was the last time you were silent? When was the last time you experienced a complete absence of external and internal stimuli? For most, complete silence is almost a utopia, an impossible state to reach and maintain. It is also considered by many to be something dangerous and disturbing. But why does this happen to us and why does silence scare us? And what can we do about it?

We are afraid of silence

You may have already realized that there may or may not be such a widespread trend in our society. The truth is that every day we repeat this phenomenon.

We surround ourselves with all sorts of technological devices that provide us with stimuli for our senses.  And in addition to doing it as one form of entertainment in our spare time, we turn to them in almost any daily activity. When we cook, clean or play sports, we are always accompanied by external noise.

The same is true for us when we spend time with colleagues, friends, or family. Although Finns are known for their infrequency, many of us have certainly found ourselves in a situation where we have started a boring conversation with a neighbor in the elevator, for example, just because silence makes us embarrassed. How many times do we really have nothing to say, and yet we try to fill those awful voids with words.

In addition to this, even if we find ourselves in apparent silence, without outside noise that would haunt our senses, we turn to our internal resources to escape this situation. These are just mechanisms by which we seek to avoid the silence we experience in the present moment.

Why does silence scare us?

Because we don’t know ourselves

We fear silence because it means we should make contact with ourselves. We escape silence because we escape ourselves. This is the fear that we will be left alone with the side we refuse to see; with the fears and wounds we have ignored. We are horrified to hear our own voice, an inner cry that we have buried for years under outside sounds and noise.

We don’t know ourselves because we’ve never been alone. We don’t know ourselves, and on the other hand, we don’t dare to get to know ourselves either. When silence arises, it brings with it the sounds of our shadows, those dark parts of our innermost being that we do not recognize as our own when they are. We are all that, no matter how refused to see this side of us for decades.

Because we are not used to it

Of course, not everything is our fault. We are born and live immersed in a society that doesn’t teach us to connect or listen to our own guts, but keeps us busy and constantly bothering us.

Self-knowledge, personal development, meditation… All these practices seem to be reserved for the minority who are suffering and who need to get back on their feet, when in reality we should all practice them.

Silence has taken on a stigmatized image and we are taught to see it as a negative thing – a sign that a quiet person is angry, hurt, sad, or gone. Silence evokes loneliness and emptiness, shyness, and negative emotions when this should not be the case.

Start practicing silence

Practicing silence helps us unite our fears, wounds, and desires. It allows us to feel ourselves, heal ourselves, and turn our gaze back to our own innermost being. It gives us the opportunity to find our desires and opinions, to regain our strength and our own voice. When you find and accept yourself as you learn to love and be with you, there is no other similar place in the world.

Only you can fill your void, heal your wounds and overcome your fears. Only you can work towards your dreams and goals. Then why are you afraid to spend time with yourself? Give yourself a chance and you’ll find out what kind of things you’ve lost all this time when you’re afraid of silence.