This blog is a chapter from Bullies and Bystanders, edited by Janet Fife and Anne Lee, which is published this week by DLT. Rebecca Parnaby-Rooke is a trained music therapist who facilitates the online community The Ordinary Office.

Rebecca Parnaby-Rooke

“Silence is Golden”, as the Tremeloes famously sang. Jazz musician Miles Davis spoke of his craft belonging in the music he did not play; and quotes have been attributed to both Debussy and Mozart speaking of the power of silence in music. The notes you don’t play are often as important to a piece as the ones you do.

Think of that moment when a conductor holds the orchestra in position after the final note of a piece. Nobody plays a sound, nobody moves. The music is still being intentionally crafted, as represented by the musicians remaining poised. The art is still in motion. But for that moment, they are allowing the silence to ring out just as powerfully as the notes did moments before. Without that moment, what came before would be diminished.

It is an art, knowing how to craft silence. As music therapists, this forms an essential part of our training. In his excellent blog “What is Music without Silence”, Phil Evans succinctly explains the way we work with silence to support our clients. Specifically he explains. “Silence in music therapy, as in life, can take on many qualities. It can be oppressive or mutual, uncomfortable or soothing.” (Evans, 2013). It is this subversion of silence from the intentional and powerful to the forced and harmful which I seek to explore in this chapter.

Preserving the Positive Silence

In a music therapy session, if I heard a client play a soft instrument, such as an egg shaker, and responded with a hard strike on a bass drum, it would drown out their contribution, send the message my voice was more important, and discourage them from contributing again. I wouldn’t be doing my job. My role within the session is to facilitate the client in communication, musical interaction, and therapeutic development, not to make the musical sounds I like best. So, I may choose to hold my silence and look interested, hold a paused chord to invite more of their sound, or repeat their pattern to show I had heard it. I would acknowledge what they had done musically and give them encouragement to continue sharing what they had to offer.

How often is that the response to a survivor? We hear you, we are interested, please give us more?

Should my response be effective, and the client be in a position where they feel able, we may proceed on a musical journey together, exploring what they have to share. My role now is to facilitate, encourage, and most of all listen. To hold the space for any emotions or challenges we may encounter on the way.

How often is that the experience during a survivor journey? We are here for you, please know you are supported and we will tackle whatever arises together?

Once the moment has run its course, all has been expressed, and we come together in a moment of pause, there will be a silence. An opportune moment. This is the moment in which all that came before can be taken away as constructive, or can be ruined.

How often is it that the meetings survivors have which feel to have been beneficial are ended with platitudes, broken promises, or inaction?

I treasure that moment of silence, however brief. I invest in that moment of shared understanding, of coming together at the end of an intense journey. For it always is profound when someone chooses to share vulnerability with me. I have a responsibility in that moment to honour their choice, and take it forward with grace and respect. For me, that means recording what has happened in my clinical notes, sharing the event with family or staff teams (should that be appropriate) and ending every session with a “Thank you” song for the great privilege it has been to be with the client in music.

How often are survivors’ experiences respected and centred so? How often are records comprehensively kept, and information appropriately shared in line with GDPR and Caldicott principles? How often are survivors thanked for the great efforts they go to every time they relive their experiences, knowing the cost each time?

What is Retraumatising?

The cost of subverting silence is retraumatising survivors. This takes many forms, but first let us be clear with a definition of the term. Retraumatising is defined as “one’s reaction to a traumatic exposure that is colored, intensified, amplified, or shaped by one’s reactions and adaptational style to previous traumatic experiences(2)’. Essentially, an event which takes a person back to the state of trauma experienced at a prior time. This is not to be confused with the term ‘trigger’, which in comparison would be an event which increases a person’s emotional response in relation to a state of trauma experienced at a prior time. Put simply, a trigger reminds and therefore evokes. Retraumatising places the person back in the physical, emotional and spiritual state of trauma as a full-bodied response.

It may feel like a bold claim to suggest silence can impact a person to the extent they have a physical response – until we consider the myriad ways silencing can occur, especially in the context of bullying: repeated microaggressions which make a person afraid to speak out, in case their contribution is commented on, ridiculed, or contradicted. Being spoken over or shouted down. Left out of email chains or meetings. Finding out about key issues concerning their work through unofficial channels, removing any opportunity for discussion or feedback – with the refrain “Oh, I thought you already knew” echoing though the gossip. As if that would make it okay – the blow had already been delivered and further participation in sharing the news was a mere aftershock.

The earthquake analogy is a good one to use when it comes to trauma and retraumatising. When an earthquake hits you get the initial tremor, registered on the Richter scale and causing various levels of damage. It is a most unsettling thing to feel, an earthquake. During the Market Rasen earthquake in Lincolnshire on 27th February 2008, I was woken from my sleep feeling like I was being thrown around in a snow globe – while still laid on my bed.  I have never felt anything like it. But that isn’t necessarily the end of it.

Aftershocks can be just as devastating as the original seismic event. Some even register as high on the Richter scale as their original tremor. The aftershocks can keep on coming for days, even years; one series of aftershocks from New Madrid in North America have been active for 145 years – and counting! Not only do they cause damage in their own right, but they destabilise what has been shored up from the previous events. They make already damaged spaces worse. They trigger near collapses to become full destructive events. Just as retraumatising events do for abuse survivors.

Silence, Retraumatising & Spiritual Abuse

Judith Herman describes silent survivors as “carrying the weight of a burden that does not belong to them(3)”. When the #MeToo movement gained rapid traction on social media in 2017, it was almost as if sexual abuse survivors everywhere were breathing a collective sigh of relief. They could finally lay down the weight of their burdens and relate to people. Use their agency. Share parts of themselves which had never seen the light of day. No longer be silent.

For with silence comes shame.

I cannot talk about this, it must be hidden. I’ll be considered dirty, stupid, I brought it on myself.

With silence comes doubt.

Am I a victim, or actually, did I deserve this, were they right, am I wrong, bad, mad? Evil. Sinful.

With silence comes fear.

What if I accidentally talk about anything close to this, and cause trouble. I’d better not talk at all.

With silence comes introversion.

I can’t talk about this, so I won’t talk about anything. I’m better off on my own.

With silence comes frustration.

Can’t people SEE that something is wrong? That I’m hurting? That I’m not ok?

With silence comes anger.

WHY is nobody LISTENING to me? WHY won’t someone HELP ME?

When we are forced into positions of silence, all of this confusion, pain and negativity has only one place to go: inwards. We become ashamed of ourselves. Doubtful of our own identity. Fearful of our own judgement. Introvert, unless we use crutches to take us out of our misery for just a short while. Frustrated because we know, deep down, we were made for more than this.

And then comes the anger. Anger because all around us we see the pastors who abused us as children continuing to live out their days free from justice. Anger because we pursue our abusers through the courts, through jury trials where we, as witnesses, are the ones tried and found to be “not convincing enough” while our rapists walk free. Anger because we lose our health, honour and livelihoods to relentless bullies who use statutes and diktats to trap us in a world of legalism. While we sit, silent, typing messages and deleting them, because “it won’t help our case”.

I often wonder, actually, if it would help our case. If instead of adhering to the social norms of smiling politely and ignoring growing animosity, waiting two months for the next PCC to raise an issue, or subtweeting our grievances without ever making an actual complaint to the person involved, we would actually do better by grappling with the process outlined in Matthew 18:15-17. Speak up, individually, then with trauma-informed, trusted, and suitable supportive peers. Make it commonplace for siblings in Christ to be people who have difficult conversations. Because the harm which comes from fear of speaking up cannot be overemphasised.

In her courageous book A Spirituality of Survival(4), Methodist leader Barbara Glasson talks about the importance of finding a language of inclusion. We can only do that if we make space to listen and truly hear what each person has to say. What one person may see as liberating, another may see as oppressive. We can only begin to understand those dynamics if we name them first, without seeing them as confrontational or personal attacks, just spoken truths from the hearts of beloved siblings in Christ. When we speak into the silence, name our truths, we give each other the power of information. With that, the weight of the burden of silence is lifted. The shame, pain, and sin is placed back with the one to whom it belongs. Jesus can deal with it there. With us, the process of restoration and reconciliation can begin. Aftershocks can no longer impact the previously damaged infrastructure because instead of being shored up with wood, it is now being rebuilt from the ground up with iron.

We don’t know what burdens are carried by those we meet. Some of us may never be able to speak of them. Others may, in time, but not yet. Through my work I have been privileged to enable the breaking of silences which have been held for decades. As people of faith we are called to nurture spaces where all feel able to speak. Where silence is an invitation for glorious sound, not an oppressive, threatening blanket of pressure. Whether through speech, sign, augmentative communication tools, writing, singing, symbols, advocacy, or any other form of expression. We must be open, listening to and caring for what we receive in the space we hold. For what beauty could we be part of if we are?

(1) Evans, P, “What is Music without Silence.” At https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/phil-evans/music-therapy-silence_b_3390764.html  Accessed 14th October 2022.

(2) Danieli, Y,  “Fundamentals of working with (re)traumatized populations” in G. H. Brenner, D. H. Bush, & J. Moses (Eds.), Creating spiritual and psychological resilience: Integrating care in disaster relief work (pp. 195–210) (Abingdon: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group, 2010).

(3) Herman, J ed., Trauma and Recovery (New York:  Basic Books, 2015), p. 200.

(4) Glasson, B, A Spirituality of Survival (London: Continuum, 2009).

Copies of Bullies and Bystanders are available from Anne Lee or Janet Fife at the discounted price of £10 + 3.95 P&P. Contact Anne Lee at

anne.lee@retired.ox.ac.uk or Janet Fife at jhfife@icloud.com