Suffering or cowering in silence is not golden

Silence is golden — or so sang the '60s Tremelos and wrote the 600 B.C. Jewish commentator Midrash. In spite of the very long or popular history of the phrase, silence is not always golden. Sometimes it is more like a sick uremic yellow. When fear and terror prompt silence, it is a mental gag, not a metallic gold.

In a biological adaptation for survival, when cerebral centers of fear are activated there is a simultaneous deactivation of the left hemisphere's speech center. If a large, fast killer is stalking a victim, one's hope for survival is hiding quietly. The body knows this. So as fear goes up, speech goes down. So if that beast is another human — like a bully or, worse, a sexual predator — the fear they create propagates the silence of the lambs.

There are other reasons why silence often accompanies abuse. Children are taught from their birth how to regulate their emotions and internal tensions through parental interactions. This is the whole field of affect regulation that occurs as parents connect with their children when both are distressed. If parents are in tune with their children they will often speak to newborns from the first day of life especially when they are upset. Other parents not as sensitive to the signals of a child may be less conversant. They may talk at the child but are less skilled in imitating a baby's chatter and less likely to converse with a baby especially during stressful moments.

When I see children, I often ask the parents about their stories of childhood fears. The purpose is to try and understand their memories and hence their mental models for handling the frequent stresses of parenting. How and what a person recalls from their past-scary moments gives insight into their own method of solving the problems of distress. If for example an adult remembers being afraid and the parental response is laughter or anger or total disregard they learn to be silent.

Unfortunately it happens all too often. I have had mothers and fathers tell about times from their childhood when they were lost or one thought she was going to die and the memory is of parents' insensitivity. One woman recounted about being sexually terrorized and telling family members. They laughed. That started her ungolden years of silence.

So a grown woman is silent about the assault from 20 years before; the silence was both a product of the terror of the attack but also the learned understanding that if she told her family she would be ridiculed. So she said nothing. Finally after two decades she tells her parents and she is again met with silence, this time from her mother.