"Some people can’t heal by talking — and don’t need to."

Therapy clients are asked to put complex emotional experiences into words. But what if your words won’t come? And what if silence isn’t avoidance, but survival?

This is the reality for many of the men I work with. Men whose lives have taught them that silence keeps you safe. That emotion is weakness. That speaking the unspeakable could cost you something: respect, safety, control, even your life.

In prison, silence is a strategy. And therapy that ignores that truth will fail.

Why Silence Isn’t the Problem

Most mental health tools are built on the assumption that you can talk about what hurts. That healing starts with naming your pain. But for a lot of men — especially incarcerated men — pain doesn’t live in words.

It lives in images.
In fragments.
In gut feelings you can’t quite name.

Trauma scrambles memory. It silences speech. It leaves you with flashes: the smell of blood, the sound of a door slamming, the image of a face you can’t forget. These aren’t stories. They’re pieces. And traditional therapy expects a story.

Here’s the problem:

You can’t tell a story if you don’t have the language — or the safety — to tell it.

The Double Silence

Two forces are at play here.

  1. Trauma makes words hard to access.
    Severe trauma can overwhelm your nervous system. Your body stores it in sensations and images, not sentences. This isn’t theoretical — it’s backed by decades of trauma research. Survivors often don’t know what they feel, much less how to say it.
  2. Masculinity punishes expression.
    Especially in prison, showing emotion can be dangerous. Vulnerability is seen as weakness. And many men have learned — long before prison — that “real men” don’t ask for help. They don’t cry. They don’t open up.

Put these together, and you get what I call the double silence:
The body wants to speak, but the system won’t let it.
The mind wants to heal, but the method doesn’t fit.

When Talk Therapy Stops Working

Talk therapy assumes you can reflect, share, and verbally process. It works best when clients feel safe and can articulate complex emotions.

But in carceral environments, the risks of disclosure are high. You don’t know who’s listening. You don’t know how your words might be used against you. Even inside the therapy room, trust takes time. Words don’t always feel worth the risk.

So the usual tools fall flat:

  • “Tell me how you feel...” → Silence.
  • “What do you think contributed to this?” → Shrug.
  • “Can you describe the memory?” → Laughter, anger, a quick subject change.

This is not because they don’t care (though this is often the automatic outside assumption, even by "professionals"). In my opinion (as a "professional"), it is because talking isn’t the way in.

So, Now What?

That’s where visual-based, no-talk therapy comes in. A new class of approaches that say:

You don’t have to name it to move it.
You don’t have to talk about it to see it.
You don’t need a perfect sentence to start healing.

These approaches rely on:

  • Symbolism instead of storytelling
  • Feeling instead of framing
  • Meaning-making through montage, not monologue

This isn’t a rejection of therapy. It’s an evolution. One that honours how trauma actually lives in the body — and how healing can happen before words.

What You Can Take Away

If you are someone who’s struggled to put pain into words, here’s the point:

  • Silence doesn’t mean stuck.
  • Image is a language.
  • And not every story begins with “once upon a time.”

Some begin with a flicker of light through a crack.
A slow drip from a broken tap.
A cut between one image and another that says more than a sentence ever could.

This is the space between silence and story.
And this is where no-talk therapy begins.

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