“Silence and periods of calm stimulate brain growth and relieve tension, which can result in a higher sense of well-being, as people can then feel more relaxed generally,” says Prunty. “When this occurs, sleep quality improves.”
Psychological benefits of silence can include enhanced creativity, focus, self control, self awareness, perspective and spirituality. Silence can be used both positively and negatively in communication, and thus can influence our relationships.
When you practice solitude and silence, you allow your brain to process your emotions, rather than suppressing them and remaining on autopilot. You may feel some uncomfortable emotions through this process, but the sooner you recognize and address your feelings, the sooner you can move forward in health and freedom.
Being silent allows us to channel our energies. It gives us the clarity we need to calmly face challenges and uncertainty. The hour of silence I practice each morning, and encourage you to practice as well, can be a time for collecting our thoughts, training our minds, and deciding how we want to enter into the day.
Being quiet and gentle doesn't mean you're weak. Such people show deep, inner strength that's under control. It's knowing when to speak and when to listen; when to take action and when to wait. Don't underestimate such people.
By nature, quiet people have loud minds because they have deep thoughts. While many scratch the surface of a comment or tone, quiet people dig in a little more. They go to the bottom layers to see what more is there. As you can imagine, this takes more time — which is why they're quieter.
Quiet people are either anxious or rude:
Shyness/Social Anxiety (you want to join the conversation but you fear making yourself a social outcast by saying something stupid) Intimidation (you're intimidated by the people around you, and shrink back because you don't feel worthy)
Abraham Lincoln said, "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." I'm not suggesting you remain silent all the time. But it's all too easy to speak thoughtlessly, with insufficient information, or out of a wrong assumption.
According To Science, Silence Rewires Your Brain To Make You More Intelligent. The old proverb about silence is more meaningful than originally interpreted. Quieting your speech, actions and surroundings does more than prevent you from looking unintelligent. Studies prove silence actually makes you smarter.
We all feel stress from time to time, but silence may help decrease stress levels by lowering cortisol adrenaline levels. An older 2006 study found that just 2 minutes of silence can be more calming than listening to relaxing music. This was attributed to changes in blood pressure and blood circulation to the brain.
Allowing yourself a little quiet time can help calm the body, ease the stress in the mind, and before you know it, you're feeling peaceful despite the worries of the world. Giving yourself some silence each day actually gives your brain a chance to rest and recuperate.
His piece went on to attribute a sentiment to Albert Einstein: “Silence is complicity with the status quo.”
Staying silent helps give you a reason to speak, to analyze your situations and yourself, to be aware of how you are going to react. Many people do things without thinking because they're not used to the absence of words.
Essentially, the point of the silent treatment is to make the victim feel confused, stressed, guilty, ashamed, not good enough, or unstable enough so that they would do what the manipulator wants.
On the contrary, introverts have attractive qualities because they're active listeners. They speak less and listen more, which gets people interested in them. What makes introverts attractive is their ability to observe beyond the words people speak. They pay close attention to details and are extremely prudent.
Relationally intelligent introverts are often highly self-aware, observant, and are excellent listeners. In fact, one study conducted in 2018 by Newport Healthcare found that introverts tend to make more accurate observations about human behavior than extroverts. Introverts tend to “read” people and situations better.
Being an introvert doesn't necessarily mean you're socially awkward, but the two do sometimes overlap. Certainly, as in my case, the fear of feeling anxious and awkward in social settings can cause us to lean into our introversion.
Introversion and Happiness
While introverts are generally likely to report lower levels of happiness than extroverts, this does not mean that introverts are unhappy. Ultimately, it's important to note the happiness benefits of both introverted and extroverted behavior, no matter where you fall on the spectrum.
And researchers have found 70% of introverts also are highly sensitive people. HSPs for short.
This isn't necessarily true, and while not all quiet people are necessarily smart, highly intelligent people will often refrain from speaking if they are accessing a situation. They will take some time to think about what was said and prepare an adequate response, and they find silence better than pointless small talk.
The smartest people are the ones who are quietly listening and absorbing everything that is being said around them. These people have the most knowledge because they're processing words instead of speaking them. Their thoughts and opinions arrive from knowledge that has been meticulously collected and curated.
People are intimidated by the silence.
People act rather wary and cautious around you. They tend to leave you alone, as if your silence has placed an uncrossable void around you. I mean, sometimes it's funny, but sometimes it's kind of irritating.
Many of those publications recognized silence as a powerful tool of communication; and that it is not peripheral to speech because any form of analysis that is applied to speech could also be applied to the analysis of silence.