When silence is mistaken for resolution
During their time in Sardinia, Kerstin and Egle found themselves waiting in the evenings for the sound of cicadas. Listening, they wondered: where were they when everything seemed quiet? What determined when they became audible?
For Egle, this prompted a psychological reflection: something can be hidden—or simply beyond our awareness—and be mistaken for something that has disappeared.
The cicada’s life cycle deepens this metaphor. Cicadas spend most of their lives beneath the ground before emerging, shedding their outer skins and filling the air with sound.
We might call this the “cicada effect”—a metaphor, rather than an established psychological concept.
A grief, fear, longing or unspoken truth may remain outside our everyday awareness for years. Life carries on. We work, care for others and manage our routines. Because something is quiet, we may assume it has gone.
Then a relationship, loss, anniversary or moment of vulnerability brings it to the surface.
What emerges can feel sudden and surprisingly intense. Yet its intensity may not belong entirely to what has just happened. The present moment may have touched something with a much longer history.
Sometimes several experiences become audible together. What initially feels like one emotion becomes a chorus: the present hurt, an earlier loss, an unmet longing and the fear of being hurt again.
Silence does not always mean resolution. What appears suddenly may have been quietly shaping our experience for a long time.
In therapy, we can slow down, find our bearings and become curious:
What belongs to this moment?
What earlier experience might it be touching?
What protection once helped me survive—and does it still serve me now?
We do not have to understand the whole chorus at once. Sometimes the work begins with feeling safe enough to hear one voice within it.
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