Words Hurt Only When You Care About Them

Words have power… and words hurt. They can create a great deal of pain that can feel like you had fought a beat in your soul, and this can beat the heart into a thousand pieces.

However, words only hurt if they mean something to you: if they come from your partner, a family member, a friend or a co-worker. It feels more if it is someone you have a close relationship with.

Language is not just a line of words that mean different things and that are used to communicate socially. In fact, it is a way of transmitting emotions from one person to another.

For a large part of your life, you hear comments that may not always be so funny. Most of these do not affect our mind, but there are those that leave wounds and that can be difficult to get rid of.

We all have a “basement” in our minds where we remember things that someone close to us has said. It may be that even today you remember certain phrases and words that have affected you.

Words hurt sometimes and leave wounds

One thing we should keep in mind is that none of us are immune to “falling” if we hear bad comments. The worst words, however, are those that lack any form of empathy.

Paul Watzlawick, a prominent Austrian psychologist and expert in communication and language, has come up with a theory he calls “denial.” In this he reflects on the destructive power of words in human communication, and its most common forms:

• Lack of appreciation: this type of communication is used to reduce a person’s value. It removes the meaning of everything a person does or says by using a language that deprives the recipient of its essence. It’s something really destructive.
• Disqualification: in this case it is not a matter of reducing a value, but of completely pulling the rug away and refusing to consider that the other person has any value at all. This often occurs in connection with phrases such as “you are not good at anything”, “you are the most boring person in the world”…
• Confirmation: this level of communication will completely reset a person. In the previous cases, it was about removing the person’s value and humiliating the person, but here it is about “ignoring”. It does not matter if the child does something good or bad, it is ignored in any case. It does not matter that the partner is close to the person he or she loves, because there is a vacuum as if the person did not exist.

How to prevent words from hurting

There are those who simply do not know how to communicate and who lack the tools to be close to another person emotionally, and recognize that person and show respect. These people talk without thinking that this can hurt (at least in most cases).

This is something we have seen in a large part of our lives. Hearing words that hurt is something difficult if it comes from a person who is close to you. However, you can use these tips:

• You need to think about how this person’s personality is. It is possible that the person has this trait: a lack of emotional and respectful communication. If it is this way then you should be prepared for this behavior constantly.

• If communication is always aggressive and includes abuse of your rights, you should not continue with this relationship. It is a form of harassment and in this case you should establish a distance.
• When it comes to your partner, you should keep in mind that irony is also a type of harassment that should not be allowed.
• It is also important to keep in mind that a person’s language says a lot about the personality. If you do not feel comfortable using the language, do not approach this person.

We have all at one time or another felt hurt by words. With these techniques above, you can try to handle your situations better.

Pictures of “Art in the Dark” and Beth Joole.