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THE POWER OF YOUR WORDS
When I was a kid, there was this saying that “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.” Usually we would use this saying in response to some sort of harsh judgment, name calling or unnecessary criticism, and the goal was almost always the same — shake off the impact of whatever someone else said.
On one hand, using this phrase can sometimes make us feel really good about ourselves (at least in the moment. We shirk off the name calling, the mean words, and sometimes even sound criticisms all in the name of strength and self-preservation. On the other hand, this sentence usually backfires. If not now, then later, but eventually we come to realise that our words have power, and we have to make an honest assessment about what that means to us.
The truth that has become more commonly known in recent years, is that words are in fact quite powerful, perhaps some even more than they let on. In an experiment published to ScienceDirect in October 2009, Maria Richter worked with collaborating scientists to answer a simple question — ”Do words hurt?” And this simple question had a simple answer — “Yes.” But in a much real sense it had a more complex answer which went something like; “Maybe. We can’t quite say we’re absolutely sure because each person may…
