There is the saying: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” That is very much a half-truth. Words may never hurt one person; but, it could always hurt another person. The interesting thing about words is that they do not harm the body. However, the words can go through the body and hurt the person’s mind. In short, words can hurt a person by inflict all sorts of emotional wounds. The interesting thing about words is that anybody that can communicate can use them.
In regards to words, they can cut a person deeper than any sort of blade. It pierces deeper than any sort of gun. In a sense, words tend to ignore all sorts of defense. You could wear Kevlar body armor and still feel the sting of a few well place words. You could lock yourself in a room with metallic walls and it still would not matter. As long as you can still hear words, nothing can protect you.
The use of words could be far more destructive than attacking with a punch, kick, or a knife. The thing about physical wounds is that as long as they are nonlethal, you can recover from them. Words attack the mind and cause all sorts of emotional harm. Unlike physical wounds, emotional wounds are far more difficult to recover from. Medicines and procedures to treat physical wounds cannot be used to treat emotional wounds. As a result, words can hurt. Words can hurt a whole lot because of that.
The mind and body are linked. Without the mind, the body cannot function. It is the brain that sends all sorts of impulses throughout the body. Also, it is the brain that stores all of those different emotions.
When we get emotionally hurt, it keeps us from doing all sorts of things.
Example One:
Say that you are in the middle of a basketball game and you end up losing. However, the team still did a great job because of the high score count. But, someone decides to badmouth you and the team. It only takes a few well placed malicious words to do the trick as a result.
The team could be hurt by those words that they lose concentration in practice. Because of this, they cannot make proper shots, passes, and other things. At the next game, the team ends up losing big time. Those hurtful words have broken the team’s concentration.
One such example of such demoralization would be Don Imus’ remark to the Rutgers University women’s basketball team.
Example Two:
A few well placed destructive words could do a person in. Say that the person on the receiving end does not have a strong heart or mind for example. The person could end up being physically ill as a result. Because of this, the person could be bedridden for quite awhile. Or if the person is physically able, s/he has lost the strength and vitality because of those damaging words. That is another example on how words can hurt a person.
Example Three:
This is a scenario which happened to a friend of mine. During that one scenario, she had a long distance relationship with a guy via this online role-playing forum that we were members of. He flew out from New Hampshire and moved in with her in Washington. I had thought the relationship was going well. However, that was far from the truth.
The guy used all sorts of hurtful words to her. During our conversations, she told me that he left her crying. He really made her feel like crap. Being around yelling and so forth during childhood really took away a lot of her confidence and self-esteem. What the guy did to her did not help at all. It made her feel even more insecure. In one conversation, she explained that the guy has erectile dysfunction. Perhaps it was psychological or something. However, the guy did not bother to do anything about it. Instead, he took it out on her by constantly yelling and so forth.
Overall:
When these examples are summed up together, words can hurt. Words can do a ton of damage on a person. On a person’s psyche, hurtful words can do a ton of damage. Because of the effectiveness, predatory people use this tactic to demoralize and degrade people that are considered to be “weaker.” The same thing goes for manipulative people as well. Then again, predators and manipulators can be placed in the same group. Hurtful words can kill a person’s self-esteem, confidence, and self-worth. When that happens, we can usually expect the worse. Overall, words then to cut deeper than blades. It can also serve as a double-bladed sword. No amount of physical armor can protect from hurtful words.
