how much are words able to hurt you?

Words can inform our mind, comfort our feelings, excite & thrill our spit and warm our hearts. But they can also slap our face, punch us in the stomach, rattle our nerves, kill our desire, or destroy our self-confidence. Not literally, but word capture or physical reactions to what is being said and it has power. It can emotionally move and affect us.

We use these words with ease and usually with little thought. We simply open our mouths and out they come. With our words we express our beliefs and at the same time affecting those we are speaking to, and they vice versa to us.

Our words have very good influence. We all at times overlook the strength of our words, but this sometimes ignorance makes us no less susceptible to their power. We have many super stitutions about how we use our words. We are afraid to talk about certain things for fear that our words will have some kind of negative affect.

The power of words starts to influence us at an early age. we learn to associate certain words with the opinons expressed about those words. These words are likely to stick in our minds even when we our adults. the words we use and hear frequently become second nature to us. this causes a problem when words loses it literal meaning and become distorted in our own minds by the emotions that surround it. we then become less able to relay what we really want to say because the words carry meanings that only we know the emotional meaning to. this is not only a problem when we are talking to someone else, but also when they are speaking to us. they may have their own emotional links to certain words; this then can cause our interpretation of what is being said to be different from what is actually meant.

In relationships, words can be especially powerful and sometimes dangerous. we tend to use labels to define people and situations.when labels are put on people they can have the effect if dehumanizing a person by shrinking their being down to a single word.

We have all heard the saying; "sticks and stone will break my bones but names will never hurt me". children learn to say this usually after being the object of hurtful words. but that saying couldn't be further from the truth. our bones usually did make it through just fine, but something had been hurt. another part of the power that words carry. they can hurt us, and usually with a more deep and lasting effect then a physical injury could cause.

ultimately, we all hold the power of words within ourselves. whatever power we give them, and how they may influence us. words reflect and give wings to everything that is inside of us,and for good or bad, they can express what we truly are as nothing else can.