The Harm Our Words Can Cause
There is an old saying that I remember from my elementary school days. Whenever someone would say something bad to another person, that person would reply, “sticks and stones my break my bones, but words will never hurt me”. Those words were very brave coming from a first or second grader. I know personally deep down inside that wasn’t true. I know words can wound a person emotionally much like stones can hurt physically. Perhaps in some ways the words do more damage than stones. Physical wounds heal over time, but sometimes emotional wounds last a lifetime.
I’ve been called names because I didn’t fit in with what my peers thought I should be. At other times I was made fun of because people didn’t like the way I looked.
One of the worst things that can happen to a young person is for an authority figure to ridicule them in front of their peers. I can recall two incidents from my past.
The first was in eighth grade science. The teacher discovered that I was embarrassed easily. At every opportunity that presented itself she was sure to call attention to my blushing. Each time this happened, I just wanted to crawl in a hole and pull it in on top of me.
The second time was in ninth grade civics class. The teacher told me to shut one of the windows. When I got up from my desk and walked toward the window, she said, “You sure are moving slow!”
Quite naturally the entire class had a good laugh out of these experiences. I was so humiliated by both of these teachers and neither one of them cared. Thinking back on those two experiences, I wonder why they were so intent on tearing a young person down instead of building them up? I was extremely insecure growing up and that just fueled the flames. I think this says a lot about how these teachers saw themselves. People make fun of others to cover up their own insecurities and make themselves feel better.
How humiliating can it be for an insecure teen to be put down in front of his classmates by someone he looks up to? Neither one of them was calling me names, but they were definitely throwing emotional sticks and stones. Over thirty years later they still hurt.
When I was in the first grade, I snuck up behind one of my classmates intending to pull a prank on him. Startling him, his elbow came back and hit me in the mouth. There was pain and blood, but I had forgotten all about this physical wound until I began writing this post.
A couple years ago, I had a wreck on my bicycle. Besides my pride being hurt, I was extremely stiff and sore for a while. I have thought much more about the pain inflicted by the two teachers instead of the aches and pains of a bike wreck.
When parents throw these “sticks and stones” the humiliation just can’t get any worse. I’ve seen parents of small children yelling curse words at them that just made my blood boil. On one occasion, I witnessed a mother give a 3 or 4 year old a tongue lashing just because he was slow getting into a van. Just because the child was an inconvenience to her, he received a cursing that no self-respecting adult would have tolerated. When a child that age is humiliated by a parent, how can he even be expected to grow up to be a self-respecting adult, much less someone who respects others?
One study showed that verbally abused children are twice as likely to develop mood or anxiety disorders. They also showed 60 percent more symptoms of depression and anxiety.
Another one has shown that verbal abuse can hurt just as much as nondomestic physical and sexual abuse.
Just like a sledgehammer can be used to tear down a brick wall in a matter of minutes, emotional sledgehammers can tear a person down even quicker. It takes much longer to rebuild a wall than it takes to tear it down and it can take years for kind words and deeds to undo the damage caused by harsh words.
Sometimes these “sledgehammers” can cause wounds so bad that they never heal. According to an editorial in The Freeport News: “A few years ago in the United States, a 12-year-old boy committed suicide after constantly being teased in school. Since then there have been several reports of suicides allegedly as a result of children being teased. On an international television talk show, many other teens admitted to having thoughts of suicide because of constant verbal abuse from their peers and also parents.”
How sad that young people take their own lives just because someone is so determined to tear them down with words.
I mentioned the two teachers who tore me down with their words. There is another occasion that I remember when I was a little older. I was going through a difficult time in my teen years with a lot of depression. My sister and I were sitting in a hospital waiting room while our parents visited a sick relative when a stranger walked up to us. He was a rather large man who reminded me of one of those professional wrestlers on TV. He said, “Do you know that God loves you?” Those kind words were enough to lift my depression if only for a few minutes. I can still remember the relief I felt.
Words truly can hurt, but they can also heal. Let’s choose our words carefully.
