Spirituality and Wellness
Peggy McDonagh
The Words We Speak
It is said that there is the power of life and death in the tongue.
As a student at the University of Alberta in
the mid-’80s, I minored in social and cultural
anthropology. I recall some of the studies done
about Indigenous communities and their ability
to use words to modify behaviou r. One interesting
story was told of an Australian Aboriginal who
died not long after someone pointed a bone at
him and cursed him with a death threat.
Apparently, as the story reported, in this
Aboriginal community, a person convinced of
his own impending death unintentionally wills
that death by becoming so stressed that he stops
eating and drinking.
An ancient wisdom text says that the tongue is
one of the smallest organs in the body but exerts
tremendous force. Words are an essential mode
of communication and can be the most infl uential
power available to humanity. We can choose
words to tear down and humiliate or choose
words to build up and encourage.
Most of us are familiar with the childhood
saying, “Sticks and stones may break my bones
but words will never hurt me.” A boy might call
his sister mean and stupid and she, in turn,
chants back that his words do not hurt her.
However, words do hurt and can be destructive.
Working with a social service program for women
living in abusive situations I learned that ‘sticks
and stones,’ in other words broken bones and
bruises, most often heal. Much longer lasting is
the lack of self-esteem and self-confi dence and
increased self-hatred and insecurity that women
experience because of verbal abuse. In such
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situations, women are persistently told that they
are ignorant, lazy, irresponsible, bad mothers,
and negligent.
Damaging words can mentally scar us.
Unfortunately, people too often deliberately use
their words as weapons with an intent to infl ict
emotional harm. Such verbal cruelty occurs in
relationships but now more potently through
various forms of social media.
The terrible consequences of verbal cruelty
are only too real. Young people commit suicide
because they are physically and verbally bullied
at school or on social media. There are many
stories of online bullying of people of all ages,
gender, and sexual orientation worldwide who
have then committed suicide as a result of such
verbal bullying.
In an article entitled “Can Words Cause
Cancer?” Dr. Lolette Kuby writes about the
eff ects of words on our health and well-being.
Dr. Kuby believes that the immediate terrifi ed
response to the word ‘cancer’ occurs because of a
phenomenon called ‘verbal realism,’ which means
that “the mind responds to words as strongly as it
would to the things they represent.” Thus, a word
carries the emotional power of the real thing.
What we hear becomes our reality.
According to Don Miguel Ruiz in his book The
Fifth Agreement, “Words are the language we
speak that results in the creation of the reality
we come to know.” Words do not change reality;
instead, they change how we perceive reality. If
a young person hears words like, “You are ugly,”