Sticks and Stones . . .

Sticks and stones may break my bones,
But words will never hurt me.

Do you really believe that adage? I was recently told that nobody’s words may hurt you without your permission. Is that true to you?

To me, it’s not. The unkindest words are words that are spoken without thought. If a person is being deliberately nasty, I can be on my guard and ignore it, or at least put it into a proper context and blow it off. When a person says something mean without realizing it (like at funerals and the like), that hurts a lot more.

Robin

I have to say that I disagree with the adage, and I’ll use the example I use with my 102 students talking about the power of words and semiotics: cunt. Horrible word, right? It’ll generally get a guy slapped for saying it, and in fact it’s nearly as strong a word as “nigger.”

But if the recipient of the sound pattern/visual image (for that’s all written language is) is either immune to or uncaring of the societal weight of the word, it doesn’t matter.

In many linguistic and communication theories, the power of language is in the recipient, not in the speaker. Another example would be the televangelist: for recipients willing to accept the rhetoric, the evanglist is powerful in his/her language. But for the unwilling listener, there is no power despite the eloquence of the speaker.

It wouldn’t rhyme, but maybe it would be best said as,

Sticks and stones
May break my bones
But words will never hurt me
(If I don’t let them)

For me, it depends on who is saying the words. I have a habit of only listening to people who’s opinions I respect. If someone who I consider to be a moron insults me, I just smirk. Someone I don’t know insults me? No biggie. When I was bartending, I got called every name in the book. Someone I respect insults me? I really have to think about whether the insult has merit, and I will probably be a little hurt that someone I look up to thinks of me that way.

Words can be used to hurt without consent. Someone can ruin another’s reputation with words alone and cause real harm.

Let’s say Joe and Jack like Jill. Joe tells Jill Jack is gay so Jill doesn’t go out with Jack.

A student is stalked by a BMOC and when she reports it her claims are met with words like hysterical, mentally unstable, etc. Her reputation is destroyued and she is forced out of school.

It doesn’t matter so much what they say about me as what they think about me…and that only if I like them. It always hurts to find out that someone that you liked doesn’t like you for whatever reason. And yes, on some level, I want everyone to like me. Jeez, I’ve got my work cut out for me, don’t I? :slight_smile:

K.

No I don’t really believe it… yes some you can learn to ignore but when your faced with words everyday that are demeaning to you it gets harder to let them slid… I wrote a poem once about it I’ll post it up if I find it it explains pretty much how I feel about that stuff.

I don’t know where she got it, but this appeared in a friend’s sig:

Sticks and stones won’t break my bones,
for I am much too scaly.
But ugly things said to me
will hurt my feelings daily. --Herbert the timid dragon

I think many people underestimate how long people will carry around a hurtful comment, especially when it is repeated often. <pity party for xtal> My mother used to say I looked “like a dyke” whenever I wanted to wear pants to an event she thought deserved a skirt. I was young enough (or innocent enough) to think she meant I looked fat, another comment she made with some frequency. I still cannot look ito a mirror without hearing my mother’s comments. </pity>

I think the old adage is true to some extent. You do have the power to decide to what extent the unkind words will hurt you – are you going to let them ruin your whole day?

But I think it would be very difficult, for me at least, to control that initial feeling of hurt or anger that comes when I first hear someone say something mean or unkind to me. It’s not so bad if it’s a stranger, but it gets worse if it is a friend or family member.

The best advice I give myself is to remember to calm down quickly and not take those words to heart. I just posted a thread in MPMS about how upset I was with a rude coworker, and all the good advice I got was along these lines. The follow up is where the idea of permission comes into play – are you going to let the incident affect your day, your job, your schoolwork, or whatever? what steps will you take to make sure it doesn’t happen again? Can you take charge and communicate to the other person how it made you feel?

lee, I think your friend was quoting Eleanor Roosevelt. It goes something like “No one can make you feel badly about yourself without your consent.”

I tend to agree with this statement. The key, I think, is that while words can hurt in the short term when they are cruel and unexpected, I can choose how to react to them based on the source. Is this person someone I respect? Does this person’s opinion hold weight with me?

My mother is the queen of passive-agressive nastiness. She always seems to know when you’ve let your guard down and she can slip in a hurtful barb. I have learned to step back from the pain and remind myself that she has her own problems-she is not a happy person-and that she can only hurt me if I give her the power to do so. No matter what she says, she cannot change who I am.

A student is stalked by a BMOC and when she reports it her claims are met with words like hysterical, mentally unstable, etc. Her reputation is destroyed and she is forced out of school.

But she still knows the truth, doesn’t she? If she leaves school because of a “bad reputation” isn’t she giving control of her life over to the court of public opinion? I’d rather see her be strong, hold her head up, and say, “You may not believe me, but I know the truth and I will not run away.”

Giving other people power over how you feel about yourself is victim behavior. I refuse to be a victim.

By forced out, I meant just that, not that she left voluntarily. She was me afterall.

Summary suspension leaves little choice. If people believe you are insane, or mentally unstable, they don’t listen and no one helps you. Your own words carry no weight.

I lost my scholarships, my life savings, my reputation, my residence, most of the people i thiugth were my friends and my job. I had not threatened anyone or myself. I had never said anything that could reasonably interpreted as a threat. Because others said that events were other than I said they were the school counselor wrote that I had delusions. Because I was worried about the BMOC hurting me as he implied he would, The school counselor wrote that I was a paranoid schizophrenic, because I missed my family and felt sad at times but not all the time, the school counselor wrote that I was bipolar.

My ex used to constantly tell me that I misremembered various things as a means to win arguments. It wasn’t until after we’d been apart for nearly a year before I realized that she was lying to me when she did this and that my memories really weren’t that wrong. She convinced me that my memories of events were wrong and that she was right, just so she could win arguments with me and control me, something she did very well.

So, yes, I would say that words alone can have a lasting damaging effect on people. I was an adult and it took me years to recover from the injury. Imagine the effect this sort of verbal and emotional abuse has on a child.

lee, it is absolutely horrible that such a thing happened to you. I have to admit I wasn’t quite sure if you were proposing a hypothetical situation or one with which you were familiar, nor was I sure of your intended meaning of the word “force.” The details you have offered help me to understand your pain and understand more the motivation for your question. I’m not sure if it changes my basic stance, though. I’ll share a story of my own.

When my husband and I were newly married, we moved to another state so he could take a job that was very appealing. We had a 9 month old daughter, so it was a big step for us. Things went well for a while, we were growing the business and we had big plans and hopes. However, the business we were running changed hands. The new owner, who had been telling us all along that nothing would change, informed us once the paperwork was finished that he was bringing in his son to run the place, and we could leave. Now. We were living in a house on the business’ property; it was part of the salary. I was 3 months pregnant. The new owner, displeased that we did not move out that week, tried to have our electricity (our only source of heat-this was October, in Vermont) turned off. We filed a restraining order and were able to stay another couple weeks while we found a place to live. The place we found was temporary. We had to move again when I was 8 months along. My husband found work where he could, working 3 jobs at a time (a little here, a little there) but it was not enough. Our car was repossessed. The next winter, I was desperately grateful to find, in a second hand store, warm coats and snowsuits for both my children for $20 total.

It wasn’t a fun time. It happened because one man lied to us and another person let us down when we really needed help. It took us years, once my husband found a good job (that required us to move to yet another state) to get out from under the debt and restore our credit. The somewhat tenuous hold I had on my mental state cut loose; I started having panic attacks and found myself in need of medication.

But (and here is my point) it did not change who we were. We struggled through with our dignity intact, though we are probably a little less trusting than we were. No matter what other people did or said, we remained confident of our abilities and our worth.

So I guess what it boils down to, for me, is that there are, and will always be, evil/misguided/thoughtless people in this world. Sometimes their actions (or words) will have an effect on my life, but they don’t have to have an effect on me.

KellyM, having grown up with a fair amount of verbal abuse, I agree with you that the damage can be far greater and far more lasting with a child. I guess my theories truly apply only to adults. But it is something I am trying to teach my children. I want them to believe in themselves, in their worth, in spite of how other people might some day wish to convince them otherwise. I am trying to raise them with a strength that I had to learn the hard way.

robinh, just because you managed to survive the effects of a verbal or emotional attack doesn’t mean that you weren’t harmed by it or that it wasn’t wrong. No person should have to stand quietly by and be insulted, degraded, or attacked by anyone else and then be told to “grin and bear it because words can’t really hurt you anyway”. The sort of harm this causes is at least as bad, if not more so, than the harm caused by physical battering. It definitely heals more slowly, and can most definitely be permanent if severe enough.

I would never say that a verbal attack wasn’t wrong. And I’m not saying you should stand by quietly and suck it up. I’m saying that rather than allow yourself to be verbally beaten down by your attacker, you have the choice to stand up and say, “No. You are wrong. I know the truth about myself and you cannot change that.”

Of course, this assumes a level of self-confidence and inner strength that many people do not possess. I grew up with constant put-downs, degrading comments and insults disguised, in my family, as “teasing.” If we complained that a comment was hurtful, we were told not to be so thin-skinned. What is really odd is that my mother can relate the story of how her brothers teased her so hard and so often about her nose (which is only slightly large with a very slight “ski jump” appearance-not a perfect button nose, but not remarkable) that she was convinced that strangers were staring at her on the street, marvelling at her disfigurement. But if I try to convince her that her constant comments about my (slightly) large front teeth or thick eyebrows were equally hurtful, she refuses to believe it. She was only teasing. I couldn’t possibly have been hurt by it. We had a long conversation about this once when I had her trapped in the car with me. I laid down the law regarding “teasing” and my children, because whether or not she agrees with me, I make the rules regarding what is done/said to my children. Now she makes sarcastic comments to my siblings about how sensitive I am and how they should watch what they say around me, but I can live with that.

When I was a child her words did hurt me, but only because I had been raised in an environment where I was told what to think, where my feelings and opinions were given very little weight. She would have a much harder time with my children, as they are today, because they have been raised differently. An example-about 3 years ago, while my mother was visiting, my daughter Gena asked me to help her straighten out her hair. She had gone to sleep with it damp, in a braid, and she wanted her usual ponytail without the kinks left by the braid. My mom jumped right in, telling her that this was “princess hair”, that it was pretty (the unspoken reverse being that staight hair was not) and actually said to her “You want this. You like this.” I was appalled and put an immediate stop to it. “She wears her hair the way she likes it. Okay?” Later, I sat down with Gena and talked with her about how her grandmother was raised in a generation that didn’t give proper respect to children’s feelings and that, while she didn’t intend to be hurtful, she was absolutely wrong. Being an adult did not give her the right to tell anyone how to think.

That happened when my daughter was 8, and needed help standing up to her grandmother. Now, at 11, if my mother were to try the “oh, you’d be so pretty, if only…” Gena would have no problem telling her “this is how I like my hair/clothes/etc and I’m not about to change just because you have a different opinion.” As a preteen, she is remakably unaffected by fads/fashions because she has confidence in her own opinions.

There is a scene in the movie Matilda where the father says “I’m big; you’re small. I’m right; you’re wrong.” My children immediately recognized the absurdity of this statement and we use it as a very effective shorthand way of communicating that absurdity.

Obviously, this is a very mild example, but it is the sort of subtle undermining that can lead a child to grow into an adult who believes that the assertions of other people about their character/worth/abilities has any sort of meaning.

Words can hurt us, especially if we are too young to know better or if we have grown up lacking in self-confidence and self-esteem. But they don’t have too. They only have as much power as we give them.

I think of situations like lee’s, where a man lied about her, or our situation, where we were deceived, as similar to a car accident. I assume, lee, that you accepted the suspension rather than fight it because you felt that, as much as you were in the right, you could not prove it. When we were having our fun in Vermont, we were forced to spend over $2000 we did not have to defend ourselves in court. (He tried to have us evicted by the sheriff, he tried to claim that our furniture actually belonged to the company, etc. We had to pay a lawyer to straighten it out.) We did not pursue a suit against him for malicious prosecution because it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to prove and we didn’t have the money to do it, anyway. Like a car crash that leaves you in the hospital with months or years of recovery, our situations were horribly unfair. But it happens. So you deal with it and get on with life.

The distinction I am making is that, while the man in question could lie and get lee thrown out of school, he could (or should) not have been able to convince her that she actually was hysterical/delusional/etc. I read the Eleanor Roosevelt quote and the children’s rhyme as referring to the inability of words to harm my (for lack of a better word) soul.

I apologize for being so verbose. This is important to me because the strength I now believe myself to have has been hard fought and hard won.

robinh, what disturbs me about what you’re saying is that it comes across as “if you are actually hurt by someone else’s words, then you’re allowing yourself to be hurt” – in other words, you are blaming the victim for having been a victim.

I shouldn’t have to elaborate on why this disturbs me.

I’ve been puttering around the kitchen, trying to put my thoughts into words. I don’t know how well I’ll do, but I’m going to give it a try.

I don’t see my position as blaming the victim. I do see it as insisting that people take personal responsibility when that is an option. I understand that some people (children in particular) do not always have the ability to make appropriate decisions or to view their situation in a rational light.

Let me see if I can explain this more clearly with an example. I have a problem with depression. If I look back, I can see that the signs were there from a very early age, but it did not start to affect my life in any serious way until I was in my 20s. I had ups and downs, my husband and I went through one particularly rough part early in our marriage, but it wasn’t until I had a full-blown panic attack in a public place that I sought help. I went through some therapy and I discovered the double-edged blessings of anti-depressants. After a time, I weaned myself from them. I had a better understanding of how and why my depression affected me, and I was generally able to keep in under control.

A couple years later, I realized that my depression was getting out of control again. While I was thankful for the intended relief the medication had given me, I hated the side effects and was loathe to take them again. However, I understood that my responsibilities to my children outweighed any personal discomforts.

I have been off medication for over 3 years now. It is my goal to remain so indefinitely. However, if I need to, for my and my family’s sake, I will drug myself again. I take full responsibility for the management of my disease. Just as a diabetic carefully monitors his diet and maintains an awarness of the signs that his blood sugar levels are off, I take a proactive role by engaging in behaviors that I have found helpful (for me, the simple act of vigorous, sweat-inducing physical exercise 3-4 times/week makes a large impact on my mental health) and by monitoring my reactions. I know the signs quite well by now and I will not allow myself to ignore/deny them, as easy and tempting as that can be. But complaining that “I have a disease; it isn’t my fault” is not, in my book, an acceptable response. I don’t blame myself for the years when I did not understand what was going on, but now that I do, I must accept responsibility.

Another example: Imagine a woman who has been abused throughout her childhood, whose father was an alcoholic who beat her mother. Imagine that she grows up, meets a man and falls in love. As the relationship progresses, this man becomes increasingly nasty to her and eventually the verbal abuse becomes physical as well. She denies the truth for a long time but eventually she gets out. Once away from the situation, and with some help, she is able to understand that she was repeating a pattern that was imprinted on her from a young age. She has a compulsion to try to “fix” men like this, to right the wrongs of her childhood. With this new found understanding, she has (I believe) a duty to herself (and any children she might have) to rid herself of these negative patterns, to learn how to avoid behaviors that she now understands to be dangerous to herself. But if, instead, she allows herself to fall into a pattern of relationships with men such as this, giving in to her compulsion because “she just can’t help it” I feel she has failed herself.

We all, in the course of our lives, do things (or passively accept things) that are bad for us. Once we are able to understand why we are compelled to engage in these behaviors we have the option to change those behaviors.

I feel the same way about alcoholics and other drug abusers. I do believe that there is probably a biological tendency that catches some people unawares. But once you are clean and sober, once you are dealing with whatever issues got you into trouble, the disease becomes your responsibility. If you choose to drink again, the fault will, in my mind, lie firmly on your shoulders. Some people keep a bottle around as proof of their control. Others understand that they are on much shakier ground and purposely avoid situations where they might be tempted. It doesn’t matter how you do it. What does matter is that you take responsibility for your actions.

You are also, I believe, responsible for your reactions. Certainly, my mother could make me doubt myself when I was a child. But today she does not control me. I do. There is another saying that has come to my mind as I write this: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.