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Sandra Pawula's avatar

Cathy, there are so many interesting threads in this piece. I agree with your therapist, words can be so harmful and can lead to violent behavior. I used to be overly direct in my communication. I know I have sometimes, wittingly and unwittingly, hurt people with sharper-than-necessary words. I've spent decades learning to speak in more peaceful ways. I know, I must slow down and be very conscious of the words I choose. Thank you for the reminder.

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SuddenlyJamie's avatar

As always, Cathy, you bring such intriguing nuance to something most people take for granted or don't even notice at all. As writers, we are particularly attuned to words and all their layered meanings. I love finding the just-right word to convey a feeling, mood, or idea. As someone more clever than me pointed out, the word "spelling" contains the word "spell," and you can certainly cast many spells with words.

I also wanted to share that I just had a little epiphany of my own this morning having to do with the importance of the words we use. It's a long, mostly boring story, but I've been battling some chronic pain for the last decade or so. For the most part, I'm able to manage it to a virtually pain-free level, but every once in a while it rears it's ugly head, and I have to start the process of kind of rebalancing myself all over again.

What occurred to me this morning as your post and and the ideas from an excellent (and for me life-saving!) podcast (Tell Me About Your Pain) bounced around in my head is that the words I've chosen to respond to inquiries about how I'm doing are maybe not the most helpful ones I could use. When someone asks about my pain, I always say something like, "I'm working on it," or "I'm working through it" ... I almost always invoke the concept of work. But, if I were to follow the excellent advice of the podcast folks, I would choose very different words. I would say, "I'm taking care of myself." That's a completely different vibe, and in this instance the vibe really matters. In fact, the vibe is everything. I've been using this shift in wording to reframe how I think about where I am in the process, and it's already made a huge difference.

So - long story short - I'm still learning how important word choice is, not only when we speak to others, but also - maybe most importantly - when we speak to ourselves. Thanks for helping me put the pieces together! xo

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