Using words- to hurt or to heal

Tarulatha  is frantic with remorse. Yesterday, in anger, she struck out at her best friend with words that she wishes she could take back. She still remembers the shock on her friend’s face when she heard the words flung at her.

Tvisha has just returned from a visit to her doctor. She had gone with the deep fear that the lump she had felt was actually cancer. After a thorough examination, the doctor reassured Tvisha that she did not have cancer. The doctor’s kindness and empathy gave her a moral boost and she came away calmer than she had gone in. Words, therefore, can be used to heal and soothe.

Curbing our tongue

Anger is an emotion that quite often can make even the most logical of us into ranting creatures. Anger makes us lose our in-built radar. We flounder on our path and let fly with hurtful words.

Words spoken in anger can wound, lacerate and leave emotional scars. These hurtful words will replay again and again in our minds. They will linger in our psyche, sometimes for days and weeks. Childhood taunts burrow into our mind and then may reappear unexpectedly. Therefore, the pain caused by hurtful words is not easily forgotten or assuaged. There are some people who justify their hurtful words by saying, “She needs to know, I am being brutally honest just for her sake.’ This is a very self-indulgent statement. Being ‘brutally honest’ may actually focus on the brutality rather than the honesty. Curbing one’s tongue is a life skill that everyone must work to acquire.

Why do we hurt the ones we love?

Paradoxically, people we love have the power to hurt us most. Family and close friends are the most vulnerable when it comes to being hurt. Those who are closest to us have the unfair advantage of knowing our weaknesses. This intimate knowledge of our soft spots allows them to sometimes annihilate us with words.