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- The Facts:Words can hurt. Unwelcome verbal assaults hurt even more.
- Reflect On:Notice if you feel entitled to verabalize to another when they don’t want to hear it. Consider respecting their boundaries, just as you would want your own integrity respected.
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.
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More harmful words were never spoken. Trauma research dispels the innocence of this myth. When someone says no, it means NO. Feeling entitled to continue to share information when someone says no is a violation. Especially when the sharing is an attack.
Verbal abuse and physical abuse share commonalities. While violating words and emotion aren’t overt physical assaults, they still affect us physically through the trauma they cause to our nervous system, to our brains, and our psyche generally. We feel verbal abuse physically even if we haven’t been physically touched, whether the attack comes hot and heavy or underhandedly.
