If someone sees another person bleeding and they know that they caused the bleeding they feel guilt. They do don’t see others bleeding emotionally when they say something hateful so they think nothing of it.

I think it really depends most on if you believe the saying is true or not. I do, and I don’t allow people’s words to hurt me. People who let others’ words cut deeply my be more affected by words than “sticks and stones.”

But bottom line, I’d rather have someone hurling all sorts of insults at me that get punched in the face, because that HURTS!

sticks and stones may indeed break your bones – but words can harm you a lot more.

to be successful and respectable in a society people must “like” you. Hence if people are talking negative of you, you will have a bad reputation. A bad reputation is much harder [if at all] to fix than say a broken ligament.

It takes a man a lifetime to build a reputation, but only a second to ruin it. When ones reputation is at stake, its pretty hard to do anything reputable.

that is if you are standing in front of a firring squad.

I have a high threshold for physical pain. But I’m sensitive emotionally. Such a GIRRRRRL.

hmmm.

Must work on that! : )

Sometimes I tell people that my father was a “hitter”. The actual truth is that he beat my mother and he beat my older brother. I got the odd slap for bad behavior, but was only beaten once. I do not consider myself to have been abused, but I do consider both my mother and brother to have been abused. And I can honestly tell you that the really long-lasting scars they carry (well, my brother is dead, but he carried scars when he was living) came not from the beatings, but from the things my father said to them. Bruises and split lips and broken ribs all heal eventually. The words that are said to us have a nasty habit of taking up residence in our minds and returning, unbidden, when we least expect them. While my father was not abusive to me, there is one thing that he said repeatedly to me when I was a child. It doesn’t bear repeating, but I can honestly tell you that it has had a significant impact on my self esteem. Every time I start to feel okay in my own skin, I hear my father’s voice in my head, and my self-esteem tanks. I have worked on that particular issue for years in therapy, and I still cannot quiet the voice. The best I have been able to do is try to ignore it. I love my father very much. He is no longer the man he was when I was a child, and he has asked forgiveness from everyone in our family whom he hurt. I know that he feels great remorse for his behavior, and that is part of what allows us to maintain a close and loving relationship. Nonetheless, he did a lot of damage. A great part of it was with his fists, but even more of it was simply with the words he used.

Sticks and stones was a great thing to teach little kids when someone came up with it a gazillion years ago. I know it’s a very old saying because it was already very old when my mother was a child, and she was born in the early 1930s. I think that back then, society really did only recognize the harm of physical attacks. I really don’t think anyone recognized back then how harmful words can be, or the lasting impact they can have on a person who is subjected to what I call “hatespeak”.

The concept of the dangers of verbal and emotional abuse are actually quite new. When I was in high school (I graduated in 1986), doctors and researchers were just beginning to realize that there was more to abuse than physical blows. Before that, women who were abused by their men were only considered abused if they were hit or beaten. Now, everyone recognizes that other, non-physical types of abuse are every bit as serious, and have lasting impact.

I will just end by saying that I know a depressingly large number of people who have been seriously damaged by abuse, and who are unable to heal from it because it took place over such a long time. My mother is one of those people. Having discussed it at length with most of them, I can honestly say that aside from sexual abuse, I think verbal abuse is the worst kind. All of the people I know who are damaged adults are damaged because of words that they cannot get out of their heads. Some of them were also physically abused, but for the most part they never ever even think about that. It’s the things which were said to them which have harmed them so deeply that no amount of therapy has been able to release them from the damage.