And, yet, it’s impossible to go through life and not have the experience of being hurt by someone else’s words, somewhere.
Indeed, it makes me wonder if that age-old response was as much about reassuring the grown-up delivering it as helping the child at the receiving end. An attempt to convince the grown-up of the superficiality of words that hurt – helping to gloss over their own past experiences of pain, as well as the child’s present ones. Perhaps it is the depth of the harm that words can cause that makes verbal abuse so very hard to bear. And perhaps this explains why sometimes we, and very often the adults who were around for us, find/found it so challenging to address.
There are no physical bruises to show for verbal abuse, which makes it easier to hide and also harder to talk about. Will other people believe me if I tell them? Will they understand how I feel? How do you stop someone talking anyway – what’s the point of saying something? They’re just words. Did I say, or do, something to provoke the person? Why would that person have said that if I hadn’t done something wrong in the first place? It’s not an obvious, or easily explainable, kind of violence. It’s more subtle than kicks and punches.
And the hurt is more subtle too. Verbal abuse can attack our very sense of self. A person who hits us is clearly doing something wrong. A person who tells us that there’s something wrong about how, or who, we are – the way we look, the choices we make, the way we talk/walk/eat/breathe… is clearly not being kind… But what they say is also easily internalised. That is to say, verbal abuse may be taken to heart as something that – unkind, or not – holds truth.
Any vulnerable person, never mind a child, may quickly come to believe the abuse that is thrown at them and decide that it is they, themselves, who are in some way “wrong”. Indeed, sometimes, psychologically, it is easier to believe that we are being abused for a reason than to accept that the abuse has to do with the abuser’s own issues. Reason gives us a controllable narrative – a way of understanding why the abuse is happening to us and a perhaps false sense of control over it… This is happening because I am being, or doing, that… I need to change…
It doesn’t take much. For example: ‘Mummy, I can’t wear that jumper to Christmas jumper day at school, because Child X wouldn’t like it, and Child X only lets me play if she likes what I’m wearing…’ The issue here is that it’s the recipient of the hurtful words who feels that they need to change.
Another aspect of this kind of abuse is not what is said – not the “noise” that is made – but the silence. Because verbal abuse is often accompanied by exclusion – the child is abused verbally and then left out of play, for example. And, if allowed to continue, the child may lose confidence in themselves, and this will affect their ability to make other friends. In many ways, the most deeply traumatic part of abuse can be the loneliness it can cause. Verbal abuse is bullying – just a more intelligent kind of bullying than physical abuse.
There are so many kinds of verbal abuse. If you’re part of any minority group, you are much more likely to receive it. And, with that, come the daily microaggressions. Wikipedia describes microaggressions as,
‘commonplace verbal, behavioural or environmental slights, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative attitudes toward stigmatised or culturally marginalised groups.’
The fact that microaggressions are ‘commonplace’ and often ‘unintentional’ – unconscious beliefs that aren’t even recognised as wrong and hurtful – make microaggressions all the more damaging and harder to call out.
If verbal abuse isn’t dealt with, then the child may grow up developing a sense of self in which they believe that there is something wrong, or “less than”, about themselves. They may struggle to trust others and to develop intimate relationships. Long into adulthood, they may continue to live in fear of being, or getting it (life/choices/what they say, or do), wrong.
But, however hard verbal abuse is to talk about, it must be talked about. Silence is a bully’s greatest ally. And if words have the power to cause harm, they also have the power to do great good. It is so important to talk about verbal abuse when it happens. It is equally important that adults and young people alike are educated about it and know who they can talk to – who is in a position to help. And it starts with recognising that words can hurt – and they can also heal.