Cutting words can hurt more than sticks and stones

While I was in the middle of my blogging, I came across this article written by Bob Garon.... I just wanna share....

ISN’T it amazing how a few hurting words have the power to make us sad? How a cutting remark can turn a beautiful morning into a dark and cloudy day? Isn’t it strange how one person’s words can affect the life of another so strongly and so quickly. In the wink of an eye, you can go from happy to sad just because somebody hits you with a word that cuts into your heart.

Worse, what is said to you might be completely off the wall, but still, you get hurt and are having the greatest difficulty shaking off the pain and getting yourself back on track. If you’re not careful and you cannot contain the damage to your self-esteem, you might even strike out and hit a few innocents (even loved ones) with a few choice of words of your own because of your anger toward the one who offended you.

I think we can handle all kinds of pain better than we can deal with hurting words aimed at our self-esteem. We can suffer physically and bear the pain more graciously than we can the emotional darts that people (especially those who mean much to us) throw at us. Hardest of all to bear is the sharp put down remark from the person we love most. That hurts like a knife in the heart.

What I want to focus on at this time are those hurting words that come from strangers and people we do not hold in high regard. We need to talk to ourselves and not allow ourselves to get knocked overboard by people who don’t mean very much to us and whose remarks lack truth and insight.

Remember that often people who hit you are the ones with problems. This is why, in order to protect yourself from needless hurt, you have to look carefully at who is the one who is speaking the offensive words and where is he is coming from.

I remember a friend of mine who had a picture of our family displayed in his little store. He told me that some of his friends expressed some negative remarks about me when they saw the picture.
“Are they using drugs,” I asked? When he told me they were, I understood and smiled. My work in the field of drug addiction has not endeared me to addicts. I was not offended.

So look at the source of the hurtful words and think of the reasons behind them. That could quickly ease if not totally erase the initial pain. If the sharp remark comes from one you love, its best to sit with the person soonest and explore more fully what it is all about. If you need to apologize, do it quickly and sincerely. The pain you feel will soon fade. If your friend or beloved accepts that his words were not fair and says sorry, then your hurt will also ease and the whole unpleasant episode might even cause you to bond even more because of it all.

It is important to guard against hurtful words and sort them out to be able to make sense of them if we cannot avoid them. Mostly though, we need to understand just how great is their potential to hurt us and then take measures to deal more effectively with them.