Words can both build us up and break us down
I think as a society we now understand the old phrase “sticks and stones may break your bones, but names will never hurt you” is frankly just wrong!
Words alone are so powerful and can both build us up and break us down.
I see this regularly in clients that come to me for hypnotherapy.
Words can be acted upon literally if we hear them when we are emotionally vulnerable
For example a client who wants to stop their binge eating may have developed a deep unconscious belief that they should eat everything up – due to a parent saying “eat it all up, there are starving children in Africa you know”.
Believe it or not something like this said to us when we are emotional can be embedded at a deep unconscious level and then taken by us literally – “eat it all up”. And a child determined not to eat the dinner Mum or Dad painstaking made for them is going to be emotional!
Phrases we use in every day life can be taken literally by our subconscious mind and converted into a physical symptom. For example someone who complains “this relationship is a real headache” may literally end up with a headache.
We can use this literal interpretation to solve the problem
Now, our inner mind taking onboard these words so literally works both ways of course. We can resolve the binge eating and the headache by working with the subconscious to understand what belief the subconscious has and then work with it to take on a different belief.
This allows the mind to let the symptom go. The mind is a wonderful thing.