Watch Your Language! Your Choice of Words Can Harm You

My client, Anne, came running up the stairs to the session two or three minutes late, plopped down breathlessly on the sofa and explained, "Parking was hell today." Later she told about preparing for a presentation at work, "I hate talking in front of my co-workers - it's hell!" And then, she lamented what hell it is trying to get her son to clean up his room. My ears perk up when people use surprising language to describe their lives and by the time the second "hell" entered into the conversation, I knew I was getting a window into Anne's reality - life is so hard and frustrating, it feels like hell.

I thought about that word, hell, and how it had a two-fold purpose for Anne. She was using it to help me understand her world, yes, but also, in describing the everyday events her life with such a strong metaphor, she was discharging some of the built up frustration that she walks around with every day.

But then I thought how the effect of a descriptive word like that flows both ways. The more she describes her life events as hell, the more they feel like hell. Her choice of language not only explains her reality, it creates and strengthens it.

Words have tremendous power, both to describe but also, to prescribe, and I talked about this with Anne. We decided to try an experiment and I asked her to think of other words, even strong words, to illustrate her previous stories. She offered, for example, she could say, "Parking was really rough today," "Talking in front of my co-workers makes me so nervous, I get sick to my stomach" and "Getting my son to clean his room is close to impossible." By steering away from the shorthand word, "hell", Anne was coming up with richer, more nuanced descriptions that felt somehow less hopeless.

In the coming weeks, replacing her fallback word with other kinds of descriptions was not easy. She was so used to using the word "hell" to describe her life that she had to make an effort to avoid it. However, she told me that she was feeling lighter and less hopeless. The everyday struggles seemed more manageable when described in a different light.

I've experienced this in situations in my own life. Once, in a tough period, I noticed that I kept saying to myself, "I'm soooo depressed!" Realizing the power of that statement, I tried (with great effort, mind you) experimenting with alternative descriptions, and thought instead, "I'm so down today" or "I'm feeling so blue." Somehow, those other ways of saying pretty much the same thing felt less like blanket statements. They had a little more air in them and felt less overwhelming and inflexible.

So last week, when I didn't submit a blog, it was because I had a rotten cold and was limping my way through my work week. I started the week moaning to myself, "I'm soooo sick!" but tweaked it mid-way to "I've sure got a rotten cold!" My nose didn't stop running but I felt better anyhow!