The Persistence of Painful Words

There is widespread public concern over the abuse of children, especially when it comes to sexual abuse, but also about physical maltreatment. Teachers and physicians are trained to be alert for signs that kids are being abused, and there are all sorts of legal and bureaucratic arrangements set up to intervene when such abuse occurs. And some of it is somewhat effective. Certainly, nearly everyone is aware of the long-term damage that can occur when children are beaten or sexually abused. But what about emotional abuse? Recently I spoke with a man who said that, throughout his childhood, his mother told him that he was "no good" and would "amount to nothing." Today he is successful in business, is married, has raised children who are doing well... but he developed a severe drinking problem, and he still finds the memories of his childhood painful. What is the long-term impact of emotional abuse, the punishment that is delivered by verbal cruelty, instead of by the fist or a coat-hanger?

Here's a report about a study that demonstrates that the painful memory of a verbal attack persists longer than that of a physical injury. The researchers found that:

the pain of physical events may fade with time, while the pain of social occurrences can be re-instantiated through memory retrievals... [In the study], participants who had to recall a socially painful experience reported stronger feelings of pain and relived the experience more intensely than those who had to recall a physically painful event. Furthermore, participants who only had to recall a physically painful event performed better on the difficult mental tasks in comparison to those who had to relive a socially painful event.

I have no doubt that parents who have a cruel or sadistic streak, and who express it in their words to their children, create at least as much havoc in the lives of those children as do the parents who physically or sexually abuse them, or those who neglect their children. Of course, it is hard to sort out the differential effects, because they so often occur within the same household; but it is important for parents (and for all of us!) to understand that words can be weapons, and very powerful ones, at that.