Sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me.” This old adage may have been true when broken bones could maim one for life but in today’s world words can cause permanent damage leading to depression, anxiety, and, even, suicide. Even rudeness has a negative impact on our performance. According to recent research, a rude remark early in the morning can influence your thinking and emotions for the rest of the day, as you wrestle with the insult and how to counter it. In today’s world, it is not the sticks and stones that the body perceives as a threat; rather, insulting words disrupt our cognitive ability and devastate our brain.
Verbal abuse is the tool used by bullies. Words that torment, embarrass, shame, tyrannize, and demean, according to the National Center for Disease Control, cause depression, anxiety, feelings of sadness and loneliness, decreased interest, or suicide. Bullied children are dying inside. In the 1990s, 12 of the 15 cases of perpetrators of school shootings had a history of being bullied.
The National Center for Educational Statistics reports a bullying rate of 35 percent of student suicide; an outcome of actions that shatter an individual’s belief in self, is the third highest cause of death for ages 10 to 14. Every single day, 123 individuals of all ages will commit suicide, most by gun, a 30 percent increase since 1999. Suicide is deemed a major public health issue. What in the world is going on to cause such distress in our nation?
The top risk factors for suicide, or acting out revenge, is depression, feelings of despair, and hopelessness. A daily dose of name calling, taunting, excessive criticism, or words that cut us deeply can cause permanent damage to the way we view ourselves and our relationships with others. It is now scientifically understood that verbal and domestic abuse early in life freezes our heart and our brain in ways similar to trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Shell shocked soldiers returning from WWI were advised to exert mind over matter and to “buck up.” And then, as the century progressed, similar symptoms of chronic shut down were witnessed in victims of rape, parental and domestic violence, and in bullying in our schools. In the 1990s, new brain imaging opened up opportunities for the medical profession to view the way the brain processes information.
What was discovered is that experiences of terror that triggered a fear response were a horse of a different color. For many, the fight or flight response stayed locked, encoded in the brain and the memories of the experience that triggered it could be recalled as if it were happening in the now. Stress hormones stayed on alert, character and personality changed in tune with the numbness of feeling necessary for survival. “We now know that their (victims) behaviors are not the result of moral failings or signs of lack of willpower or bad character; they are caused by actual changes in the brain,” wrote Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D. author of The Body Keeps the Score, the most up to date account of how childhood neglect, sexual or domestic violence, and war wreak havoc on too many lives.
The changes to the nervous system from encoded trauma are life long and not easily remedied. So, how do we deactivate the defensive actions of the body response that once ensured survival in a time of abuse or terror?
Van Der Kolk says to overcome trauma we need to think differently. Drawing the person into social engagement that promotes play and eventually smiles engages the safety system of the brain. School curriculums that include music, physical education, or recess that involves movement and play enhances social engagement. It may be easier to rescue future citizens from trauma at this age than the deep-rooted encoded trauma experienced by our warriors. Recent stories of veterans and “the dog that saved my life,” however, speak to social and emotional engagement as a remedy for restoring the nervous systems relaxation from the stuck fight or flight or chronic shutdown feeling that diminishes the journey of life.
Do each of us have a stake in interrupting man’s inhumanity to man? If so, how can we foster the fight against verbal abuse, bullying, harmful gossip, violence, and malevolence that are the sources of anger, fear, anxiety, depression, and despair? What do you think?