Words can definitely inflict harm. Psychological harm is sometimes more long lasting and detrimental to one’s psyche than physical harm. Verbal abuse, gaslighting and bullying are all things that can break people without any physical violence being involved. In fact, it can be easier to heal from physical pain than emotional hurt in some cases. I like being in (close) community with people who recognize this and take care to consider the impact of their words, even if they are communicating something that might hurt my feelings. I’ve found that when I feel that type of safety, it’s easy to talk about anything
I’m only going to speak about my own experience, the range of human experience is so broad and I can only speak for myself.
Lets say a friend I really respect and admire were to tell me that I’m a bad person.
This would hurt for sure. Where would this hurt come from? It would come from internal resistance I have, there’s a gap between my self-image and what my friend just told me, I feel resistance to that gap, and it hurts to begin reconciling it. If there was no gap it wouldn’t hurt. If I already believed that I was a bad person I’d probably just shrug and agree.
But why does it hurt in the first place? The “hurt” is a mild sense of panic. Where is that from? For me, it’s probably grounded in childhood. Being a bad kid came with fear of physical violence, deprivation of my needs, external invalidation of my lived experience (gaslighting). In other words, I’m afraid of being bad because in the past it was coupled with other unpleasant experiences and those other experiences are the actual root of the fear and hurt, not the words themselves. Sure, it isn’t pleasant to be bad, but that in and of itself is actually pretty easy to swallow on its own, it’s the threat of violence and abandonment that’s the really scary part.
To me, it seems like these two parts can be decoupled. The idea of being bad can be swallowed pretty quickly; if it’s right then my friend is helping me become more aware, and if it’s wrong then no biggie, either way it’s in my best interest to listen and really receive the message. This is also true of people I don’t respect and admire — there’s only an upside to listen, consider it, accept the advice if it’s consistent with everything else I know about the world and myself, drop it if it’s inconsistent.
The second part has two components. I was so vulnerable and helpless as a child. Violence and deprivation is so big then because there’s nothing I could do to stop it. As a kid, if I was abandoned by my caregivers and society I’d just straight up die. So at that stage, the violence really is an existential threat. As an adult, almost all the same actions would be fine. Sure they’d be unpleasant but I’d live for sure. This is where it’s important to update. Even if other people don’t like me I’ll be just fine. This wasn’t the case as a kid, but it is now.
The second component is gaslighting. When my parents invalidated my lived experience I was left with immense confusion, my parents basically mediated my relationship with much of the physical world, so usually they’re right about the nature of the world. Once I started doubting myself the world became upside down, because it was unclear when I could trust myself or not. It was more useful to anchor on my father than it was on myself, if I tried to express my needs it’d just get me in trouble, it’d just backfire and make things worse.
This second component is where I think words can be very very dangerous, as you pointed out. If external opinions can bully me into doubting myself, it’s extremely hard to regain internal trust. So this is the kind of harm which I think is real and lasting. That being said, it’s also something we have agency on. The ball is in my court to trust myself or not.
In any case, the former can be prevented with a “violence is utterly unacceptable” policy, and the latter can be prevented with a “truth comes from within” policy, and the words themselves are always useful to listen to, provided these two policies are held.