They say that words are carried away by the wind. But the truth is that there are words that are like darts, that hurt and that are not easily forgotten. An anonymous text that addresses this very delicate topic with which we can all identify has recently become popular on the internet.. “Not even the dogs are going to love you,” with this painful phrase begins a story that guides us through painful words, veiled insults, moments in which what is said transcends the facts and leaves a mark.

But why do words do so much harm? And how can we free ourselves from their weight when they have already affected our self-esteem? The psychologist José Martín del Pliego, head of the psychology area at the Los Tilos Medical Centerhas resolved some of these doubts for Bodymente by analyzing the famous text that has already traveled the world through the Internet.

The text that left everyone speechless

“The word becomes a symbol,” del Pliego explains to us when we ask him about the effect that these can have on our lives, “and symbols are associated with emotions.” Thus, “what we are saying can generate an emotional response in the other.”. That is the key: our words can move or induce an emotional response in the other person, which has to do with their own story.”

The text we refer to in this interview, and which has gone around the world thanks to social networks, is the following:

«‘Not even the dogs are going to love you,’ was the phrase she always used to challenge her children when they behaved badly. First, came the pinch, and then, as if to top it off, this sharp, sharp phrase. Surely, if asked, she would say that she raised them with love. And in the name of love, she said phrases like these.

‘Who wants another bread with ham?’ Carlos asked on his daughter’s birthday. She was celebrating her 19th birthday and he was in the kitchen. ‘Who wants another bread with ham?’ he insisted. ‘Not you, my love, you’re very fat,’ was the phrase she fired in front of all her friends. She turned red with shame, a huge lump closed her throat and she didn’t eat anymore. He got up slowly and the solitude of his teenage room was the best refuge until the early hours of the next day. The father died wondering what he did wrong that night.

‘Come on, don’t be a sissy,’ his swimming teacher told him when he – who was 6 years old at the time – asked for a towel when he got out of the pool because he was cold. And all his friends started laughing. ‘Sissy, sissy,’ they shouted. And the teacher, far from making them silence, encouraged them. He never swam again. (And never, in 34 years of life, did he put his lips on a woman’s lips.)

‘You’re an elephant in the class,’ his drawing teacher told him on the first day of his first year of high school. She came from an impeccable primary school, where drawing was her favorite subject. And it was, to honor the truth, a young promise. That year, he failed drawing. She returned to drawing 28 years later, when – through therapy – she discovered how much that phrase had immobilized her.

The mountain of 7 colors in Cusco was the place chosen to celebrate their 10 years of marriage. Walk through the hills, all the tourists in a row. She was ahead; him, behind. ‘Your ass blocks all the sun from me’ was the phrase he chose to make a joke. And then he didn’t understand why that night she locked herself in the bathroom to cry.

They are phrases that don’t kill you, but they mark you for life. Shitty phrases. No matter how many hours of therapy you dedicate to undoing them, they are there… hanging around, only to reappear without warning. They are phrases that, when you count them, it seems that you are exaggerating, that they could not have been like that, that perhaps you remember them wrong… Then you discover the crudeness of those words.

The good thing is that one day, because that day – believe me – finally arrives, you take out one by one all the daggers that stuck in your body and soul, you do a healthy, healthy, little frog’s tail and you discover that they were not said with hatred, that those responsible for spitting such phrases at us are beings who carry, in turn, with other phrases. And then forgiveness comes. And we forgive. Later – much later – comes compassion. That’s when we feel happy again, wanting to walk through the mountains of Cusco beyond the size of our ass, to swim and shout: ‘I’m cold, bring me a towel’, to make a list of all the people who love you. Because not only dogs love you…

Let’s try to think before we speak… since WORDS THAT HURT take many years to come out of another’s heart, or sometimes they don’t come out…

Unknown author.

Not even the dogs are going to love you.

The first sentence of the text is, perhaps, the hardest. “Not even the dogs are going to love you.” Regarding this phrase, the expert explains to us: “When our basic referential character – such as our mother – tells us “that no one is going to love us”, for us it acquires a very powerful meaning because it is assumed that the person who has to be the one who takes care of us, the one that makes us feel safe, feels that we are not worth it and, therefore, it is that “really” we are not worth it. These words are internalized with the meaning of “I am not enough”, “I am not valid”, “I am not enough”.

Getting rid of this yoke can take years of therapy, years of suffering. That’s why we must measure the words we say before they leave our lips.

Not you, my love, you are very fat

I could have said short, ugly, tall. Any other adjective, and this sentence would probably have been just as painful. Del Pliego explains to us that in this particular case there are two interesting things that we must analyze. On the one hand, he indicates, we have “the difficulty this father has in generating an empathetic response with his daughter, realizing the meaning of what he was saying to her«, given that for him there was nothing wrong with it. And on the other hand, «the freezing response that she, the daughter, has when she feels criticized for her physical appearance in front of her friends.»

This freezing response explains to us, It is “called the dorsal vagus response,” and it is common in situations of extreme shame or emotional pain.. This impact on the self-image that we saw in the first case is reflected in the reaction of the young woman in the text, whose “only way to take refuge from this situation is to disconnect from the group, go to her room to generate calm and achieve isolation as a form of recovery.”

Come on, don’t be a sissy

This third phrase takes us one step further, because, as we read in the text, it leads the protagonist to perceive his abilities in an altered way. “We need others in our relationship,” the psychologist explains to us, “we need to feel balanced.” In this case, when the “teacher, who is an authority figure, He makes a fool of the boy and insists that he is behaving like a ‘sissy’ and the others laughthe kid loses connection with his group.”

The acute stress produced by this situation leads him “to not want to get closer to the water because for him, everything that conditions that situation has become something aversive: He doesn’t feel like he wants to get close to anything that has to do with that circumstance he experienced. since it connects him with the negative emotion of that traumatic experience for him.”

You are an elephant in the class

We continue to advance a little further in cruelty, in the effect that words have on our self-esteem, to face a situation in which we even disconnect from our passions. The psychologist José Martín del Pliego She explains to us that «in this case, what these words imply is a response with a high level of emotional activation because it is happening in an environment where there are more children of the same class and, therefore, she feels observed and criticized.»

In this way, “that activity, which was previously associated with something positive, becomes aversive because it is associated with the level of activation that those words have generated, which are very brief but very powerful, and penetrate directly into the unconscious mind. It has been so powerful that that person rejects what was previously positive because, now, that situation is tinted with a high level of intensity emotion. Consequence? My system, as a protection, no longer allows me to get close to that activity that I liked so much.”

Your ass covers all the sun from me

The next phrase of the text reminds us of other previous ones, related to the physicist, but this time in a different context. How do words affect us when they come from the person we have chosen as a life partner? Del Pliego explains that the context can be especially painful, given that the “joke” comes from the couple, “with whom trust is generated and a safe space is expected,” to which is added a social environment that enhances the reaction.

“Whenever there is a social environment where they make me feel bad, the negative emotion is going to increase,” he explains. “Beyond the couple, in this case, I dare to say that, if this girl had not previously experienced criticism of her body, the emotion that would have appeared would be anger or anger.«And the words that hurt the most are those that impact our personal history.

Can we somehow get rid of the words that hurt us so much?

It is clear that Words hurt, and they do so in many different ways.. However, it is possible to manage them. As Del Pliego explains to us, «in reality it is not so much about working with the words but with the emotion that that word causes me, with what I feel in my body that it is causing me. Because, I insist, that word that affects me is telling us about a story. What is disproportionate and influences me in the present, has to do with something that is connecting with my past.»

That is, when words hurt, it is because they drag emotions from our past to our presentwhich we have not managed or worked on.

In this sense, forgiveness plays an important role, something that is also reflected in the text. However, The psychologist explains to us that “when we hurt with words, recognition is important, which has to do with saying: ‘You’re right’, ‘I was wrong’, ‘I shouldn’t have said this’”. This could be the first step towards that healing, and the expert assures that “recognition is a human need.”

In addition to this recognition, we must reconcile with that part of our history that they remove. And of course, to avoid finding ourselves on the other side of this story, let’s try to avoid “silly grace” and measure our words carefully.. Because as in many other cases, with words it is better to prevent than to cure.

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