Words we hear are absorbed
by our neurological system.
In this way emotions, thoughts and beliefs
are formed based on what we hear, even if it’s a lie.
Mean words are common when we’re involved with or entangled by people who use them. If we’ve been in the presence of a narcissist and also if we’ve been ensnared by a sociopath we’ve experienced a lurch in the pit of our stomachs.
We’ve experienced sadness, and drooping self esteem in their presence and still long after they’ve left the room because of their words hurtled at us us like darts. We feel feelings from what they’ve said. This is normal. – This is how normal healthy humans work.
Where Do Our feelings About Mean Words Come From…?
We, humans, are astonishingly amazing beings. As we’re swept through the riptide of narcissistic abuse and the machinations of a pathological predator we’re influenced by them. This is only natural. This is because whole-humans are influenced by each and everything within our awareness or within our environment.
This means that all things around us have an impact and an effect on us. – This is based on science. It’s how humans are designed, or built or created… It’s what we are. This is normal; it’s how our system – our biology, our neurological system works. There’s no getting around this.
Emotions Feed into Our Feelings, Which Then Make Our World
Okay, here’s how it goes… Our body takes in our surroundings, including the words we hear, and has an emotional response. In this way without us doing a thing, our body – our neurological system – recognizes an emotion which translates to a feeling. Our feelings are individual and nuanced. This feeling becomes a conscious thought based on these feelings that have been generated by our emotional response.
And then finally our body creates a conclusion or a belief about this whole experience. This can happen in a flash, mere milliseconds. It can be that the emotion and the feeling are fairly instantaneous and then the thought and that belief come days later. – And not at all consciously identifiable as being the product of the emotional response and then the feelings we form after receiving those mean words.
So… Humans experience a raw, or root emotion which morphs into a feeling. We might notice this emotion – we might not. We might not be particularly aware of the feeling it inspires.
The feeling though works on it’s own to turn itself into a thought inspired by that original root emotion mingled with our subconscious and things we already “know”.
That thought or those ideas born of the emotions and feelings become a belief. One day they become a proclamation, an announcement we form into words in our minds about ourselves or the world we live in.
Raw Emotions to Feelings to Thoughts to Beliefs
This emotional construct from raw emotions to feelings – to thoughts and ideas – then takes the shape of a belief or conclusion. As it becomes a conscious thought, possibly quite charged with emotion, it may no longer be attached with any awareness in our minds to the original emotional and then feelings experience we had. We also then make a belief that is unattached from the original emotional experience, our feelings or possibly from even those thoughts and ideas that are stirring this all. Make sense?
So where exactly does the belief we arrive at come from? The belief or conclusion does from our beautiful and automatic-mind. It shapes for us the ideas and then this newer belief — based on what we already believe.
The mind does the work without us, incorporating what we already think we know and what we’ve felt and what those feelings mean to us. The mean words then have been the cause-point of our concluding belief. A belief we then live our life from.
Ultimately, the things we believe play into how well we heal – or not. What we believe creates our experience of life. Our beliefs in every way, are the foundation for the limits we place on ourselves, or the dreams we decide we can achieve.
Narcissistic Abuse Unwound Podcast
Mean Words or Kind Words
The same works with words of care, praise or kindness; these in turn inspire positive thoughts and strength or courage. All things filter through our emotional self. Knowing and understanding this is so, so, so, so important in recovering from a trauma.
When highly praised by others, there is no hardship one cannot bear… such is the courage that springs from words of praise. …When criticized one can recklessly cause one’s own ruin.
~ Nichiren Daishonin 12th century Buddhist Monk
Read about recovery sessions
filled with lightbulb moments.
Taking Mean Words to Heart
So, feeling bad and sad after an encounter with a non-pathologically narcissistic person or with a sociopath is normal. However, we can change this and learn how to manage a narcissistic person – and how to exit the scope of the sociopath, aka a “narcissist”, the pathological user and fully restore our lives.
We can learn skills and perspectives to manage or fundamentally transform how we respond to what’s around us, particularly to narcissistic people and even to sociopaths.
This comes in part by understanding the things and the people and the words we hear them speak all around us. In addition, this comes within deeper knowledge about our bodies and mind and emotions, our thoughts and beliefs.
Comprehending that they’re all one and the same aspect of ourselves and interconnected. – And that we’re in charge of it all. Including this mysterious neurological system.
Break Down Our Neurological Function: How Words We Hear Create Our Beliefs
Let’s keep this science simple. We can feel this response to words happening in a few small examples. From there, we can carry this concept through to realize how it is that the smear campaign hurts like a nest of hornets attacking.
Example One: Imagine This:
You’re standing in your kitchen. A lemon on your kitchen counter catches your eye. The rounded curves, tapering at the ends to a green and brownish bit where the lemon grew from the lemon tree.
Is your mouth watering…? This is the neurological effect of words, mere words on our entire body system. Imagining this scenario with no lemon in view nevertheless has our body believing there is a lemon.
We experience this as if there were a lemon in our hand, and lemon aroma surrounding us. Our body believes. – We believe we’re experiencing a lemon.
We Believe On So Many Levels
What else happened in your body as you imagined this lemon…? Has your body relaxed…? Did you sigh…? Is your mouth puckering…?
Your body reacted and responded as if a real lemon were really there. From reading words about lemon… And you might have noticed though that whispered in your mind.
The thoughts were words that came to mind depending on how you’ve previously experienced lemons and the emotions they evoke.
How We feel Deeds Into Our Beliefs
All that from words you’re reading off a backlight screen about a lemon that isn’t anywhere in sight! The power of words as they resonate into our ear, sink in, filter through our nervous system is amazing…
And it is everything. All things around us, all we experience transmutes into an emotion, a thought, and then a belief. What are we feeling, thinking and believing…? Who decides what we feel and think and believe…?
Lightbulb moments.
Find your way back to you.
Mean Words Bring a Full Body Response
Mean words hit us hard and ripple through us from head to toe. Hitting our neurological system, adrenaline flows, cortisol spikes, a biological shock wave happens.
Our emotions pitch in with a search for meaning in what was said. We come up with a meaning based on our emotions and our body and our previous life experiences.
Example Two: Imagine This:
You’ve been waiting to hear from your partner, boyfriend, spouse… You’re waiting to hear about what you’re doing Friday night.
There’s a birthday party you want to go to; it’s for your best friend and you want your partner to come with you. You’ve let them know about it and asked them to come with you.
There’s been no reply from them about the party and it’s been two days already. You send a follow-up text asking: You got my text? About Sandy’s birthday…? You’re coming with right..?! I’m super excited about it!!
Instantly after two days of no response, they zing a text back: Get off my back!! Stop asking for things!!! You’re ruining everything.
Mean Words Send Our Hearts Pounding
Did your stomach lurch? Is your heart pounding…? Has your heart rate gone up thudding in your chest, your palms sweating…?
Are anxiety and confusion colliding inside your body? Did your brain kind of shut down..? That’s a normal neurological, physiological, bodily, and emotional response to violent language.
We Take the Smear Campaign to Heart
As normal able-bodied whole-humans, we each have the same neurological system. Words we hear are absorbed by our neurological system. In this way emotions, thoughts and beliefs are formed based on what we hear, even if it’s a lie. Even if it’s out of context, confusing, cruel and strange.
The words hit us and instantly emotions spring up and thoughts and beliefs nearly all in one millisecond. What we feel, what we think and what we believe is rooted in who we are and our previous life experiences combined with our understanding of the person hurling language at us.
Words Are All We Have
Words are all we have. They’re the most powerful tool we’ve got. We can use them well and deliberately, assertively.
Learning to understand the real meaning behind words based on who the speaker is and their intentions and motivations is one way to short circuit absorbing the poison and absorbing it as an emotional response that leads to a limiting belief.
Kind Words Effect Our Feelings and Beliefs
Example Three: Imagine This:
Waking slowly from a heavy sleep you know you’re late for work. Feeling weird, heavy and dizzy you try to get up but can barely manage to roll over on one side.
The realization that you’re sick lifts onto the horizon of your mind. The curtain of brain fog shifts and you remember there’s a project deadline, you’re meant to be at work, people depend on you. There’s a lot of pressure…
You think, maybe I can make it, and lift the covers off your bed one more time trying to sit up and get dressed to go… Maybe you can make it on time. As you sit up your stomach grips and vomit rises from your gut, you barely make it to the bathroom as your face turns pale.
There’s No Way Around It
You puke your guts out. A cold sweat breaks out along your hairline as you rest slumped at the toilet bowl, exhausted for turning your innards inside out. You’ve got to call in sick. You feel guilt creeping in.
You call up the work and ask for your boss’s extension, and say: I’m sick. I really tried but I just can’t make it in. I’m vomiting and feverish and I”m so sorry I just ca — Your boss interjects: That’s fine. No worries! Please take care of yourself. Are you alone or is there someone who can bring you juice or things you’ll need…? Please let me know if we can do something or have anything delivered to you. Please stay in bed. It’s okay. We’ll take care of things here, you get better. Please call for anything we can help with. It’s okay.
Are your eyes tearing up in relief..? Did you feel disbelief…? Have your shoulders dropped in letting go of the guilt…? Does this sound impossible as a response and yet you felt the effect of it anyway?
Normal Humans Are Astonishingly Amazing
This is how amazing we are as fully limbic brained, whole, able-bodied humans. Words are all we have and there’s nothing more powerful wherever they’re spoken, from a classroom to the workplace, at a family dinner or in silent prayer.
Take in the knowledge of how our bodies work and what all those feelings, thoughts and beliefs come from, and how they get there.
Find out how to use words in an expanding, and positive way. Decide what we believe. Deliberately develop an understanding of the scenarios and odyssey through the black hole of hell with a sociopath.
Our Emotional Intelligence and Whole-Humanity Wins Out
Know who’s talking to us. Understand their position, and meaning; their motivation in speaking to us. And as far as the predator goes, truly understand their simplistic motivation so that we can decode their meaning.
This frees us to have an emotional reaction, a thought process and a belief about our experience that match what’s actually happened. This is key. This is true resolution and healing.
We can land in a place where their weird, tangled words become ridiculous, meaningless and stay always perverse but shift to a perversion we know is coming for them, and so holds no sway over us – not even their lies.
The study of language, how it affects us and how to use it effectively is the study of neurolinguistic programming, NPL.
We’re fortunate to have the ability and are free to define our experiences; to create our life and find freedom, joy and real true love and happiness. We are awesome.
Here’s to REAL True Love and Happiness!
Time to Thrive!
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