Words as Drugs: Understanding Their Impact on Body and Mind

Some drugs are helpful. We feel better when we take them. 

Other drugs have awful side-effects.

Have you considered that the words you use have a similar pharmaceutical effect?

Your partner walks into the room “We need to talk.” 

What happens in your body when you hear that?

Your partner walks into a room and says softly “Hi, beautiful.”

What happens in your body when you hear that? 

How did you react differently to those set of words? And, how did you do  that? 

Words are literally drugs. 

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These past few weeks, I’ve been listening and looking more deeply with words to notice how the word feels in my body and where. I’m practicing taking my time and wondering why words I read, say, think or hear create a particular sensation. As an example, words like, Miscellaneous Fee on my bank statement.

It’s 11:30 PM, I’m wide awake and in bed. I reach for my phone and to check my bank balance when I see those two words.  I felt myself hold my breath, eyes narrowing, and a bunch of obscenities soon followed. I did the math calculations month by month, year by year. Hundreds of dollars to be lost…I began to toss and turn. I could also feel this rising energy up to my shoulders. There was no way I could sleep now. I’ve just sent a whole chemical reaction through my body within minutes!

What I know is that most of my inability to go to sleep, there is some thought about something I’m concerned about. This is also consistent with what my clients tell me. So, maybe we don’t need an Ambien. We need a way to relax ourselves once we’ve drugged ourselves with words. 

I mean, these words in this case, are just pixels on a screen, right?

They can be some of the greatest sources of inflammation because we also bring our experience to those words.

Part of our reactivity is not solely what the words mean, but also we add meaning to them.

What if you knew more about your body sensations? Maybe they’re connected to what you’re thinking, reading, saying and hearing.

There is a practice to also be the ‘anti-inflammatory’ because being unaware of how we create our bodied reactivity is costing us. Going to the doctor for every little sensation, doctors ordering expensive testing, adding more drugs to your pill box. Maybe you need all that, but you could also begin a rigorous practice to notice your reactivity and shift that. Go to the source.

When was the last time you slowed down, from pure curiosity, to ask what people meant by words they use? This is useful because many times you make something mean something that the person didn’t intend. Then the reactivity begins. I can think of a few family situations where I can hear my siblings or see their texts and observe myself tense. Is it possible that high blood pressure could be better controlled by observing their ingestion of words and thoughts? I see it all the time in my clinic, a practice of clamping down on emotions, not noticing their reactivity, telling a story to small to live in.

This one practice of noticing your words and other’s words in your body can change how you show up in your life. 

This is about agency.  Can I be awake to my own use of language and be present to others' use? There’s a possibility of getting skilled enough to know you are also a type of drug dispenser and also the antidote.

This is not about saying the right thing to manipulate to have things go your way. It’s about recognizing that by hearing or seeing  certain words we create a certain world based on our experience with that word.

The next time you hear a word that generates reactivity in your body, breathe, and calmly ask what they mean by that word. Keep observing your body until you have clarity. You’ll know because your body will be much more relaxed.

Let me know how it goes!