Hello everyone!
Words - the most powerful thing on the planet.
We have two choices - to speak life or to speak death.
We can hurt people with our death words - in fact we can wound them for life. We can destory dreams, destroy self confidence and self-worth and even affect someone's health with death words. This death, this destruction is the basis of what verbal abuse is all about.
We can build people up, increase their self-confidence and self-worth and better their health with our life words. We can even heal hurt with our life words.
The choice is ours.
I would off this advice - pause before you speak. That may not always be easy and letting everything fall out of your mouth may actually seem more fitting at the time. You have to pause long enough to ask yourself this question, "will this response actually help me, the other person or this situation?" If the answer is no, be quiet. If the answer is yes, speak the truth in love to them. What they do with that is up to them.
I would offer another piece of advice - walk away from someone who is verbally abusing you. Walk out of the room, get out of the car, leave the restraunt (all things I have had to do), do whatever you need to do. The conversation is over. No one, let me repeat no one, has the right to talk to you in that manner. You can re-initiate the conversation when they want to talk to you like you are a human being. If they do not want to do this, do not speak with them until they can treat you like a person. You are only responsible for your respones to them, not their actions.
If you want to learn about my experience with verbal abuse and how you can overcome this just like I have, please read or listen to my book The Road Less Traveled: A Story of Love, Hope, Pain and Everything In Between. You can find it in online in paperback and digital on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, digital at iTunes and in audio at Audible.com
I will leave you with this Bible verse from James 3:5-10;
" 5 In the same sense, the tongue is a small part of the body, and yet it boasts of great things.
See [by comparison] how great a forest is set on fire by a small spark!6 And the tongue is [in a sense] a fire, the very world of injustice andunrighteousness; the tongue is set among our members as that which contaminates the entire body, and sets on fire the course of our life [the cycle of man’s existence], and is itself set on fire by [b]hell (Gehenna).7 For every species of beasts and birds, of reptiles and sea creatures, is tamed and has been tamed by the human race. 8 But no one can tame the human tongue; it is a restless evil [undisciplined, unstable], full of deadly poison. 9 With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in the likeness of God. 10 Out of the same mouth come both blessing and cursing. These things, my brothers, should not be this way.."
Please, please, watch your words!
Until next time,
Elizabeth