On the Importance of Words

Words are hard.  So are feelings.  A picture is worth 1000 words. How many feelings is it worth?  How many feelings is a word worth?  I’m not sure those questions have been answered. What is a question worth? Maybe very little if it has a quick answer. But what about the questions that live in us, unanswerable completely? Those are priceless.  Can we have a question without words?

I’ve had many such questions in my life. It’s frustrating not to have immediate answers to, but extremely valuable in all the partial answers I’ve found while living the questions and looking for answers. And those questions are formed with words. So are the answers. Well, they do start with a feeling. An impulse.  A longing.  A somatic experience and an emotion. A question forms with a desire, a curiosity, seeking something missing.  An answer with a form.  Eventually, both become more solid when we put words to them. And then it all becomes even more solid when the loop reverses direction – that is, we start to live the word, creating more somatic experience and more feelings. They all become integrated into us. One dimension alone, thought, word, intuition, somatic experience, or feeling, is incomplete. All together, they make us whole.

I practiced primarily somatic therapy for the first many years in private practice. It was very important to me as it was a neglected part of my human experience. By prioritizing the soma, we reconnect with the old patterns from early childhood, from before there were words. This can be an important and necessary part of therapy for many people. But it’s not just early childhood. Every time we have a new experience, it starts in the body and with feeling, which is some sort of valuation of that experience, and it takes us time to make sense of what the experience is, how we feel about it, and what we think about it.  Further, we need to differentiate feelings.  Many stay stuck in the simple notion that if something feels good, it is good, and if it feels bad, it is bad.  It takes words and thought to make that happen.  Without words and thoughts, it stays unconscious.  An unexplainable mystery.

Images are powerful. In our modern age, we are bombarded with billions of images every day on our various screens. Each of these images creates experiences in our bodies that we are mostly unconscious of. Do you feel erotic charge with some images?  Or lightness and whimsy with others?  Do you ever cringe when you watch someone being hit in a TV show or movie? What about the examples of war, violence, and brutality shown on the news every day? Do you feel those things, or do you numb them and tune them out? Keeping them at a distance on the screen and in a location far, far away? Or perhaps even more challenging, do you experience them as if they were happening to you right now, unable to differentiate that you are currently safe and it is happening to someone else, somewhere else, at some other time? 

Putting words to the experience helps bring clarity, definition, and separation from the raw, primal experience so that we can make sense of it. If we never take the step of putting words to our experience, it remains primarily unconscious and can continue to drive further thoughts, feelings, and behaviors without our awareness. Just as a baby learns to differentiate itself from its mother and eventually expresses its feelings and experiences in words, this is a necessary developmental step in everything we experience in life. 

Just like the gluttony of images, we are also bombarded with words every day.  Some of us more than others, depending on our profession, but regardless, more words than we can completely consciously register and digest.  That is part of why we don’t recognize the power of words or images.  They are common, ordinary, and present in an overabundance.  They are easy to overlook and dismiss, but as Bob Marley sang (paraphrasing a bible verse), “The stone that the builder refuse, will always be the head cornerstone.”  What we want to overlook, because it is common, ordinary, and found everywhere, can actually be the most important part of what we are building.  In fact, one of the core principles of Alchemy is that the things we want to reject the most are actually the most vital ingredients of our transformation.

Words, of course, can bring more confusion because your definition of a word and my definition of a word might be slightly different, even if we read the same dictionary definition, but eventually, they bring us closer to clarity. Especially when, in a relational interaction, we can continue to use words to explore our mutual understanding and come as close as possible to an authentic connection that may or may not involve sameness but might also make room for difference. When it stays within the realm of feeling or somatic experience that isn’t discussed, there might be a felt sense of connection, but it’s often an illusion arising from unconscious projections and assumptions. Once we start to talk about it, we may realize that while we feel connected because we might be feeling the same things, the way we interpret it and the sense we make of it might be vastly different. People may not want to talk about it because they would prefer the illusion of connection, but a deeper connection is possible when these things are clarified, and both people’s perspectives and positions are valued.

Using words with the stance of compassion, curiosity, and empathy brings us authentic connection and interpersonal subjectivity. In my opinion, that’s the only way out of this increasingly intensely divisive world we are living in. Using words disconnected from any sense of feeling is a tool for distancing rationality, or, at worst, for manipulation.  I think this is why words sometimes get a bad rap.  While words can bring us closer, words can also divide and distance us.  It is all about the words we use and the feelings they evoke in the people who deliver and receive them.  

We are simultaneously both all the same as humans and vastly different, even within easily perceived categories such as gender, skin, color, education, political affiliation, ethnicity, etc. In any given moment, we prioritize sameness or difference, which has the cost of excluding the other. When we focus on our sameness, we forget our differences. When we focus on our differences, we forget our sameness. It’s actually a defensive maneuver: choosing to prioritize sameness or difference.  We combat our aloneness by focusing on sameness, and we protect ourselves by separation, focusing on our differences.  Using words to talk about our thoughts, feelings, and experiences enables us to dance together, moving in and out of our differences and sameness into a more accurate reality and a more authentic relationship that honors both.

Due to the glut of images, the speed of life, and countless digital connections, it’s rare to slow down and take the time to put words to our experience. We reply with an emoji, assuming we know exactly what we mean by it and that the other person will receive our message. Does that really happen? Like pictures, each emoji and GIF can have 1000 meanings. What meaning is received? Usually, whatever meaning the person wants to make of it, it carries the illusion of being effective, but I’m not so sure we’re actually communicating the same message.  We wouldn’t actually know unless we ask and talk about it.

I’ve been offering groups I call “Tending the Waters of Psyche and Soul” to invite us into this process of navigating the relationship between self, other, and the archetypal images in our lives. We work with the images that come to us in our dreams and through our screens to explore the feelings, somatic experiences, and meanings that arise in our lives. And we do it in community because each of us has an important piece of the puzzle that our isolated, limited individual perspectives can only grasp a small part alone. 

Admittedly, as powerful as this group work is, it is still slow.  We can assume we understand the message in a big, intense experience, but I’m not sure we do if we can’t put words to it.  It takes time to unpack, process, digest, metabolize, and use that as fuel to change our lives and live differently.  But perhaps slowness is exactly the medicine we need in our manic times.  For me, taking time to find the words can be a humbling experience.  The right words don’t seem to come; I don’t know the right words.  I may misunderstand the meaning of the word, leading me to feel stupid.  I’m confronted with my limitations and inadequacies.  When I try a word, it doesn’t feel quite right.  I feel alone and disconnected while struggling to find the right words from deep in my psyche.   But the effort is worth it.  Because words are a perspective.  A standpoint.  A lens through which to look at the situation and develop a connection or relationship to it.  It’s only through finding our words that we can truly change something.  Otherwise, we continue to live through the same unconscious patterns.  There is a reason that when magic was a thing, it was invoked with words.  Finding the right words casts a spell. A spell that can change us, others, or the situation.  

In Harry Potter, a boggart takes on the form of what the person fears most.  To neutralize the boggart, it required a combination of somatic, emotional, and mental activity.  Remus Lupin explains, “The charm that repels a boggart is simple, yet it requires force of mind. You see, the thing that really finishes a boggart is laughter. What you need to do is force it to assume a shape that you find amusing. We will practice the charm without wands first. After me, please … riddikulus!”  The boggart is immortal.  You can’t kill it, but you can recognize what it is, and using the power of the word, calling it what it is, while somatically pointing your wand, feeling a feeling of amusement, mentally picturing something amusing, and calling it what it really is – “ridiculous”, you can change its form.  

Over and over again in life, we will have feelings and face difficult things.  We can’t escape that.  But we can study ourselves, we can study history, we can study words, and we can call things by what they truly are, using the power of words.  Not just empty words, but words imbued with feeling, with soma, and with imagination.  Just as in Harry Potter, we often project our greatest fears and unconscious, unspeakable patterns, which appear to us as monsters – usually in another person.  But when we name them, they lose the power to harm us.  Speaking the unspeakable thoughts, feelings, fantasies, and experiences is a key ingredient in the transformation of our psyche, soul, and ego.  Speaking words is a vital part of being human that can’t be replaced.  No other creature on the planet communicates with words.  Words make us human, make us whole, and help us become masters over our lives and psyche, especially when paired with emotion, imagination, relationship, and somatic experience.  

Chuck Hancock, M.Ed., LPC, LMHC, is a licensed psychotherapist and Analytic Psychology Training Candidate practicing in Colorado and New York, guiding individuals, couples, and groups into greater wholeness.  Inner Life Adventures.