If the child is strong, the pain must not be real.
Either way, the child loses access to their own truth.
Emotional Injury Leaves Fewer Scars—and Deeper Ones
Unlike physical injury, verbal and emotional harm leaves no clear evidence trail. There is no cast, no X-ray, no universally acknowledged recovery timeline. This invisibility makes it easier to dismiss—and harder to heal.
Bessel van der Kolk, in The Body Keeps the Score, documents how emotional trauma is stored somatically, shaping stress responses, self-perception, and relational patterns long after the original words are spoken. The body remembers what the mind was told to forget.
Adults who grew up under verbal invalidation often struggle to name their pain. They second-guess their reactions. They apologize for being affected. Many enter therapy not asking why they are hurting, but whether they are “allowed” to hurt at all.
This is not resilience. It is adaptation to chronic invalidation.
The Function of the Phrase Is Control, Not Strength
The cultural persistence of “sticks and stones” is not accidental. It serves a social function.
By minimizing the power of words, the phrase protects speakers from accountability. It shifts responsibility away from those causing harm and onto those experiencing it. It reframes emotional response as a moral failing rather than a natural human reaction.
Michel Foucault’s work on power is useful here—not because he focused on parenting, but because he emphasized how power operates most efficiently when it becomes invisible. When individuals police themselves. When harm no longer needs enforcement because it has been internalized.
Teaching children that words do not hurt is one way culture ensures they will endure harm quietly.
Reclaiming the Truth About Words
The counter-narrative is simple, but radical:
Words do hurt. And that does not make someone weak—it makes them human.
Strength is not the absence of impact. Strength is the capacity to name impact accurately and respond with agency. When children are allowed to say, “That hurt me,” they are not being fragile. They are practicing discernment.
Part of reclaiming power—especially for those harmed in childhood—is learning to re-evaluate the stories we were taught about pain. To recognize that minimizing language was never about our protection. It was about someone else’s comfort.
This blog exists to challenge those inherited scripts.
Because if narrative is the mechanism through which power is internalized, then telling the truth about words is one of the first ways power can be reclaimed.
