Words are powerful. Regardless of whether the circumstances around us change, being conscious of the language we use to describe our personal experience can lead to monumental shifts in wellness.
The consequences of wording became important to me as I started exploring my own processes around anxiety and insomnia. During this time, I would frequently say things like “I’m an anxious person” or “I just can’t sleep anymore”. As I started to address my own emotional challenges, I began to notice these phrases were incredibly limiting.
When I said “I’m an anxious person”, I not only labelled myself as “anxious” but denied myself and the listener access to all other parts of my personality. I blocked myself from acknowledging the whole picture, which included the crucial fact that because I knew anxiety I also had to be familiar with feeling calm and content.
In Western culture, we often envision concepts as individual and standing alone. Our perspective is dualistic, which is not always helpful when working with emotions. When we take a look at Eastern Chinese philosophy, the Yin and Yang propose that the whole picture is composed of dualities that are actually connected and complimentary. Under this perspective, it is possible to see that knowing one emotion (such as joy) requires us to be familiar with its opposites (sadness and despair), as we are really recognizing the imbalance between the two emotional spectrums.
Yin Yang
Language also plays a role in empowering ourselves to take responsibility for change and recognizing our capability in the transformation. When I said “I can’t sleep anymore”, I was actually lying (and really good at fooling both myself and others!). In fact, I was fully capable of sleeping… I had been doing it pretty well up until that time in my life. But saying that I couldn’t sleep reinforced my sense of incompetence. When I was ready to acknowledge the fact that I was still capable of sleeping, I started to realize that my insomnia was a great excuse for not performing perfectly at work, school, and in my relationships. When I lost the insomnia, I lost a lot of distance between myself and my imperfection.
Over time, I started to slightly adjust my language to say “I can feel anxious” and “I was awake late last night”. I expanded my perspective on how anxiety affected my life, and started to see a clearer choice within my situation. This choice was to make room for anxiety, but not allow it to control of define me.
In highlighting these relatively simplistic shifts in language, my intention is not to discount the struggle involved with emotional distress. Rephrasing is only a part of the process of change, but certainly not one to dismiss. Adjusting our day-to-day language and personal narrative is something that can be practiced by anyone at any time, regardless of where they are in their journey to wellness.