Are you one of those who speaks with words that heal, or words that hurt?

And you already know which category you belong to…

You've probably placed yourself with the good ones. Among those who listen, reassure, advise, comfort. Among those who believe they want what's best for the other person.

But if it were truly that simple, all it would take is deciding which words to use to land on whichever side you prefer. As if the divide between good and bad, healing and hurting, were simply a matter of word choice.

We'd like to believe it all comes down to words — reassuring ourselves that speaking well, choosing the right phrasing, learning to communicate better would be enough.

Yet the reality runs far deeper than that.

Words matter, that much is obvious. You know that a sentence can humiliate, reassure, silence, open a space or close it completely, that some words stay with us for years. And that others become invisible shelters we keep living in long after we first heard them.

Still, words never act alone.

They carry something else with them. A tension… A fear… A way of being with the other person… An expectation… A need for control… Or sometimes, on the contrary, a presence stable enough that it no longer needs to produce anything at all.

So the real question isn't whether you're capable of choosing the right words…

The question is from what inner place you are speaking.

Meeting Someone or Producing an Effect?

Meeting Someone or Producing an Effect?

When you speak to someone, are you trying to meet them — or to produce an effect on them?

The difference seems subtle. And yet it changes everything in a relationship.

Because producing an effect often takes very acceptable forms.

You comfort someone to ease their pain… but also to calm the discomfort their pain creates in you.

You offer advice no one asked for… because you can't bear feeling powerless.

You explain when what the other person needed most was simply to be heard.

You say "I understand" before they've even finished speaking.

You want to help, to fix, to solve, to soothe — and above all to do something, anything, rather than sit with that helplessness.

Remember this time when he/she told you they couldn't take it anymore.

And you felt something rise inside you, not compassion first. Discomfort… That silence to hold, that pain you can do nothing about, that helplessness you don't know how to sit with.

So instead of welcoming the other person, you defended yourself. And you spoke.

You offered options, asked practical questions, looked for a way out. Not only for them. For you too... To avoid staying there, in that suspended moment where you had nothing to offer but your presence...

And deep down, you know it, you were no longer truly with them. You were managing what they provoked in you.

That's precisely where, sometimes, behind all this relational busyness, there is no real encounter. There is an attempt at management.

The other person becomes an emotion to calm, a tension to reduce, a reaction to avoid, a problem to solve — rather than a person to meet.

And that's exactly where something breaks.

Because you can speak to someone without ever truly being with them…

You Can Say the Right Words and Not Be There.

And what's striking is that the other person often feels it before they can explain it.

A "how are you" thrown out while looking away.

A "I'm listening" said while already formulating your response.

An "I love you" that has become automatic from being repeated without being inhabited.

The words are right. The form is correct. The relational script works perfectly.

But something is missing.

And that absence cannot be compensated for, over time, by communication techniques, empathic phrasing, or carefully chosen vocabulary.

Because what heals in words is not only their content.

It's the coherence between what is said, the inner state of the person speaking, and the way they truly inhabit the moment.

The voice speaks too. The rhythm. The silences. The gaze. The tension in the body. Real availability.

Not because "the voice never lies." Human beings are perfectly capable of performing, seducing, playing a social role, displaying impeccable warmth while remaining deeply absent.

But the human nervous system remains extraordinarily sensitive to incoherence.

You sense when someone is more interested in convincing than understanding.

You sense when someone wants to produce an image of themselves rather than genuinely make contact.

You sense when words are primarily serving to maintain emotional control over an exchange.

And yet, some clumsy, imperfect words become deeply healing — simply because they come from somewhere true.

An inhabited word is not a perfect word.

It's a word carried by someone who is genuinely there.

Your Words Are a Mirror.

And this is probably where things become truly uncomfortable.

Because the way we speak to others often reveals something about the way we live with ourselves.

The person who constantly attacks is sometimes speaking from a permanent inner war.

The person who always needs to be in control often fears losing their footing.

The person who always needs to be right struggles to tolerate uncertainty or vulnerability.

The person who appeases everyone is sometimes running from their own inner conflicts.

And the person who humiliates isn't always simply trying to hurt the other. Sometimes they're trying to escape their own shame, their own sense of powerlessness, or something inside themselves they don't know how to face any other way.

Remember when you said of your colleague, that he doesn't really know what he's talking about. Or of your friend that she always overdoes it. Or of your partner who never does anything to make things better, quite the opposite…

But if you stop for just a second — just one — you'll recognise that voice.

It's the same one that speaks up when you make a mistake. The same severity. The same absence of margin. You're not only judging them. You're revealing the climate in which you live with yourself. What you say to others, you've been saying to yourself for a long time. With the same exigence. And rarely more kindness.

And if you look more closely at the form of what you say — not just the content, but the structure — something else appears. When you say "people never listen to me," who exactly are these people? When you say "it's impossible," what precisely is stopping you? When you say "I'm just like that," like that… how, exactly? These deletions, these generalisations, these linguistic distortions are not mere slips of language.

They are windows into the way you construct your reality. That is precisely what the NLP Meta-Model reveals — a tool we explored in depth in a previous article. [→What if words revealed the invisible mechanics of our problems?]

But let's be honest all the way through: suffering doesn't excuse everything.

Some people consciously use words to dominate, manipulate, or silence others.

Awareness doesn't guarantee kindness.

And unawareness doesn't always prevent repair.

There are clumsy people who heal deeply. And there are people who are extremely self-aware and destroy with sophistication.

Because the real dividing line isn't between the "good" and the "bad."

It lies elsewhere.

In our capacity, or our inability, to let the other person exist as a subject…

…rather than as an object to manage, convince, correct, or use.

Words Can Repair, but hey Can Also Silence Someone Completely.

A word doesn't only act on the mind.

It acts on the body, the nervous system, the sense of safety, the image we have of ourselves — and sometimes even on the way a person ends up inhabiting their own existence.

Putting an emotion into words doesn't just describe it — it transforms it. Neuroscientist Matthew Lieberman showed that the simple act of naming what you feel — not analysing it, not understanding it, just naming it, reduces amygdala activity and activates the prefrontal cortex.

In other words: saying "I'm angry" or "I'm afraid" isn't just information.

It's an act.

An act that changes something, physiologically, in the person speaking — and sometimes in the person listening. Words don't describe experience from the outside. They participate in transforming it from within.

And some phrases become psychological homes.

A few words repeated over years are sometimes enough to build lasting shame, a fear of rejection, or the deep-seated belief that you will never be enough.

What is the phrase you repeat to yourself regularly?

Think about it. Now.

Maybe it's "I'm too intense." Or "I shouldn't have said that." Or "I always make things complicated." Or "I'm useless, I'll never make it."

You think it's your voice. It isn't. It's a voice you were given — repeated long enough by someone who had authority over you — until you took over the job yourself. Today you don't even need anyone to say it anymore. You do it yourself. And sometimes, without realising it, you pass it on — to your children, to those you love — with the sincere conviction that you're telling them the truth.

On the other side, certain words become corrective experiences. Not because they're "positive," but because they arrive from a place coherent, stable and credible enough to finally be received.

And perhaps that's where we understand that what heals isn't necessarily gentleness.

A word can be confronting and deeply true.

Another can seem extraordinarily kind while being intrusive, controlling, or invalidating.

So the real question may no longer be:

"What words do you use?"

But rather:

"What quality of presence are you bringing into this relationship?"

Before Your Next Important Conversation…

Don't ask yourself what the right words will be.

Ask yourself instead:

From what place inside me am I speaking?

From fear?

From a need to be recognised?

From wanting to be right?

From a need to be in control?

From avoidance?

Or from a presence stable enough to truly meet someone?

Because at the heart of it, words rarely reveal only what we think.

They reveal above all how we inhabit a relationship.

And sometimes even… what we haven't yet learned to welcome within ourselves.