The Fuck Loop
Author’s note: I wanted to generate an image of a child being yelled at by an adult, and it seems that ChatGPT did not want to produce such an image, as it it abusive. Good for ChatGPT.
It was 2012, and I was sitting in the dining area of the Loo Erf. A woman in her twenties who was becoming a friend called me a bitch. I informed her that the term bitch was not something I viewed as anything but a slur. She didn’t get it, and I had to explain the old meaning to her. She still didn’t get it. Just as no man should be called a stud, no woman should be called a bitch. I want respect for all human beings.
What we say matters, and how we communicate matters even more. It will always matter because the expression of emotions and communicating what we really mean to others can either build a person up or rip into them and destroy their self-image.
I’ve been involved in conversations about the use of the words shit and fuck wherein the proponents of their use say that intelligent people swear. Maybe some people with high IQs swear; however, they aren’t the ones who have high IQs in other areas. It seems that society’s IQ is dropping rapidly.
One of my husband’s ex-girlfriend’s family used to say that hell and damn were emphasis words. I can go along with that; however, it is the use of fuck that I have the biggest issue with. I will admit that holy shit is comical, and shorthand for the moment in which one must catch their breath to process some amazing factoid or happening. But it is followed up with other words that are move descriptive.
Why do we use such words? Most people I see in therapy might start out using fuck as a shorthand to express what they can’t express in a healthy way. It takes some digging in the iceberg of the mind to get to the real words, and when we’re frustrated, we might not even be able to say that. Then what happens is “shit” or “fuck” get blurted out into the air. They hang there as if to say to the air, “There has to be more to this than I’m saying.” If we’re in an empty space, no one hears us. If there are people present, and it is directed at someone, damage is done. What if it is a child?
In a way, shit and fuck are the modern version of spanking a child for what we view as wrongdoing. We now understand that corporal punishment does not teach the person, adult or child, to change a behavior in a positive manner: it teaches someone to get better at not getting busted for the poor behavior, and it teaches fear. It creates feelings of worthlessness and low or no self-respect. The fallout from this is that people can develop low or no respect for others.
I remember the one time I got spanked. It was back in the 1960s, and I stuck my tongue out at my mother. I was heading out the door to school, and I was told that when I got home that day, I’d be getting a talking to. I don’t remember what my father said: I do remember that he laid his hands on me. It was only once, and I felt awful. It dug into my seven-year-old tender soul. It changed things. It was poor parenting. I got the lecture that evening, and I don’t remember what was said. What I remember is the spanking with his hand. Did it teach me anything? No. I suppressed my feelings because they weren’t going to be heard. When you aren’t able to get the words out as a child, what can you do? Slowly, you learn to hold it inside, and then you grow up, and yelling at the world is what you’ve learned.
Looking back on that incident as an adult, I was not even able to form the words “I’m angry at you mom!” If a parent can hear those words from a child, they can then move to help the child express and resolve the issue in a space of safety.
Without the words and the ability to work in a higher arena, you have a child who sets you off. And let’s say the child is two or three, and all of a sudden you are calling them a little fuck or a little shit. You are yelling at them. First off, no one likes being yelled at. We should never be hit by anyone. And here you are standing in your kitchen, or the grocery store, calling an innocent child a little fuck or shit. We condemn spanking, and if we saw it in public, we might want to report abuse to the proper agency. Why not with the words we use? They can be just as stifling to emotional growth.
What gives us the right to cross such a fragile boundary? There is not a good answer for this. We don’t have that right.
The right we do have is to haul ourselves into therapy and work through the damage that was done by those who created the mess in the first place. We have the right and the ability to do some deep soul work, and we have the ability to learn to find the real words. We can discharge trauma and come to understand that there are better ways to express what we feel. It is about digging into the iceberg below the anger to put real words to what is going on into use.
We also have the ability to apologize for words that damage.
What all of this feels like once we get a handle on ourselves is a calmer self. You might find yourself with a new kind of “keep calm” thought. Calm, and think about what is being felt, and why. Counting might stop the short-term knee-jerk response. Using our words on ourselves teaches us that we can solve problems by ourselves in effective ways! We then build up the positive stuff that reinforces that good feeling in our brains about our ability to do the harder things of living. Simply stated, the above stated happening becomes a learned skill, and all of this because we got words that work, and took ourselves out of the fuck loop.
