How do the words that others say to us influence us?

Since the human being is born, he builds himself into the subject of language, thanks to the words that his parents and family endow him with.. Learn to name things and people. Also, little by little, himself.

He incorporates phrases that will shape the world around him, those that teach him how to react, how to manage emotions, how to get what he wants, how to describe and describe himself; in short, they give you tools to position yourself. The influence of the first five years is decisive.

Those words-repertoire will be with which it goes out to the world. They will leave an imprint. In addition, he incorporates them, repeats them and even on occasions, takes his chest out of them.

Labels become flesh, they become empowering beliefs, but often they also restrict. One exercise that can easily be done is to pay attention to and reflect on the fillers used in everyday life. Even the ones we don't say in public, to everyone; the ones we say in front of the mirror. It is believed that they are just that: "set phrases" but after repeating them so much, they fix what to do.

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Language and its participation in how we see ourselves

You often hear: “Carlos is very nice”, “María is very docile”, “Alberto is just like his father”, “Ana is very stubborn”. Some of these phrases can sometimes be flattering and almost flattering, and sometimes the opposite. What they all do is establish a stereotype, mark a character, a role; they are setting a range of movement, some edges.

Words have enormous power and yet the subject is not fully aware of it. They impact on him and will make him build, based on them (the subjectivity with which he endows them) his reality. Because words are loaded with a peculiar meaning: the one that every human being attributes to them. Each word has a weight, a smell, a color, a temperature, a quality, an emotion. That is why “being happy” is not the same for some as it is for others.

The good thing is that this can be modified, you can work on expanding that connotation of the words or endow them with multiple meanings, depending on the moment, the place, the conversation.

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Going beyond labels

The assumption of roles (the nice, the docile, the stubborn, the equal to the father), can be prolonged in adult life and prevent successful development in some areas and relationships.

Following so to the letter what was said is a way of anchoring in a past that probably no longer works (because it is out of date). In many cases, permanence in these roles is due to a misunderstood loyalty, a loyalty to whoever said that phrase. To be what was expected of that subject.

There is a tendency (unconscious) to remain faithful to what it was, waiting for recognition from someone. The question that the patient must ask himself is if this is necessary, if it is useful to him in his current life. It is about thinking for whom you are acting and what you are looking for with that action.

Children's content will be known in the analysis. It will be in that space where it is investigated the unconscious vestige of those set phrases, how they are working, how they position the subject, etc. Because the time of the unconscious is different from chronological time, there may be situations in which we psychically relive our childhood, and one of those phrases conditions the present. You have to work to transform that, to build new phrases that inhabit the present and deactivate, transmute those.
From those infantile constructions, psychic impediments can occur, ways (that do not prosper) of solving some problems, scenes that are repeated without (apparently) being explained, limitations, fears, contradictions... all that is giving us clues. When it has not been possible to put words to them, when it has not been possible to transform those desires, they will turn into obsessions, into pathology.

In everything there is a joy, even in the symptom. The symptom comes to show that which has not been able to unfold in a healthier way, which has not been put into words. It is a way of telling the story of the patient without him realizing it, because the unconscious only needs / wants to manifest itself, it wants to specify that repressed, and when he cannot do it by linear means (because it would be extremely unpleasant for consciousness), he does it disguised, scrambled, distorted.

Psychoanalysis is a very useful instrument that listens to detect what are those limiting phrases and beliefs, that it is permeable to listen to what is repeated in the subject, indicating what even this does not perceive from the conscience.

Through interpretation, new chains of signifiers will be built that will deactivate old / current beliefs endowing them with other perspectives, understanding them in a richer and broader way, appreciating how this phenomenon can be thought, learning to tolerate that this is part of the past and that what is important is what is important come.

In the analytical process, the patient will be the one who does the work of construction of the new words. These are transformed, they are changed allowing at the same time that they are others - more their own, more in line with the subject and in due course - those that re-construct the subject.