Swearing - ?

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This is an odd one . I'm not usually prone to doing this , but lately I've been speaking out loud to myself . It's peppered with strong swear words. I'm not talking to a voice in my head or outside of my head . I'm not particularly stressed so can't use that as an explanation .

Making a word tabboo increases its value

Reverse psychology

No word is inherently good or bad

Same as euphemism

"ret*d" , "idiot" and "moron" used to be medical terminology. Not right now.

Euphemisms are not magical or special but using euphemisms shows you are current with the psychology industry

Especially for precious lil "people" that are professional counselor

I find I swear a lot, esp in meltdown.

My current theory is that since swearing is processed via the amygdala, and in meltdown your prefrontal cortex is struggling to engage, perhaps it's a way of communicating emotion verbally when that's not possible. Especially for those of us whose primary intelligence is verbal.

That was my conclusion after a particularly horrible meltdown yesterday (at church, a woman hugged me when I went outside to get some space because it was too loud, even though I said clearly that I needed to be alone she thought she knew best... sigh). I often have these weird epiphanies (not saying I'm right, but it made sense of what I felt) after the meltdown is finished and my brain regains equilibrium.

I'm someone who pretty much never swears, but there have been times, when I have done just as you describe. It's almost like a stim, the repetition or use of words you wouldn't usually say also gives them more power, which serves as a kind of release. Maybe subconsciously, you've got some pent up emotions needing to be released, maybe not. But, I did find the following as well ...

Improved psychological and physical health — The health benefits of swearing include increased circulation, elevated endorphins, and an overall sense of calm, control, and well-being. The key is to do it sparingly and not to get angry at the same time, which would be very bad for you — as well as terribly vulgar.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hide-and-seek/201205/hell-yes-the-7-best-reasons-swearing

Professor Timothy Jay of Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in the States, whom I have since had the pleasure of meeting, has forged a career investigating why people swear and has written several books on the topic. His main thesis is that swearing is not, as is often argued, a sign of low intelligence and inarticulateness, but rather that swearing is emotional language. In his words: ‘Curse words do things to sentences that noncurse words cannot do’ (Jay, 1999, p.137). Indeed, Professor Jay is rather scathing at psycholinguists’ tendency to have largely ignored swearing. He says: ‘Linguistic definitions of language [that omit cursing] are ultimately invalid, although polite’ (Jay, 1999, p.11).

...So, our research shows that swearing can help people better tolerate pain, that too much swearing in everyday situations can reduce its effectiveness, and that swearing probably works by making people feel more aggressive, in turn setting off the fight or flight response. Swearing as a response to pain appears not to be an expression of pain catastrophising, because if it were, there should have been a heightened sensation of pain with swearing. The idea of swearing in response to pain as disinhibitory behaviour also seems unlikely as this predicts no alteration in pain perception, contrary to our findings. Our research instead indicates that swearing as a response to pain represents a form of pain management. While this had never been empirically demonstrated before, it seems nevertheless to have been well known anecdotally by nurses, midwives and mothers-to-be.

The media reaction to our research was unbelievable. When the first paper was published in late July 2009 my phone rang off its hook as journalists from all over the world sought to arrange interviews: with Evan Davis on The Today Programme, with Arthur Smith for The One Show and with Stephen Fry and Brian Blessed for Stephen Fry’s Planet Word.

Actually, on reflection, we were probably quite lucky in the timing of our research on swearing and pain. Maybe a few years earlier and it would still have been too much of a taboo topic to secure peer review publication. This is not so today. Indeed, it really does appear that ‘now’ is the time for researching the psychology of swearing, as demonstrated by the recent publication of a number of fascinating studies.
https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-26/edition-9/swearing-language-life-and-death

I used to swear a lot when I was younger and had a group of peers. Then I went through a long period where I didn't swear at all and suppressed any such thing but it felt artificial and repressive. Now, I don't swear excessively and only swear on rare occasion for emphasis or effect and only to my wife, to myself or in written form with online friends. My wife swears a bit more than I do when we talk together.

Being the Sweet Pea that I am, I always make an effort not to swear.

If it makes you feel better ...one of my Spanish teachers in highschool was this funny little old man from Bolivia. Before class started he walk around the classroom getting things ready (testing the roll up map etc) all of the while muttering "Miercoles, Miercoles, Miercoles" which means "Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday,..".

"Wednesday" is to Spanish speakers as "shucks", and "shoot" are to us in the English speaking world- a nice word that sounds like their S-bomb.

A few months before I was diagnosed with Asperger's, my meltdowns and outbursts not only got a lot more frequent and severe, but I started swearing a lot. I even said the F word and called people the b word. When the staff at the home I lived in secretly told my mom about this she was shocked, because my mother has known me my whole life and knew something was very wrong if I was acting that way.

Swearing might be considered the emotional equivalent of bleeding.

The cascade of emotion associated with a "meltdown" might require using a verbal expression as a sort of relief valve.

One might not want to develop a habit (such as in the military) of using swear words frequently as they can lose their ability to covey emotion if used too frequently.

I'm going to be honest with you: I've never swore when I became an adult. In fact, I don't even like swearing that much.

I mean, sure, I'm fine with the words 'damn', 'hell', 'crap', and others that are mild, but I do NOT like the words that start with S and F, and other words that are as strong or stronger.

Whenever I do tend to get stressed out, I usually blurt out something as tame as "Dagnabbit/Doggone It!", "For Frigg's sake!", "By all that is sacred!", and "Holy Cripes!". Yeah, I know it may be silly to others, but this is how I talk, OK?

For some reason, people have 'found out' that swearing makes you smarter, creative, and honest than those who don't swear. Yeah, that's what people said about 'liquid courage' and Christianity, and that's just a form of hubris, and it's just plain ridiculous.

I rarely swear.

Except on Twitter, then I'm a drunken sailor.

I conditioned myself not to use swear words to the point that I automatically replaced them when I was reading something that had the words in it. I've only recently started even saying them in my head. With my hands, though, I'm much less polite

Is it just me, or do most people actually tend to call pretty much EVERYTHING the 's-word' nowadays?