Mind Your Language: How the Words We Use Shape Our Experience of Health
“Words create worlds” (Osamah Mimish)
A simple phrase I saw last week that sounds both poetic but powerful.
The language we use everyday subtly shapes how we experience the world around us – including how we understand our health and wellbeing.
You’ve probably heard or even said things like:
"My life is chaotic at the moment"
"My period is a s**t-show"
"The weekend was a car crash"
”My body is annoying”
“Life’s a bit mad until...[date]”
“Kirit – this period s**t is pissing me off”
Any of these lines sound familiar? These are real words shared by real people over the last few months – and it shows how common it is to use negatively charged language to describe our bodies, moments in time and circumstances.
And for anyone who uses social media, we don't need to use it for long before we see headlines like "Hormonal havoc" or “Wellness burnout”. But, how helpful are these types of headlines in shaping our expectations and even our physical experiences?
What Science Says About Words and the Brain:
Scientific studies show that the words we use can change the way the brain processes emotions and sensations.
Emotional words, whether positive or negative, activate a region of our brain known as the amygdala (Straube et al. 2011). The amygdala – often nick-named our primal brain – is responsible for emotional processing, especially emotions like fear and anxiety.
This shows the brain doesn’t need an event, activity, direct exposure or an external trigger to experience emotion. Simply reading or hearing a word can spark and alert these brain regions and emotional pathways. Our language has the power to influence how we feel – physically and emotionally.
In fact, research shows that reading negative or pain-related words before receiving a painful stimulus, like heat or electric current, can heighten how painful that experience feels (Ritter et al., 2019; Vukovic et al., 2019). Quite literally, words can alter our perception.
The Vocabulary of Emotion and Wellbeing
The connection between words and wellbeing goes beyond just momentary sensations. In a large-scale study, Vine et al. (2020) found that people who frequently use negative emotional vocabulary tend to self-report lower wellbeing, poorer physical health, higher levels of depression and greater neuroticism. In contrast, people who use more positive emotion words reported better overall health and greater emotional stability (lower depression and neuroticism).
In other words, our everyday language can act as a mirror or give some insight into our mental and physical state. Though this research doesn’t prove that words cause these outcomes, it does suggest a link between how we describe our lives and how we experience them.
Choosing Language That Supports Wellbeing
Our words might not directly manifest reality but they can influence how we perceive and respond to it. Just as we pay attention to our actions, habits and behaviours, tuning into the language we use about ourselves, our health and our emotions can be another way to develop a more balanced outlook.
I think intuitively we know this, but often, we make remarks quite off-the-cuff without recognising their depth or strength. And our ancestors and traditional systems such as Ayurveda really appreciated the meaning and impact our words carried.
So next time you catch yourself saying that everything is “a mess” or “a nightmare,” pause and reflect. Can it be reframed? The words we choose shape the stories we tell—and those stories, in turn, shape the world we live in.
References:
Mimish (2025) Presentation becomes perception. Substack
Ritter et al. (2019) How words impact pain. Brain and Behaviour, 9(9)