Verbal And Nonverbal Communication Research

The Power of Communication to Shape and Direct We have all heard and recited the old adage, “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.” I started my research believing this was a lie that parents, including myself, tell our children to help them deal with bullies and mean kids. I heard this growing up and told this to my children a few times, before I realized that words hurt worse than broken bones. My research started with a thesis of: Verbal and nonverbal communication is powerful and has the power to crush or nurture the spirit and dreams. A simple search on Ted Talks, my favorite site for research and general wasting of time, brought up two intriguing talks. The first was a talk by Shane Koyczan on bullying (Koyczan, 2013). The second was a talk by Amy Cuddy on how our body language shapes who we are (Cuddy, 2012). These two talks, made me rethink my thesis and mindset. Both of these talks were heartfelt and touched my spirit, they had me truly rethinking my whole life. …show more content…
My mother was not able to handle parenting as she still has the mental age of a teenager. My mom could be fun, spontaneous, and scary, all on the same day. I have great memories of her breaking me out of school to go on a grand adventure. However, the most predominant memory of my mother has nothing to do with adventure but revolves around her bad days when she would tell me I was worthless. Her most common shriek when she was not able to get her fix, was that I was not worth the sweat off of her ass. Those often repeated words hurt and scarred my very spirit, the pain was 100 times worse than when she broke my arm. I am forty-four and can still close my eyes and hear her voice. Her words affected my feelings and thoughts (Wood, 2014) and as a child I was not able to voice my thoughts and feelings (page 124, Wood,