Freedom Friday: The Hidden Anger in Your Sarcasm
Have you ever considered how sarcasm, often seen as witty or humorous, can be a veil for deeper emotions? Or how it might impact your relationships more than you realize? RA shares her personal revelations about sarcasm's place on the spectrum of anger and the importance of authenticity in communication.
But it's not just about self-awareness; it's about the power of words. We dive into how words can shape realities, impact emotions, and even influence physical environments, as seen in the fascinating rice experiment.
This episode isn't just a podcast; it's a call to mindfulness about the words we choose and the environments we create. Join us as we challenge ourselves to be more genuine, authentic, and conscious of the impact we have on the world around us.
Hello everybody and welcome once again to the unlearned podcast. I'm your host, ruth Abigail aka Ra, and this is Freedom Friday, where me, or me and a friend of mine, come and share something we've unlearned this week and how it has made us just a little bit more free. And speaking of a friend of mine, if you tuned in last week, you saw that I did have a new friend. His name is Paul Zulman and he wrote a book called the Role of Love and he also created a game with a die that also pairs with that book, and really helping to achieve giving away all five love languages as opposed to just focusing on the one that you are most comfortable with, and understanding that love needs to be given away with nothing in return. It's a beautiful book, it's a beautiful game, and he and I had a great conversation. Well, one of the things that we talked about in this conversation was what the language of love versus the language of anger sounded like. So he was describing a moment that he had where he began to learn some of the terminology around what love languages like, what's the language of love, what other forms of communication really pair with love versus what pair with anger, and so one of the things that he mentioned, one of the ways of communicating he mentioned, was sarcasm, and we got into a really, really good conversation about that and if anyone knows me at all, I am sarcastic. We talked about sarcasm being on the spectrum of the language of anger man. That really shocked me personally, because I've never thought of myself as an angry person on any level, like I feel like I'm pretty jovial most of the time, positive thinking. Anger and getting upset and blowing up or what I associate with anger has never really been a part of my personality, but sarcasm has always been a part of my personality. I have been sarcastic for most of my life and I've hurt people like that. I know that. I've heard that from other people and I know what I have done in the past, how my words have impacted them, and so when he was talking about sarcasm being on the language spectrum of anger, it really put me in a place to begin to, I guess, re-unlearn how my words impacted other people the opposite. I really loved what he said, that the opposite of sarcasm is being genuine, being authentic, and it really got me thinking like I really need to. I really need to unlearn and have been unlearning what sarcasm really means and really what's happening when me or anyone else is being sarcastic and really a lot of what's happening is covering up. So when you're sarcastic and you're not genuine or you're not authentic, you're covering something up where the real feelings you have or the real thoughts you have are masked by some sort of clever saying or thought or something that's going to elicit some sort of reaction so that the real thing behind it is not revealed. I have never really considered the depths of how sarcasm can impact a relationship. That was really eye-opening for me. The other thing that it's brought back up in the unlearning process for me is the power of words. So I'm fascinated by words. Personally, I love the idea of words, I love how the study, I love to look at the study of words and how they're used to communicate to audiences and move people to do certain things, and I think one of the things that we need to keep in mind with words is that nothing, nothing this whole world was started with words and how powerful words really are. And we say it all the time and we say that words have power and we say that, but we don't always operate that way and I know I certainly don't and so it's important to recognize the power of your words, negative or positive, and not just affecting your own life but impacting other people. So last week I got to visit a classroom here in Memphis and the teacher showed me a really, really cool experiment they've been doing. So you may have heard of it. It's called the rice experiment. You can find it on YouTube, but there's three jars. One says love, one says hate, one says ignore, and then you put some cooked rice in the jars and the experiment goes that every day you say words of love, hate or simply just ignore the different jars of rice, and then after a certain amount of time several weeks you'll see how your words have impacted this rice. It is actually fascinating. I saw it with my own eyes that the rice, after several weeks that has been spoken well of, told that it's loved, it looks like rice. The hate jar is molded and black and looks dead, and then the jar that is ignored is about in between. Look it up on YouTube, y'all. It really is fascinating. But it is another really good depiction of how powerful words are. If it does that to rice, imagine what it does to a heart, to a brain, to the whole of a human being. It's important, and I was challenged last week through my conversation with Paul, to reevaluate how I'm using my words. Even if I think something's clever, even if I think something is funny which a lot of times I do it can't trump the impact that it has on someone else. And so if you, like me, kind of have that issue and tend to lean towards sarcasm, then I would challenge you to unlearn that too, to unlearn what it is. That sarcasm is not just doing to other people, what it might be saying about what's going on inside of you. What are you covering up? Where's the inauthenticity I think that's a word what? Where are you being inauthentic? That's a better way to say it, right. Where are you? What are you trying to hide that you would rather people not see? And what does being genuine actually look like? And how might that change the way you communicate on a regular basis? So, anyway, that's what I've been unlearning recently and I appreciate the challenge. I'm challenging y'all let's get more free through the unlearn process. We'll see y'all next week. Peace. ["the Unlearned Podcast"]. Thank you once again for listening to the Unlearned Podcast. We would love to hear your comments and your feedback about the episode. Feel free to follow us on Facebook and Instagram and to let us know what you think. We're looking forward to the next time when we are able to unlearn together to move forward towards freedom. See you then. ["the Unlearned Podcast"].
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