Believe it or not, swearing like a sailor – really letting the curse words fly – can be a fantastic way to unwind, to relieve a mountain of stress off of your shoulders, and to generally just get everything off of your chest and out into the ether.
I know, what a surprise, right?
And while the overwhelming majority of people have probably dropped a handful of F-bombs when they were facing a little bit of pressure (or had something dropped on their flood), most of them didn’t really understand just how beneficial some curse words can be a when you have had it up to here and just need something – anything – to help you unwind.
You may have heard that it isn’t quite polite society friendly to drop F-bombs or other curse words at any point in time, and that may be true in most circumstances. But when you are at you’re boiling point and cannot find any other way to let off some steam in a hurry, dropping you below that pressure threshold where you feel like you are going to pop, you may want to uncork a couple of saltier words to get back to your equilibrium.
Here are a couple of reasons (and some science) behind why it can be so beneficial to scream and curse.
You’ll feel a lot less pain when you are letting the expletives fly
As an interesting psychological study, Richard Stevens of Keele University in England decided to test whether or not our vocabulary – and especially the profanity that we use on a day-to-day basis – could have an impact on whether or not we focus on or feel certain levels of pain.
Recognizing that human beings almost universally let the expletives go when they deal with sudden pain over there you probably had this experience stubbing your toe in the past), Stevens wanted to know exactly what the impact that these expletives had on the human body and the mind – if any.
Encouraging 67 college students to submerge their hands in nice cold water, a certain subset of those students were encouraged to scream as many profanities as they liked while the others were forced to use much more “vanilla” words.
Comparing how long both groups were able to keep their hands submerged in water, those that screamed up sanity’s – the filthier, the better – were able to keep their hands submerged in the icy temperatures for (on average) 40 seconds longer than the control group.
Disney language may be perfectly fine around small children, but if you are dealing with a little bit of pain – or quite a bit – you may want to swear like a sailor.
Curse words can make you feel superhuman
Stevens (of the research project we mentioned above) also noticed something else during the tests and examinations:
When human beings curse – especially forcefully and as loud as humanly possible – they trigger a chemical response in the human body that is closely linked to aggression, testosterone release, and feelings of competitiveness.
Those that are able to channel their curse words and let fly a string of expletives were able to psychologically pump themselves up more so than those that do not, allowing them to cause a biochemical reaction throughout the body that cascades into all aspects of their life.
This biochemical reaction improves their mental focus, improves their athletic ability, and helps them compete – essentially turning them into superhumans for at least a short duration.
More study is absolutely necessary in this area, but it may help to explain why some of the most dominant athletes and soldiers in human history fell in love with salty language more than most anyone else.
Swearing may be a fantastic coping mechanism
Human beings have an amazing tendency to adapt to almost any situation that they find themselves in, and that all happens because of our brain’s ability to create coping mechanisms that allow us to adjust on-the-fly.
Though there are all kinds of different coping mechanisms that humans will turn to depending upon the specific stressful situations they find themselves in, cultures all over the world have this in common – they love (absolutely LOVE) to fall back on their curse words to help get their minds off of a particular situation while also communicating to others just how dire things can be.
Anthropologists across the globe have found that most every culture has certain curse words that are used as coping mechanisms, and that they have an interesting way to unite members of that particular culture together to accomplish things they wouldn’t have been able to otherwise under certain stresses and pressures.
Language really is the most important and powerful human invention and curse words play a tremendous role in allowing us to unlock all of our potential even when we are facing significant odds.
Those that swear aren’t stupid, foolish, or ignorant
According to information published by a handful of UK medical professionals and psychologists, as well as numerous studies conducted in the United States, there is absolutely zero link between curse words and the intelligence (or lack thereof) of individuals that use them.
Curse words and salty language has always been considered “below” a certain class of individuals in most cultures, and attributed to those that are somehow undesirable. However, you’ll find that all people of a particular culture will fall back on the curse words that they know when they find themselves in sticky situations – and there is zero link between those words and some lack of intelligence.
Don’t be afraid to let the F-bombs fly
Obviously, you’re going to want to make sure that you aren’t throwing F-bombs left, right, and center when it would be socially incorrect to do so, but you may not want to police your language quite as much as you have been especially when you’re feeling stressed out or pressured.
If you feel like you are about to pop, and if you feel like you’ve had it about up to here already with life’s stress and pressure, you’re going to want to scream, you’re going to want to shout, and you’re going to want to make anyone with a near shot feel like the fleet has just returned.