Swearing can reveal a lack of imagination at times, however, intolerance for swearing suggests a lack of tolerance for being offended.

Being offended is good for us.

Then came the nurse and she told me to ‘stop it’, and that it wasn’t that bad, or something. (she wanted me to stop for reasons of taking on a better attitude, I think)

And I remember saying to her, that it really helped a lot to moan and say that it hurt, and that was why I was doing it, and not because I was complaining or because it was unbearable or because I wanted more morphine. It just really helped.

I recall the nurse not being impressed, but I sort of was about my own insight.

So now what I usually do, and since I realize even someone like a doctor or nurse feels threatened when you tell them you are in pain, and that this means you want them to do something, or more, I explain that I am only telling them this for the purpose of information, and to let them know, and not because I want them to do something differently, or more, or less. (The first and the second example are not exactly the same, I know, but both are true.)

So, my point is that I am not sure it’s the swearing, or more the external expression.

Like, with my kids, whenever they hurt themselves and came running crying, I would hug them and take their pain very seriously. As a result, they were satisfied, happy and done within a minute and no longer interested in whatever had brought them to me. It’s like they go enough, or more than they needed and it paid off. It did not turn them into whiners, and I am not threatened by their expression of pain, either. The more and the sooner it gets validated, the faster it’s gone and out of the system. And yet, damn therapeutic as well.

Like with PTSD, it’s one thing what happened and another huge matter how and in what manner people respond to you. I think it is rather the difference between acute, and complex PTSD. And the response is the biggest part of the healing vs. not healing, or making it worse.