Therapeutic Swearing: The pros and cons

I’ve been doing more and more swearing specific work in my music practice and I have found some real pros and cons to the sweary situation…

Firstly, for many of us, swearing is a really great way of dissipating some of the trauma, the activation that happens in our body around our childhood experience of getting in trouble for swearing, how you should always be polite and “don’t say anything at all if you don’t have anything nice to say”, and people pleasing rather than speaking the truth.

There is a lot of research evidence of the impact of swearing! Such as… It heightens our pain threshold, in many cases it can overwhelmingly help us be trusted more by our peers (especially by our colleagues in the workplace), because we’re not giving them fluff… We’re speaking to truth.

Concurrently, swearing can activate traumas for many of us who’ve experienced different forms of derogatory abuse when it comes to swearing. Swearing has been reclaimed by some, but not all. It can bring up memories, feelings, emotions, gaslighting and so much more.

So, when we do swearing work in therapy, I have found it’s a great idea to set some boundaries around what words are okay, what words aren’t, to look after yourself during the swearing process, and not assume that your experience with swearing is going to be the same as somebody else’s experience of swearing.

Swearing can be extremely liberating, fabulous and fun, and incredibly therapeutic! And swearing can also be triggering.

So, when using swearing in the therapy process, make sure you are trauma informed! There’s no such thing as a ‘safe space’, but there are boundaries and ethical spaces. And my song sharing circles will always sit within ethical practice.