# Words Are Powerful ##### Fear-based advice can do more harm than good ![[CleanShot 2026-11-12 at [email protected]|Photo by Johannes Krupinski on Unsplash]] --- Although… 1. I’m sure my husband would disagree with me here 2. There appears to be a positive correlation with the amount of ranting and my age! But I am sick and tired of all the scaremongering that is (still) going on. I’ve said this more than once. But it doesn’t appear to be slowing down. I’m not sure whether it’s ignorance or naivety. --- ## Fear-mongering disguised as “advice” When clients come to me they often arrive carrying fear. Fear that’s been planted by well-meaning (and sometimes not-so-well-meaning) friends and family. Here’s just a taste of the absolute bollocks they’ve been told: - Running is bad for you - You shouldn’t lift weights ‘at your age’ - Walking is bad for you (don’t ask!) - Swimming, cycling and yoga are the *only* safe options - Training for a triathlon will only damage your body Seriously? FFS. Scaring people is not big. And it’s not clever. And in most cases, it’s completely unnecessary. Because this kind of messaging? It creates fear of movement. Which leads to avoidance. Which leads to so many more problems. --- ## It’s not just friends and family I wish I could say it was only well-meaning friends or family dishing out this fear-based bullshit. But it’s not. These are the actual words some of my clients have been told – by *health care professionals*! The people who were there to *help* them. - “Your neck is crumbling” - “You have degeneration in your spine” - “You have 10 years to live” - “You’ll end up in a wheelchair” - “You need to protect your back” Holy. Shit. I swear, every time I hear one of these phrases from a client, I want to scream. Where the hell is the ‘care’ in healthcare when making people absolutely petrified. To move. To live To trust their own body. --- ## The Nocebo Effect This fear-based response – it has a name. It’s called the **Nocebo Effect**. Basically, the opposite of the placebo effect. It means that negative expectations, beliefs or words can actually make symptoms *worse*. Like when your friend tells you about their cousin’s, wife’s, aunty who “had the same thing as you and now she’s in a bad way!” Or when the Facebook ‘support’ group that you’re a member of has never-ending posts about random symptoms (that you now definitely have, even though you didn’t before). Or when you say to yourself that you need to ‘be careful’ because your *[blank]* is ‘weak’. That kind of fear-driven storytelling creates tension. It creates anxiety. And an unconscious (and often conscious) pull-back from movement. And life. --- ## Rebuilding belief I have spent way too much of my time trying to *undo* this damage. Reassuring clients they are *not* broken. *Not* fragile. *Not* weak. And definitely *not* beyond hope. And it honestly pisses me off. So if you’ve been told any of the above – please, I beg you – do your own research. Our bodies are incredible. Resilient. Adaptable. More than we give them credit for. (I have seen first-hand in the cadaver labs just how strong and robust the spine is.) And movement? It builds capacity. It builds strength. It builds resilience. And the words we’re told (or tell ourselves) can do far more damage than movement ever will. --- ## Findings ≠ Pain or Dysfunction We now have so much research showing that imaging and pathology findings do not always equal pain or dysfunction. In fact, what creates more long-term damage is the *fear* of movement. The avoidance. The belief that you are fragile. This has a more detrimental impact on health, wellbeing and life than any pathology ever will. Not only that, but we also know if someone expects something to hurt – it’s going to hurt. And those words above? Well, they feel like they would hurt to me. --- ## Words are powerful %%[[Words are powerful – be mindful of what you say]]%% Knowing about the nocebo effect is something that *everyone* needs to know about. Because words are powerful. As Albus Dumbledore said to Harry Potter (yes I am now quoting a fictional wizard), > Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic. Capable of both inflicting injury, and remedying it.