Language Has Many Dialects: Why Healing Doesn’t Start (or End) With Words
Last week, I introduced a framework that runs quietly beneath almost everything I write:
language → awareness → action.
This week, I want to slow down and stay with the first piece of that framework, language, because I think it’s where many of us get stuck without realizing it. I know I have often sat with a lump in my throat, unable to speak even though my head was full of thoughts. This was one of the hardest, by most important, habits I learned how to change.
When people talk about change, they often assume the problem is effort, discipline, or willpower. But looking back on my own life, I can see that many of the things I wanted to change were not rooted in doing something “wrong.” More often than not, I lacked the language to fully express what I was experiencing. I lacked awareness of the patterns that kept repeating. Because of that, I didn’t know how to step into action that was sustainable rather than reactive.
Language is where it all begins. But language is not as simple, or as narrow, as we’ve been taught.
Language Is More Than Words
Most of us hear the word language and immediately think of speaking. We think about talking things out, naming feelings aloud., or “using your words” (a statement I use often with my children)
Let me say this first…Yes, spoken language matters. It can be incredibly regulating to say, I feel angry, or I’m overwhelmed, or that hurt. Naming an emotion engages higher-level thinking and can interrupt a stress response.
But spoken language assumes a few things:
Access to the language you need.
That you were taught that your words mattered.
You weren’t interrupted, dismissed, or punished for expressing yourself.
Your nervous system doesn’t shut down when emotions get intense.
For many people, words are not the first place emotion lives. When we insist that healing starts and ends with talking, we unintentionally exclude huge parts of the human experience.
The truth is this:
Emotional language has dialects.
Human beings have always communicated emotion through sound, image, rhythm, movement, and symbol long before we ever had formal words for how we feel. Healing becomes possible when we learn which dialects our nervous system already understands.
Musical Language: When Emotion Finds Its Voice Through Sound
For me, music has always been one of the most honest forms of emotional language. There are emotions I can’t immediately articulate, not because I’m avoiding them, but because they live somewhere deeper than sentences. Music reaches those places first. It organizes what feels chaotic and gives shape to what feels overwhelming.
When I was grieving the loss of my husband, The Night We Met by Lord Huron held what I couldn’t. There were no words that could capture the longing, the ache, the sense of wanting just one more moment with someone who was no longer here. But that song did. It spoke for me when I couldn’t speak for myself.
“I had all and then most of you
Some and now none of you
Take me back to the night we met
I don't know what I'm supposed to do
Haunted by the ghost of you
Oh, take me back to the night we met”
When I feel alone or deeply misunderstood, I return to From Can to Can’t, sung by Corey Taylor with Dave Grohl on drums, and Rick Nielsen, and Scott Reeder on strings. The song explores emotional exhaustion, isolation, and disillusionment without trying to resolve them. There’s a moment when the guitars and drums swell, and my body responds before my mind does. Goosebumps, my mind swirls, and then emotions release.
That’s language.
Music speaks directly to the nervous system. Rhythm, tempo, repetition, and volume all influence how emotion moves through the body. Sometimes a song gives us permission to feel something we’ve been holding back. Sometimes it helps discharge emotion that’s been stuck. Sometimes it simply says, you’re not alone in this.
Music isn’t only for grief or anger. I have an entire playlist that functions as a happy, dancing meditation, songs like Glorious and Good Old Days by Macklemore. Joy, too, needs language. Celebration needs expression. Pleasure needs a place to land.
If I could, I would give my husband a playlist. Not because every song would make sense to someone else, but because it would say what my heart still knows how to feel even when my mouth doesn’t.
Not everyone hears what I hear when I listen to these songs and that’s okay. Language is personal. What resonates for one person may not resonate for another. But resonance itself, that moment of yes, this is it, is how we know we’ve found the right language for us.
Below are two very different songs. They have similar names but very different tone. Pause here. Give them a listen. After each song, note the emotions and feelings. Leave a comment in the comment section about the experience or with your go to songs when words are not enough.
Visual Language: When Images Speak Without Explaining
Some emotions don’t want to be talked through, they want to be seen.
Visual language often reaches us before words ever have a chance. Color, shape, contrast, texture, and composition communicate meaning faster than logic can intervene. This is not accidental. It is psychological, neurological, and deeply human. Our brains are wired to respond to visual cues as signals of safety or threat. Long before we had complex verbal language, we relied on sight to interpret our environment. Is this place safe? Is this person hostile? Is there something here I need to pay attention to?
That wiring still exists.
Color alone can shift the nervous system. Warm colors like red, orange, and yellow tend to increase arousal. They can signal energy, passion, urgency, or danger depending on context. Cool colors like blue, green, and muted neutrals often slow the system down, evoking calm, stability, or melancholy. This is why hospitals, spas, and meditation spaces often rely on softer, cooler palettes, while action movies, advertisements, and emergency signage lean heavily into high-contrast reds and blacks. But color is only one part of the story.
Shape matters too. Sharp angles, jagged lines, and high contrast tend to activate the nervous system. They can evoke tension, alertness, aggression, or unease. This is why we associate sharp imagery with conflict, violence, or instability. Think of broken glass, barbed wire, or angular architecture. The body reads these shapes as something to brace against. Curves, rounded shapes, and flowing lines tell a different story. They signal softness, safety, continuity, and ease. There’s a reason we describe nurturing environments as “gentle” or “rounded” rather than rigid or sharp. Even in typography, rounded fonts feel more approachable, while angular fonts feel more confrontational or authoritative.
None of this is accidental. Visual language speaks directly to the nervous system. This is also why film is such a powerful emotional medium. Directors and cinematographers understand visual language deeply, even if audiences don’t consciously name it. The use of color grading, lighting, camera angles, and composition all shape how a scene feels before a single line of dialogue is spoken.
A desaturated color palette can evoke grief, numbness, or despair. High contrast lighting can create tension or fear. Soft lighting and warm tones can signal intimacy, safety, or nostalgia. A low camera angle can make a character feel imposing or threatening. A wide, open shot can evoke freedom or loneliness depending on what fills the frame. We feel these choices before we understand them.
This is why certain images stop us mid-scroll. They bypass the thinking mind and land directly in the body. A photograph can evoke grief, longing, comfort, or hope in an instant, often without us being able to explain why. That response is not intellectual. It is somatic. It is emotional. It is the nervous system recognizing something familiar.
For many people, visual language feels safer than verbal language. There’s less pressure to explain. Less pressure to justify. You don’t have to get the words right. You can simply notice what arises. This is why images are such a powerful entry point for emotional awareness.
Below are two different pictures (both taken by yours truly). Sit with them. Feel them. Then note, in the comments if your comfortable, how do they make you feel? What emotions arise?
Somatic Language: When the Body Speaks First
Before we ever have words, before we ever form images or metaphors, the body speaks. The nervous system does not wait for language to catch up. It responds in real time, through sensation, posture, tension, movement, and breath. Long before we are able to say I am afraid or I am overwhelmed, the body has already registered the experience.
This is why somatic language is so important and so often overlooked.
The body communicates through sensation:
tightness in the chest,
a knot in the stomach,
shallow breathing,
restlessness in the legs,
a heaviness that pulls the shoulders forward,
a collapse that feels like giving up.
These are not random signals, they are information. For many people, especially those who grew up needing to stay quiet, compliant, or hyper-aware of others, the body became the primary container for unexpressed emotion. Feelings that were never given words had to go somewhere. So they went into posture, breath patterns, or movement or the lack of it.
The body learned how to protect.
Movement is one of the most honest forms of language we have, because it is difficult to censor. Think about how different emotions naturally move through the body:
Grief often pulls us inward.
Anger tends to be sharp, tense, and explosive.
Joy lifts and bounces.
Fear often shows up as freezing or retreating.
None of these responses are wrong. They are the nervous system doing exactly what it was designed to do. When we ignore somatic language, we often miss the most honest data we have about what we’re actually experiencing. From a neurological perspective, this makes sense. The body and nervous system process information faster than the thinking brain. Sensory input, movement, sound, visual cues, is routed through the nervous system before it ever reaches the parts of the brain responsible for logic and language. This means that by the time you are thinking about how you feel, your body has already reacted.
This is why someone can say, “I don’t know why I’m upset,” while their shoulders are hunched, their jaw is tight, and their breathing is shallow. The body knows. The words just haven’t arrived yet.
Somatic language allows us to listen without forcing explanation. It asks questions like:
What is my body doing right now?
Where do I feel tension or collapse?
What does my posture communicate about my inner state?
Does my body want to move, rest, stretch, curl, or expand?
These questions don’t demand answers in sentences, they invite awareness (step 2 in the process). When we override the body repeatedly, telling ourselves to “push through,” “calm down,” or “get over it”, we teach the nervous system that its signals are not welcome. Over time, this disconnection can show up as chronic tension, fatigue, burnout, emotional numbness, or sudden emotional outbursts that seem to come out of nowhere.
This isn’t a failure of self-control. It’s a breakdown in communication. The body doesn’t stop speaking because we ignore it. It just gets louder or shuts down entirely. Somatic language is often the bridge back.
Below is a music video. While I personally love this song, I think that the visuals of the choreography (the somatic langauge) really adds an additional layer to the emotions behind the song. I would love to know what you think (and feel) when watching it.
Why This Matters for Real Change
When people struggle to change, it’s often not because they’re resistant or lazy. It’s because they’re trying to process emotion in a language their nervous system doesn’t understand.
You’re not failing at change.
You’re speaking the wrong dialect.
This is why language always comes first in my framework. Because until we can express what’s happening inside, through words, music, images, movement, or symbol, we don’t actually have anything solid to work with.
From language comes awareness. From awareness comes choice. From choice comes action that is sustainable rather than punishing.
This is also why the Nervous System Reset Workshop (Click here to check it out) begins here. Before tools, practices, or action plans. We explore how your system already communicates. What calms you. What activates you. What helps you process emotion instead of suppressing it.
Regulation doesn’t come from forcing yourself to be calm. It comes from being able to listen. Sometimes, listening starts with a song, a picture, or movement.
A Gentle Invitation
If you’re reading this, I invite you to reflect, not to analyze, but to notice (see how we are moving from language to awareness):
What helps you find language when words aren’t enough? Is it music? Movement? Writing? Images? Silence?
Where does your nervous system feel most understood?
There is no right answer here. There is only your answer.
Once you find your language, everything else becomes easier to meet. This is not about doing healing “correctly.” It’s about finally being able to hear yourself.
