This is the second in a two-part series on the power of language. Read Part 1 here.
At a fundamental level, speaking and language have an immense impact on how we relate to others. In Part 1, I discussed the materiality and structuring power of language — presenting words as both substantial and framing, capable of leaving a felt impact and shaping how we understand an entire conversation. In this piece, I want to go further: to look at the ability of language to bring new experiential worlds into existence.
How We Organize Experience
To understand what this means, it helps to return briefly to the structuring power of language. Language has the power to create a framework through which relational interactions are viewed and interpreted — but this quality is even more expansive than how someone starts a conversation.
In his pioneering work on childhood development, Jean Piaget described the processes by which humans organize and make meaning of their experience. This isn’t simply about having a “sense of purpose” in the abstract sense — it seems to be an invariant of being human that individuals, from early childhood, begin structuring their experiences of the world to form what we might call a personality: a relatively stable framework through which new experiences are interpreted.
Piaget described two complementary processes through which this happens. During assimilation, a new experience fits with one’s existing internal world and is incorporated relatively seamlessly. During accommodation, a new experience doesn’t fit — and the internal world must adjust to make room for it. Imagine someone tells you that you’re bad at math. If you already believe this, the statement lands without much disruption. But if you’ve always considered yourself good at math, that statement requires accommodation — a shift in how you understand yourself.
Why Accommodation Matters
Accommodation can be quite difficult, precisely because it challenges the existing personality structure. Interestingly, the experiences that require accommodation — those that genuinely challenge the preexisting structure — are often what bring people to psychotherapy. They generate unease, disturbance, or a sense that something no longer fits.
When accommodation takes place, there is a shift in the structure of one’s experience. A new and different way of experiencing comes into existence. The change may not be earth-shattering — the whole of one’s value system doesn’t have to change — but as with washing your car after months of grime, even a small change can carry a strong felt impact.
A Personal Example
When I began my training as a psychotherapist, I remember feeling terrified upon meeting my first real client. I felt certain the person I was seeing might recognize my inexperience and peer right into my uncertainty. During a session early on, I said something I felt to be quite confrontational. When I reviewed it with my supervisor, I hesitantly repeated what I had said and braced for his judgment. He said: “I think you could have taken that further.”
I was shocked. That single statement opened up a new experiential world for me — not just about that session, but about what psychotherapy could be and what I could do within it. The language changed something in how I understood myself in that role.
What This Means
Language is powerfully impactful. It creates frameworks through which we relate to others and to ourselves. But beyond those frameworks, language carries an even more consequential possibility: the ability to bring new experiential worlds into existence — to shift what a person understands themselves to be capable of, to be, or to deserve.
In reflecting on the gravity of language, it’s worth giving real consideration to the words we give voice to — both in how we speak to others and in how we speak to ourselves.
If questions about identity, self-understanding, or the patterns shaping your inner life are ones you’d like to explore, our clinicians would be glad to help. In-person in Denver and telehealth throughout Colorado. Call 720-675-7918 or request an appointment online.