Why do disparaging remarks or insults hurt people?

Question

Why do disparaging remarks or insults hurt?
I noticed that it hurts me when someone insults me or makes an unkind remark about me even if I know it's just words. I try to take things like a Buddhist. It seems like when someone insults me, I initially feel a bit of pain, psychologically. It's just a brief but sometimes prolonged and generally unpleasant feeling. I am able to concentrate and assess whether the remark is worth getting upset over. Usually then I get over it. I don't stay upset about it unless it's someone who's opinion I care about or if my reputation is being damaged. But there is still that initial brief pain that is felt when the remark is first made. I imagine this is the automatic thinking process that automatically accepts everything as true initially. Then controlled thinking follows. (If you're familiar with social psychology terminology)
Why is that?
Have there ever been studies done that show which areas of the brain are activated when an person is insulted?

Answer 1

Even though those disparaging remarks are just words, those words can be very powerful. Those words could have an impact on other people and can let them feel hurt or pain.

Answer 2

The remarks don't hurt people. People become hurt by them. The people have chosen to react to the remarks in a hurtful manner, but the person saying the remark didn't make the person behave in this way. Stop accepting that the way you feel has to do with other people, stop making them responsible, and your initial reaction to the remarks will change.

Answer 3

What hurts someone else does not hurt you.

What hurts you does not hurt someone else.

The person sending the insult does not lose an ounce of sleep over it.

The world is your mirror, and if you have something that is unresolved in your life, then it will reveal itself as hurt from someone else.

That hurt is a reminder to resolve it. Resolving it makes you a bigger person, a stronger person, a more accomplished person, a more humble person.

Resolving it makes you the person who is awed. Who is revered. Who is succeeding. Who is healed, healing and moves on.

Answer 4

We are in constant competition, according to the theory of evolution, so that the fittest among us will be the ones to have babies and pass their genes to the next generation. Actual physical confrontations are less prevalent now in human society (theoretically), and so "wars of words" have come to replace them. Thus a verbal attack causes psychological damage.

Answer 5

We're all little judges and it hurts when we're the ones being sentenced.