One of the most impactful books I’ve ever read was Nonviolent Communication by Dr. Marshall Rosenberg. The concept is surprisingly hard to summarize, but one example is replacing accusation-style language (yes, including popular phrases like “You made me feel…”) with “nonviolent” alternatives like, “During our conversation, I felt my need for respect was going unmet.” As you can see from this example, NVC requires the speaker to self-reflect before communicating and speak about their own experience rather than what most of us do fluently: putting the emphasis on the person we are speaking to and their actions, etc.
At some point I started paying more attention to actual violent phrases people use. I mean truly violent ones. Not the subtle violence of “you made me feel,” but things people commonly say like “he ripped me a new one.”