Remember the childhood rhyme, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me?” It sounds optimistic, but it’s actually not true.

According to neuroscientists and brain communication researchers, words can do damage. In fact, negative words release chemicals in your brain that cause stress. Angry words send alarm messages through the brain that shut down logic and reasoning centers. Our minds are hardwired to worry.

But it gets worse. Just like that horror movie where the babysitter discovers the killer is calling from inside the house, some of the most damaging words are the ones we tell ourselves.

“Self-esteem is a word-based inner dialogue going on in your brain,” says Mark Robert Waldman, coauthor of Words Can Change Your Brain (Penguin Group, 2013).

An expert on communication, spirituality, and the brain, Waldman says he and other researchers discovered that very few people are conscious of the way they speak. “Inner dialogue is going on at all times in the frontal lobe [of the brain],” he says. “The left side of the brain is optimistic, focused on problem solving and decision making. But the right side is the pessimistic part of the brain, and it’s constantly generating worry fears and doubts.”

Waldman says the good news is that you can train yourself to move to the left side of your brain through a two-step process of relaxation and positivity exercises.

Most of us don’t know how to relax, says Waldman, but it’s quite simple. He offers four ways to get to a state of relaxation, relieving mental stress: