Growing up I never cursed. As an older teen and young adult I started to around my friends but never in the home around my family. Then I entered the military and very quickly cursing became deeply ingrained in my speech. To the point it was difficult to speak a entire sentence without a curse word. Towards the end I embraced religion heavily and made it a point to cut out cursing entirely. Nowadays I do not curse at all nor do I even think about doing so, even the muscle memory is completely gone from my speech.

As someone now who does not curse whatsoever under any circumstance, hearing those around me curse, it literally hurts my ears. I can pick those words out of a crowd like they're being spoken into a speakerphone. Especially being around military people still who curse every few words and just about every single sentence has an F word throw in, it's very uncomfortable.

You've removed them from your speech but I worry you've still given them some special power over you in your mind with that sensitivity. It would be freeing to treat them like any other word and not react to them so strongly for you, I think.

> Then I entered the military and very quickly cursing became deeply ingrained in my speech

Same. Never cursed before military. But military stress combined with surrounding fellows cursing made it difficult to filter it out from my own language.

They're just words. If you want to give those words so much power over you, that's your own problem to deal with. What right do you have to demand the rest of society cater to your particular hangups?

When I hear curse words, they elicit exactly the same emotional response as any other word. There's nothing magical or inherently special about them, it's all in your own psychology.