Insult doesn't have to be overt, and "in your face." There are ways to hit people pretty hard, mentally or emotionally, without resorting to direct name calling. And I have never, in my entire life, physically attacked anyone for mere words they spoke. Within my life experience, I quickly came to understand that the person who takes discouraging words to heart has literally CHOSEN to do so. It is all too easy for me, myself, to simply dismiss people's words of disparagement toward me. They don't have to mean anything unless I let them.
And as for more "covert" assaults that are actually quite effective, I have an interesting anecdote. I had just gotten into a verbal tiff with the woman next door, because she refused to pick up a dead rat that had somehow ended up in her driveway (probably via a cat) and was goading her 8 year old son to do it. She was basically shivering all over the place, and too disgusted to even look at the thing, and here she was, trying to force someone even younger with less experience to do the dirty work. Mind you, I already had issues with the woman's behavior in the past - one time she was out hooting and hollering on her porch with friends and her kids for 3 whole hours, bragging about how she kicked some other woman's butt in a fight - kept showing pictures and video on her phone to everyone, etc. And another night her and her friend got home at 11:30, which I happened to notice because they were being loud next door. It turns out they left their kids at the house, the eldest of which was 11. They were all asleep because it was a school night, and the one that finally came to the door due to all the noise the women were making was no older than 3. Anyway, the rat thing wouldn't have been such a big deal if it weren't for the fact that I knew her to be lazy, entitled, and just a rather unsavory person overall. But I took issue with it because she wasn't willing to pick it up herself, and the kid was wary, and I could tell he was frightened and there may also have been a tinge of understanding that he was being taken advantage of. This wasn't some assignment of chores, or a lesson in how he may need to do something like this someday - this was happening because the woman was too weak to do anything like this herself. Anyway, I went out and picked up the rat for them both, threw it in the garbage, shaking my head in disgust at her behavior. She caught onto it and wanted to get into it with me, so I obliged her. Anyway, long story short - the woman bad-mouthed me up and down to her kids after she went inside, and they apparently had it out for me, because when my son and I walked to the park, the kids followed us. So we got to the park, and while I was pushing my 5 year old on the swings, they stood right by us and started calling us names and hurling insults, talking back and forth to one another about how stupid and terrible we were. When I asked them to stop, they told me "we're not talking to you, we're talking to each other." because obviously they thought they were just so very smart. Well, when they called my 5 year old the b-word, I had had about enough so I turned to my son and said "You hear those words they're using, son? We don't use those words, okay? Only MORONS use those words." They then piped up to protest, but I simply told them: "I'm not talking to you, I'm talking to my son." You should have seen the looks on those kids' faces. Priceless. They knew in that moment that I had mentally defeated them without so much as even talking to them directly. They seemed to realize that no matter how many curse words they threw out, or how many ways they insulted me directly, they had no more ammunition that was of any use. I had already dropped the H-Bomb. The insults immediately stopped, and they slowly turned their attention elsewhere. They had failed, miserably, and I feel they learned something. Now I am not advocating going around making fun of children. Not at all. What I advocate for is using your wit, tearing people down a few pegs if they need it by showing them that sometimes there's more to it then they ever even contemplated, and maybe they aren't doing things the best way they could be. Maybe they have more to learn, and maybe, just maybe, they came away with an understanding I came to long ago: that you can never know when you are outgunned, so it is best just not to draw in the first place.