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| Don't be like our friendly parrot and repeat everything you hear. PHOTO BY SHAZIA ISLAM |
"Did you hear about so-and-so?"
"Did you hear what so-and-so did?"
"So-and-so should receive an asshole-of-the-year award for..."
"I can't stand so-and-so because..."
Do these intros sound familiar? They are the sound of gossip coming from the mouths of people all around us including you and me. Consider it an ancient form of bitching passed down the ages in order to safeguard our position among the lot in our communities, our workplaces, our schools, and now even in our social media worlds. Like Amy Toffelmire writes in her well-articulated and sensible article, "Gossip: good or bad?":
Researchers theorize that life in small tribal groups may have forced our ancestors to adapt and gain some pretty sophisticated social intelligence. Imagine living among a small group of people, competing for resources and for friends and allies. Sounds a little like high school, doesn't it? You'd have to figure out who you could trust and who would make a good partner. Among our ancestors, those who survived and thrived were those who could predict and influence the behaviour of the people around them. This took a bit of talking and a lot of listening and watching.
For those of us who need some clarity, gossip is sharing and expressing information and judgments about others in a derogatory manner, "Did you hear that so-and-so got the award? What a joke! So-and-so didn't deserve it, a real cheater for sure!" It can be used in all kinds of ways to seriously damage the reputation and character of others, and prevent them from being promoted or finding work.
Gossip in most cases can't be helped because we are giving voice to our own internalized struggles, frustrations, and fears. When we speak ill of others, it is just as much a reflection of the battles we're having with our own demons, and the fear that we're losing our place in our communities. But it also serves as a distraction and escape from our own personal conflicts. In order to placate those negative energies and insecurities, we engage in rumour-mongering of others, and in so doing, we are able to tell ourselves that we're not as bad as "those people".
Toffelmire writes:
Gossip can actually be a kind of deterrent or a punishment against those who deviate from the norms and values of a group. It's tough to be the one being negatively gossiped about or the one excluded because of a nasty rumour, so the social pressure keeps us from veering too far away from the group. Positive gossip can also encourage cooperation among people in a group.
The frustration that often can be heard in our tone of voice when we gossip can also be a sign of our own inadequacy to deal with an interpersonal conflict. We might have been brought up to shun confrontation and honesty, and instead survive these difficult relationships through pretense. Putting on a mask with a fake smile is far better than revealing what we really feel underneath. But there is no fault in not feeling a warm sense of affection for certain people in our lives because some of it has to do with our bodies' chemistry, our instincts, how we were raised and what personalities we feel the closest to, or maybe it's just karmic narratives from past lifetimes if we believe in them. So, the problem is not that we dislike people. This can't be helped, as it's part of our social/cultural/human-specific realities. The problem is, the environments we are often in do not give us the language we need to express our frustrations with the people we dislike in healthy, non-toxic ways.
Toffelmire writes:
Too much pressure can, of course, be a bad thing, and gossip has great destructive powers. People use gossip for their own selfish interests at the expense of others. Subtle social cues can turn to hostility or manipulation and quickly trigger anger, shame, and resentment.
Resentment intensifies if we suspect that the people we share our personal information and concerns with are using that information to slam our reputations, attain loyalties for themselves from others, and lower other people's esteem of us. Retaliation is our first reaction to something based on suspicion or actual evidence of other people rumour-mongering at our expense. We make an attempt to turn the tables, and start our own gossip clubs, which might involve gossiping about the gossiping behaviour of others!
It's a vicious cycle.
However, in certain situations, gossip-mongering can really damage not only the reputation of its target, but also that of the gossip-mongerer. These situations involve the kinds of work some of us do where highly sensitive and private information is shared in confidence. People struggling with serious health-related issues, or legal issues might require support accessing proper care, services, and resources. Sharing their needs and concerns with service providers places them in a highly vulnerable position.
Doctors take the ceremonial Hippocratic Oath to commit to upholding a strong work ethic for their patients. People who provide counseling as psychologists and social workers abide by a code of ethics through membership in regulatory bodies like the Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association, Canadian Psychological Association, or Canadian Association of Social Workers. In any support role, whether as professional counselors or community support workers, we have a duty to keep the information given to us safe. This responsibility comes along with our choice to do this work in the first place. There is no room for compromise in this regard. If we are blabbermouths and gossip about other people's personal lives and struggles, then clearly, we do not belong on this career path, and need to find something else more suited to our tendencies.
That latter statement might seem a bit privileged and judgmental since many of us find ourselves in these positions as a result of our own identification with the communities we serve. In identifying with these communities, we sometimes get confused about our role, such as when we are positioning ourselves as "support worker/counselor" and when we are "peers". In my mind, there can be no confusion. If our job is to provide support to our peers, then our peers are not our friends, they are our clients through and through, no matter what we might say to distinguish those two roles we play.
It is easy to get on the self-righteous bandwagon and wag my finger at others, but I am primarily writing from having experienced and learned from the challenges of being in a support capacity. When I started to work in this field, I was not totally conscious of the boundaries I needed to set up in order to protect the integrity of my relationships with my clients. I belong to a number of different communities, all of which encourage close interactions and friendships as models of peer support; part of my helping clients was getting to know them as part of friendship circles and families. Very different from the more Western models of interaction espoused in standards of practice for those in a counseling role.
It's not a bad thing to have clients for friends, but if we are not wary or mindful of our primary role in the larger community, we could lose sight of those boundaries and divulge information haphazardly or maybe out of frustration or stress after a long day.
Alternatively, information might be disclosed to us via these channels and networks. The best thing is to stop it where it's at, and let the person sharing this information know that the story is none of our business and should not be talked about. Some people just leave the conversation abruptly because they don't want to be incriminated and targeted if news gets out that this information was shared. If it's gossip, then the gossip about this news being shared and who shared it will be shared. And we, as the listeners, might suffer an equal backlash for our role in spreading the offense.
These are not easy waves to surf. What others say about us can hurt in many significant ways:
- Mental Health - gossiping can drive us to paranoia when we are exposed to networks of people who use gossip to solidify loyalties and to exclude people they don't like; when we are exposed to malicious gossip, we start thinking that people are talking about us in the same way; the paranoia can lead to stress from having to constantly walk on eggshells to avoid being the target of other people's gossip.
- Physical Health - stress can have a destructive impact on our physical health, particularly for those of us who have various chronic illnesses to manage; our bodies often absorb the energy of unhealthy, toxic environments and situations; for those of us who are sensitive to the suffering of others, if we do not have strategies to release these energies, then our bodies will soon be saying NO in various, unpleasant ways.
- Emotional Health - because our bodies are reacting to the stress of "anti-us/them" campaigns, our emotions might be out of whack and we might have to take some time off for anger/stress management; our negative emotional responses can severely impact communication and interaction with others - our colleagues, our clients, our friends and families, other people in the community we do work with, which could then create more situations for others to gossip about, increasing our paranoia, our stress, and our negative emotional reactions, which could possibly get us fired or force us into handing in our resignation.
- Job Opportunities - criticism of the way people do their jobs without taking any action to assist them or give them support to improve their work ethic can seriously impinge on a person's chances of finding work if potential employers get word. Read Mary Abbajay's article on the damage gossip can do in the workplace.
We can't stop people, and even ourselves, from gossiping. We don't have to look in our papers to find examples of people defaming others. It's happening in our kitchens and in our offices as we speak. But for those of us who work in sectors that include a high number of people facing vulnerable situations and barriers, clients and colleagues, alike, putting a cork on the rumour-mongering bears a certain degree of salience when we realize we are actually putting our own reputations/survivalist needs on the line every time we open our mouths and ask, "Did you hear what so-and-so did?"
