Speak, Pray, Release: Gossip versus Healing

Gossip or sharing?  Privacy or protection ?  I don’t have the answers  but I have lots of questions. I once dated my friend’s brother; she did not mention he had history as a pedophile. She did not want to “gossip” about him. Really ?!  I had to find out for myself ? Yikes.  Part of dysfunctional family systems is the culture of “keep the secrets,” usually taught to children under fear of threat by the adult violating and or abusing the child.  “Keeping the secret” is also typically part of the family culture of alcoholism, and often even mental illness.  Many people then do not give out useful information, not realizing that it is not necessarily what everybody else does. If you were taught the culture of keeping a secret as a child, it probably never occurs to you to question that behavior or choice.  

So what is gossip.  It is mean spirited talk about another, with absolutely no intention of resolving problems or working through issues.

Sharing information about someone else with the intention of allowing another to make an informed decision is to me, invaluable. We are grownups. If someone tells me something about a person--s/he is an alcoholic, or tends to lie, cheat, etc., that information gets filed away for future use if needed. I do not take others' experiences and opinions as fact. If I do not see similar behaviors, I simply chalk up the information I received as an anomaly rather than a pattern. It is up to us to treat information as unproven rather than fact until we find out for ourselves, but I would rather not travel blind.

I do find it quite destructive to be harmed by someone when I could have been given information that would have helped me better assess and/or confirm  my own perceptions (after all we all have blind spots).  If  I see signs of what is bad or harmful behavior from another, and some one has shared their experiences I proceed with more caution, ask more questions, examine more closely.  Otherwise, I sometimes tend to give people the benefit of doubt, and that can be painful in the end.

Con artists, chronic liars, addicts, sociopaths, and many other "personalities" count on the fact that people do not share information. This allows them to have a long run before getting caught.

What is venting?  Venting means processing relationship issues with another mature being who understands that you are working on YOUR SELF by trying to better understand your interpretations, reactions, choices, and decisions. Hopefully you wonderful friend asks you provocative questions, uses active listening, and gives you feed back when you are jumping to irrational conclusions, and reminds  you when to “hand it over” to a Higher Power.  Perhaps your friends have another take on the person in question, or another take on you ! That can be hard to hear.

Keeping secrets, being “neutral,” is not always the best way. Sometimes it is the path of cowardice. We are not talking about confronting another about who we think they are, or their actions.  This is about focusing on one's self in order to make better decisions, improve perceptions.  Telling people"who they are" is not our business.  Plus who they are is affected by who we are when we interact with them.

Processing information about another in order to improve our reactions, actions, judgements etc. takes courage, persistence and the willingness to have an open mind regarding ourr own behavior and mistakes. After processing, we can take that experience to our Higher Self and our Spirit Guides to get an even bigger perspective on the experience or relationship and how we want to handle our self in the situation.