49. Can We Call This What It Really Is?

Gossip sneaks in dressed up as concern, processing, connecting, or the classic church-friendly cover of a prayer request. 

We talk through a gut-check illustration that still gets us: what if a device instantly alerted someone the moment you started talking about them? We expose the hidden contract gossip creates between the speaker and the listener, where we quietly step into the seat of judge while the third person loses their voice. 

We discuss Friedman’s Failure Of Nerve and the lure to become the “confidant” - and name the dopamine hit of being the one with interesting information. We also make room for a crucial nuance: protected processing in counseling or wise outside support is not the same thing as spreading someone’s story inside a shared community.

If you want healthier relationships, to live out the golden rule, and have more truth in Christian community, listen in, then share this with a friend. Subscribe, leave a review, and tell us: what helps you choose truth and repair over the quick comfort of gossip?

Transcript

Welcome And The Big Question

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Story Matters Podcast. I'm Ryan Baker.

SPEAKER_00 0:04

And I'm Emily Baker.

SPEAKER_01 0:05

We believe people grow and heal through understanding how our stories are rooted in God's redemptive story.

SPEAKER_00 0:11

We hope our conversations encourage you to engage your story in the world around you with a new lens.

SPEAKER_01 0:17

We're glad you're here.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Can we call this what it really is? That's the title of this episode because I don't think I would usually call it a gossip. I have had several moments that I've either butt dialed someone or accidentally texted the wrong person. And that panic feeling of what did I say or what did you hear rushes into my body. I remember very well sitting in a sermon several years ago that you were preaching. And the illustration you gave was imagine that you have an Apple Watch type of device and it alerts and immediately contacts anyone that you begin to talk about. So if you say someone's name or someone's name is brought up in a conversation, that person immediately is getting live feed of what's being said. And I remember the feeling like, oh goodness, that sounds terrifying. Lent was coming up, and we always, as a family, talk about, hey, let's all give up something different, you know, kind of a fast, chocolate, certain foods, drinks, whatever. And I said, I'm gonna give up gossiping. And my family rightfully teased me a little, like, what is this? That on Easter you're just gonna indulge in gossip like in some chocolate.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

I'm back. Let me tell you what I've waited to tell you.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

But my thought was, no, I want to take this concept that has flooded my body with nerves and think, okay, what if I put into practice something? And I want to practice for 40 days that you know, Lint, I want to practice not talking about people and see how hard it was. Well, I'll just admit, I think I've called gossip other things for a lifetime, whether it's I'm concerned about someone or I I think we should pray for this person, or I need to process how I feel about this person. Whoa, it was enlightening.

SPEAKER_01 2:01

And the topic is really difficult, and that's why we're covering it, because the lines between gossip and sharing are really thin and there's a lot of gray. And so we want to talk about it because Emily, you and I have just noticed, not just in the work we do now, but coming out of the ministry, the pastorate, how pervasive gossip is and how damaging it is. And I think the two things we want to make sure we highlight are how does that damage the community or the person being spoken of. But we'll also want to touch on in this conversation, what does it do to you, the person speaking the gossip? And by the way, let me add, there's two parties to every act of gossip, the speaker and the receiver. And we would probably say they're both equally involved. It's tempting to be the receiver and think, well, I didn't say it, but we'll cover that more later. But friends, please hear us. This is not something we're saying you do or others do. Like we all, I struggle. Emily has just said that she has that struggle. You know, it's very difficult to really know when we're gossiping because I think most of us, when we're doing it, if we do, probably have some sort of uh caveat, like, well, this is important, or you sort of need to know this because, or you know, I or I need to have some wisdom. So that's what we're gonna talk about.

SPEAKER_00 3:17

Yeah, and for women, it's a huge source of connection. I think we feel more connected when we have shared things about people and about our concerns. But let me just say that gossip has been probably one of the top sources of evil that's come against me personally and relationships and damaged me, but it's also one of the top temptations I have. So I'm guilty of it, but I'm also a recipient of it. And I think you mentioned two parties just now, but there's always that third party. And so many of the people that we meet with, we are trying to help them find their voice again from either a family of origin or a marriage or some kind of oppressive relationship. And in the circles of gossip, the person being gossiped about is silenced. Whether it's just simply them not getting to tell their story, it was their story to tell, all the way to no, there's like a violent duct taping of you don't get to speak, we're gonna speak about you.

SPEAKER_01 4:13

Yeah, so a lot to cover. And we recognize in one discussion, one episode, we can't cover everything we want to do. So we'll be somewhat brief, but we're hoping to also shine some light on some reasons and why it's so alluring so that maybe we can begin to see more of what's happening internally. And then what does this have to do with story matters? Well, story matters by definition, we're saying the truth matters. What is the actual story does matter? And gossip, in one sense, is a story. I want to tell you one. And so there is that aspect of it. Now, I want to distinguish gossip from slander. I think just a real simple overview. I think of slander as being false information. I I know this to be false, but I'm gonna still say it.

SPEAKER_00 4:53

Or half truths, we could say, like my perspective.

SPEAKER_01 4:56

Well, half truth has been often called a whole lie. And if I knowingly proceed down that road, and I would add also the word intent. Maybe I think what I'm saying is sure I've convinced myself that this half truth is mostly right or whatever, but somebody's hurt me and I'm gonna get them back, or someone's hurt my friend, and we're gonna take them down.

SPEAKER_00 5:15

Well, I think what you just said about story matters, how does this relate? There's a story underneath gossip in terms of what's driving you to do it and why are you wanting to? Why is it even something that you do that you're not aware of? And so we do want to shine light on the anatomy or the psychology of gossip. Because Ryan, you've really helped me at times when I am more drawn to wanting to talk about a person, you will kindly pause me and say, Why do you feel the need to do that? Like, can we notice that there's an anxiety possibly that you're trying to soothe, or there's avoidance that you're trying to get me to help you with, right? There's a lot going on with gossip in that, like failure of nerve brings up, we don't have the courage to go to a person, so we talk about a person.

SPEAKER_01 6:01

So you just referenced the book Failure of Nerve by Friedman, and it's a book on leadership, which he would say applies from everything from the family to the boardroom to the you know, elder board at a church, of course, businesses and all the way up into government. His point is anytime you have community or a group, you're dealing really with systems, family dynamic systems. So he's building on that. And so much of the problem and why he titles it a failure of nerve is that the people whose job it would be to act as a white blood cell in the body of the group, they would absorb information and they would rightly deal with it. But oftentimes you'll find in leadership people do not do that. We talked about in the Godfather syndrome. Some want to become the godfather, and they'll say, Thanks for coming to me. This is really good that you keep coming to me.

SPEAKER_00 6:46

That desire to be a confidant.

SPEAKER_01 6:48

Yes. And he he blames most of the activity on what he calls anxiety, which sounds right. It's it's sort of this frenetic activity that really needs leadership. And by leadership, it doesn't mean the top person. Honestly, and anyone that wants to do what's right would be someone who could then rightly metabolize this anxious information. And gossip is not the whole point, but it is definitely a big piece of the puzzle of what brings down organizations or what hinders the growth of groups.

SPEAKER_00 7:16

I think you made a comment recently that you don't know of any church split or church conflict that doesn't to some degree involve gossip.

SPEAKER_01 7:26

Yeah. And again, this is what makes it so tricky is gossip in some ways is speaking. It's the dissemination of information. And the challenge is going to always be what's okay to share and what's not. If you think just from the information, like news sources, somewhere like in the 80s, right? Someone, it was Ted Turner thought, hey, let's make 24 hour news. And so if you think about the burden that would carry, you've got to basically look for news, right? Instead of reporting the news, which is what ABC, CBS, NBC did, it's kind of like 30 minutes a night, all over the world, there's going to be things we're going to tell you about. It's 24-hour news is kind of like, we need to go find it. And of course, that's just turned into just all sorts of problems with the internet and apps and social media. And that's sort of an outward sign of what we all do in our close communities, where I see a friend and it's like, ooh, what can I tell them? Like, what can I say? And so it's not like I have something I really need to share with you. It's more like I kind of want to entertain you, or I want to say something to you that makes me feel entertained. Nothing wrong with wanting to tell a good story, a funny joke, a situation. Where I think gossip is the category we stumble into is when it's at the expense of someone else. And this goes back to the illustration you mentioned. If I told the story of something that happened, I don't think I would feel bad if that went out. Like, oh, he told the story about this thing that happened at the office. But if someone's the butt of that joke, I might feel bad. And in some ways, I may have stumbled into gossip. And especially if the story is simply someone else's misfortune, right? Did you hear about this person? They're getting a divorce. Okay, well, okay, is that gossip? I don't know. It's tricky. So the relaying of information may be, I would I would say we may be stumbling into the category of gossip, even if we're telling a true story and that's it. Because often we're telling it in a scenario where we're having an uptick arousal. I'm getting delight from sharing this. And this is why earlier we said it's both the recipient and the giver. I'm hearing it, and I'm also wondering more and wanting to know more and thinking, who may I tell? We will stumbled into possibly the arena of gossip.

SPEAKER_00 9:38

I think you're hitting on a couple of underlying topics we cover quite often, and it's the why behind a lot of our behavior. What's making us need that? Um, I know you and I have talked about just this kind of arousal of I get to be heard, I get to be the center, everyone's listening to me, or the arousal. And I use that word because it's something of I was bored or I was sad or there was mundane. And now there's kind of this feeling of stimulation and dopamine and whatever chemicals we want to talk about in the brain. We're all on a lookout for those things. And we live in a community now that we don't have to always talk to people. We can go to the phone for the gossip and the three-second sound bites that give us those hits.

SPEAKER_01 10:24

Yeah. Neil Postman covers in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death, talks about how media and television has learned there's a survival mechanism we all have when there's a little bit of a change in our environment, we notice it. So if you're walking in the woods, everything's fine, everything's in place, and then you hear something out of place, a type of branch breaking. Our bodies are designed to notice. Well, they've used that against us by bringing that into TV shows. So when you watch a TV show or a sporting event from years ago, it's much more boring, often because they just don't cut the cameras much. Imagine watching baseball, and you just the camera just sits there looking at the batter, maybe the pitcher and the batter, you know. But now it's going to cut to a fan, it's going to cut to the first base, go to the coach, the dugout, back to the batter, back to the guy that's on deck, back to the pitcher, back to the catcher. Like, and the idea is every shift keeps us alert. And I think why I'm bringing that up is I think sometimes that's what we're doing with gossip, or share the tea or whatever, spill the tea. You know, it's it's like, hey, I'm fine right now, but I could certainly use a shot of something, you know. And so gossip can feel that. By the way, we're not the moral police, we're not trying to say, when did you cross the line? I think the real question is, what's the harm and what's the benefit? But if I said to you information like, Did you hear that the Smiths separated? Rarely does the other person go, Oh, I didn't know that. Well, what are you doing next? Right? What do we do? We say, Really, what's going on? Why? You know, I don't really know, but he always had a wandering eye. I mean, you know, we always want to slip in another thought, or I don't know, but she, blah, blah, blah. Like, I think just sharing news opens a door for speculation, innuendo, and and actually kind of deep conversations around, you know, marriage in general.

SPEAKER_00 12:10

And do you think this is wrong or this is like a deeper connection? And that's what I think is the the false allure of gossip that women, even more than men, but we all as humans need connection. We want to connect on a deeper level.

SPEAKER_01 12:24

I agree with that. And I that brings up another thought. I love documentaries. And some of you listeners, I'm sure you do. There's something about just sitting and listening to like a Ken Burns documentary and trusting that for the most part it's telling me the truth about something in the past that I have a general awareness of, and it feels comforting to hear about something that's not affecting my current life. If that makes any I know it's weird, like what? But there's just something about history that can be soothing because it's already done. Whereas learning about like the current conflict with Iran or whatever can be anxiety provoking. Reading about the civil war, just somehow it's like as bad as it can sound, we feel safe. And as I think about gossip, I think that's kind of what's happening. It's like the second someone wants to bring up a story about someone else, it's like a part of me settles down. Like, okay, I'm ready to receive and judge. Like I'm ready to sit in a chair of reception and speculation.

SPEAKER_00 13:20

That feels very powerful. That neutral feeling. I'm not the one being talked about.

SPEAKER_01 13:25

I don't think it's neutral. I think it's one up.

SPEAKER_00 13:28

Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. I meant like we're not in it, but you're right.

SPEAKER_01 13:31

The second gossip begins, there's this implied contract between the two people speaking, whom whatever we're about to talk about, we get to be the judge. I feel, if I'm honest, I feel bad for like that person. It's like their hand was caught in a cookie dry, they're on the hot seat. Whoever that person is, did you hear that Mike lost his job? You know, all of a sudden, it's like you and I are watching a documentary and we're just talking about this poor soul, and we're a little bit better than him right now. We would never use that language, but that's the work we do is like to really pause and go, what's happening for me? And the reason this is important, Emily, is you just said a minute ago, there's dopamine or there's arousal in it. Like, what's the draw? And the draw is if we're honest, anytime we're talking about a problem that's not mine, I can chill. And then secondly, I kind of get to move into the seat of judge.

SPEAKER_00 14:23

Well, I've actually seen this show up in our marriage to a minimal degree. I mean, I can name it, but I've also experienced other people almost as a necessity that when they can talk about other problems or other people and it's them versus the world versus our own conflicts, then it puts the couple in a position of bonding. Yeah, let's talk about how horrible our neighbors are. That keeps them safe. For example, I what I've heard often is a woman say, he's great at connecting with me when the problem is outside of our family. But if I bring a problem that we have to like interact with, he's so avoidant.

SPEAKER_01 14:58

You're right. There is something of like, okay, maybe we're not doing great, but here's an area we can definitely join hands on. And it's a situation where you're in together.

SPEAKER_00 15:06

Yeah, like you said early on, we're guilty of a lot of these things. Can we just together, listeners, you and us together, just allow light to shine onto what's really going on when we want to talk about other people? Like my illustration of if that person was alerted or even sent at the end of the day an AI summary of what was talked about, would you be mortified? And if so, why are we drawn into these kind of things?

SPEAKER_01 15:32

Now, why the scrupulosity, Emily? Why do we care? Why are we even talking about this?

SPEAKER_00 15:36

Because the sentence I often say is, I'm a big believer in talking to people, not about people. And what I mean by that is if we have a conflict or if we have a hurt feeling or we have something that we feel needs to be addressed, I think the vast majority of humans, and even more so people that claim to be followers of Christ do not want to approach another person. We would rather talk about that person. So we have angst, and instead of going to the person for repair or any kind of let's come together, there was a misunderstanding. We instead talk about people, and that soothes us, and it's a false soothing because there's no repair.

SPEAKER_01 16:15

Okay. So what I hear you saying is there's harm to the person spoken about. Yes, we all they lost their voice. There's also harm to the community because it could be a false narrative or it could be spinning up information at a speed, you know. But what I hear you saying is actually those of us that engage in the giving or receiving of gossip are also harmed. Like just the doing or the receiving harms us. I think that's really a great point that we're actually using this practice to soothe our nervous system. Is that what you're saying?

SPEAKER_00 16:45

Right. It's a way of falsely bringing peace into an anxious environment. So your body feels anxiety. You then think, well, what do I do? You then have avoidance. I don't want to directly go at the problem. So I'm gonna go over here and I'm gonna feel connected.

SPEAKER_01 16:59

Okay. So let me let me try to make sure I'm understanding. First of all, I think in general, a lot of us carry anxiety, right? That's just a condition. So part of what I hear you saying is the opportunity to gossip or receive gossip will soothe that, even if what we're hearing has nothing to do with the anxiety. But then I think what you were saying in particular is if I am bothered by something to the point of anxiousness, often what will happen is I might go to a person, I'll call them a confidant to make it legal, and I'll share it, but I'm not going to find truth. I want someone to see me and tell me I'm right and comfort me. So I'm gaining both comfort and I'm kind of gaining a coalition.

SPEAKER_00 17:42

Absolutely. We would much rather find someone that would listen to us and validate us than listen to us and have a conflict. What you're describing is we would rather go to a person that would agree with us and join us in what we're feeling than to confront it with the person that may say, Well, I didn't mean to do that, or this is kind of how I saw it, and it gets a little bit messier.

SPEAKER_01 18:03

Okay. So one of the problems for the speaker or the receiver is this kind of false soothing, right? And again, the receiver might be getting their soothing from I'm comforting you, I'm in your court, I'm with you, buddy, or confirming there's definite connection in that. There's also a factor of one of the ways Jesus self-describes is truth. I am the truth. And I think one of the ways we would describe gossip is even though it may be truthful or have partial truth, usually the person who's receiving or giving the gossip is not interested in the full truth. In other words, rarely would it be like, hey, did you hear about this? And the other person is like, I want to get to the bottom of that because that doesn't sound right. Let's go to him or let's go find out. You know that's not going to go over well because that's not the point. And so what I'm getting at is by giving gossip or receiving gossip, I'm really strengthening a part of me that's fine with information that's not based on truth. Now, in the academic world, that's like anathema, right? You don't ever write something with a solid footnote crediting a source, not just for plagiarism, but to say, here's where I'm learning this from. Reader, you go and track, if you would like, to find the primary source. That is an attempt at producing truth. How many times people say, you know, studies show what we're saying in those moments and with these types of communication is we're after truth, but gossip is patently opposite. It's like, I would hate right now if you could play the video and I could see the truth. Part of what's happening here is I'm telling a story. The arousal in this is the effect of the story. I'm appealing to your humanity of like, since when in my life do I want to codify behaviors of receiving bad information? Like I remember when we were kids, you'd be checking at the grocery store and the, you know, what was the inquire.

SPEAKER_00 19:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:43

You knew it was lying to you.

SPEAKER_00 19:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:45

And again, and it sells, but you never believed it. So what it does is it creates this pattern of sensationalism without research, right? And that's kind of what gossip is. Hey, I don't really care if that's true or not. I'm with you in this.

The Acceptable Sin In Communities

SPEAKER_00 19:58

Well, and I think women get such a bad rap because we are more drawn to this kind of behavior. But you and I have watched men who in their academia world hold the truth as to what you're saying. They would research, they would make sure they're not just hearing one side. They have intellectual integrity. But we've watched these same men have what we now just phrase ourselves like the failure of nerve because of that book. They don't stay grounded, they get pulled into an emotional drama, and it's very arousing for them to feel like they're the confidant.

SPEAKER_01 20:33

Well, the worst, the saddest place in the men who are in church leadership. I remember a female in a lecture saying this, and I was like, She's 100% right. Men will often say, Women love to gossip, and that there is some truth. Women are relational, you love to text and speak more than me to others, etc. But men will do it under some sort of authority structure, like, you know, hey, brother, did you hear about this? And let's talk about that. And we have a discipline case now because we're on leadership, and what we're gonna do in this arena is talk a lot about things, but we're not gonna necessarily get to the bottom of it all. There's a lot of hearsay, and we're coming to the this meeting, like the presbytery or a session meeting, and we have different sides, and we're gonna have conversations. There's so much excused gossip that can happen, and it's astounding. And this is what makes it so crazy making is it's very, very difficult to look at a singular piece of gossip, if that even can be called that, and say, see how evil that is. Because the evil, it's like wind, it's like one particle of wind isn't a big deal, it's a tornado. And there's a Stephen King book called Needful Things, and it was about it ended up being the devil, but he's uh in a form of a human who owned a shop, and he had all these like crazy cool items in his store. And it turned out someone would come in and it would be the one thing they've always wanted. Like I remember like a Sandy Koufax baseball card, some boy wanted, and the seller would say, Okay, it's actually a reasonable price. Nice, but here's an envelope with a little bit of an instruction you had to go do this. And then you'd open the envelope and it would say, go to this address and put this item in their mailbox. Oh, okay, that's nothing. Well, what you find out the way the story unfolds is that was like a huge issue to the person who opened the mailbox and they saw a photograph from their childhood and it incites rage or whatever. In other words, the devil knew exactly what you would want and what would spark the other person to this rage, and it just creates this firestorm in the town. And yet I all I did was I just put this envelope in the mailbox. I don't, I had nothing to do with that. And that's how gossip feels. Nobody's like the person. And so it's really when you think about the word integrity, it makes sense why people avoid certain technicolored sins because it's embarrassing. But gossip's one of those that like everyone's guilty of.

SPEAKER_00 22:51

It's so acceptable. It is truly the acceptable sin. And it's kind of like in the sports world where this is a rule or a regulation that we can't do, but everyone does it. And then you'll hear of a guy getting fired for doing it, and you're like, but I thought everybody was doing it.

SPEAKER_01 23:05

One of the things that I want to say about gossip is we heard years ago we all never really get out of junior high. If you take that to heart, it's like we always are looking at our group. We're always aware of our social status. And oftentimes where gossip thrives and does its work is it lets you know what team you're on, right? Am I on team Emily or am I on team Ryan? And no one says it like that, but it can have the sense of the volume and the quickness of information spreading. It's not so much what's the truth, it's where do I fit within the situation? I even recently heard of a rather large church going through a situation where gossip was the main medium. So again, you have all sorts of variants in life, in marriages and in organizations and in churches, but gossip seems to have this powerful, it's almost the medium or the blood that drives all the communication. And surprisingly, so often, and this ties into our NPC episode, it's the people who allow it. We would say, don't gossip. That's the problem. I think a lot of what we would want to say to you listeners is don't receive information, like be storied people. Let's be truth tellers. Let's go, wait a minute. That's interesting. You know, as a facilitator of a story group, Emily, you and I will hear a story that a participant brings and we'll be inquisitive. You know, that's interesting. Tell me more. Why was that the response? That's facilitation. And the person who brings the story, the whole idea is like, you know, that's a great point. I didn't even think about that. They're wanting truth, and that's the medium of healing and growth. Whereas gossip, it's like you can tell it's happening because it's like, quit asking questions. Okay. In our attempt to define gossip and distinguish it from slander, one of the things we've said is slander is intentionally used as a weapon and often it's intentionally wrong. Whereas gossip, if it is different from slander, it's probably in the category of this is what I was told, or this is the news, this is the info. But when you only have half a story, you don't have the full story. We know that. And so to begin passing on information in the news, if someone has passed and the news reports it, that's a story. It's not gossip. It happened. Here's the police report, here's what they're saying. Where it can become gossip would be if the article would go on to speculate. You know, there was a history of drug addiction. Well, okay, now you're insinuating things. The point we're getting at is when gossip begins to insinuate, kind of wink, wink, there's more, it's sort of arousing. It's, I feel like this is interesting. Say more, I want to know more. But I think what you had said, Emily, about that illustration is ultimately what we're warning of is the fact that it will harm the person that we're talking about. Like the story being perpetuated through the community, just the volume will trump truth. If there's a hundred people in your community and 98 have heard the story, and as far as they're concerned, that it's the truth, and two people have the truth and say, I have the truth, the 98 people are like, We're fine. We look around, we have a consensus, we're good. And so what we're after in this work in general, and why we call it story matters, one of the reasons is truth matters. And as Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and the truth shall set you free. That's hard because we don't really believe that often. We think, ah, I'll take a half truth right now. I'll take the mostly truth. And yet, if you want to know whether something is gossip or not, simply say, okay, is that the full story? Do we have all the angles? Has that person had a chance to speak? Have they told their side of it?

Processing Versus Spreading A Story

SPEAKER_00 26:29

Yeah. Am I taking their voice? Am I needing something? I think what feels similar about gossip and slander is that there is self-gain in both of them. One is more intentional and untrue, like with slander. Gossip may just be the story, and the person may agree that is the story, but why are you talking about me? And the why is because I needed something. I needed to feel like people were listening to me, or I needed to feel like I had a good reason to call my friend. Can we just be honest that it's arousing to have information? People are going to come to me, and it's a false kind of wisdom. You know, I think we all to some degree want people to come to us, whether it's for I need wisdom or I need training in your particular expertise or I need mentorship or I need you to speak truth into my life, whatever. Having information is a false version of that. And so if we can just be curious around why are we talking about people, is that person being talked about being harmed to some degree? What are we trying to accomplish or soothe? Do we have anxiety that we are trying to get false repair because we do have a conflict with someone? But the thing we haven't really talked about is the trickiness of our position, Ryan. You and I listen to people and many of our clients live out of state, so we aren't doing community with our clients. And that's helpful for not knowing the characters in their story, right? But the tricky thing we haven't gotten into is that some people do feel like they're gossiping about their family members when they come and talk to us in a counseling session. And we've had to reassure people this is actually good processing. This isn't gossip because I'm not going anywhere with this. It's a locked vault. But it is tricky if we do know the person, because then our opinions are being formed without that person also in the room. So kind of like a married couple. I may see a wife, you may see a husband. We have very different perspectives on the marriage. So why do I bring this up? I think we have to always ask ourselves, why are we talking? Why are we listening? And what is it doing to our bodies and our communities?

SPEAKER_01 28:34

And I love that. I'd love to add, and as the listener, the therapist, the coach, we also know our role. And there can be a temptation when you're hearing a client's story to just want to support them. I'm for you. I'm taking everything you're saying at face value. But a good therapist is gonna ask questions, like, no, wait a minute, that's interesting. When you said this, did you mean like how did that play out? In other words, we're challenging, we're wanting truth, and we're trying to help them. Have you thought about this? Or this is a part that you keep naming that. And what I'm getting at is if someone's gossiping, that's such a buzzkill. The good news is they're gonna quit coming to you. Like, I'm a really bad texter, and I don't get a lot of text. And there's a correlation. Like, if I was a quick texter, I responded immediately with long text, I would get a lot of text. Nothing wrong with texting. But I think gossip might work that way too. Like if I receive it, I acknowledge it, I'm whiffing with you, I'm I'm talking to you, you feel great about sharing, I feel great about receiving. Then I'm gonna get a lot of gossip. But if I'm kind of like, wait a minute, have you gone to that person? Or that's interesting now. How did that make you feel? Pretty quickly, and that's what actually Friedman talks about in failure of nerve, is that's a white blood cell doing its job. What's the purpose? You're coming with potential cancer, and my job as a white blood cell is to distinguish is this cancer or not. And we're supposed to do that with information all the time. There's no room for information where we don't have that role on some level. We may not immediately challenge the person if it's our child or whatever, but most of the time we need to be ready and apt to be present, just like we would in a counseling situation.

SPEAKER_00 30:08

Well, challenging isn't people pleasing, and people pleasing is at the center of failure of nerve. That person fails to be a good leader when they don't say, hmm, let's find out the truth. Instead, oh, this person really wants me to make them feel felt, which is attunement, but without the containment of truth.

SPEAKER_01 30:27

And the crazy making is if that's a cell that's cancerous, and the white blood cell coddles it, says, Oh, thanks for coming to me. The white blood cell has lost its property and has now become a cancer cell.

SPEAKER_00 30:41

Right. There's no longer an adult in the room, so to speak. And when you were describing texting, I don't send text, I don't get texts. I I literally thought of women in my life from the past that I would want to tell news to because everything about their body was like, oh, tell me more. And it was so fun. Like I just gave them a gift. Oh my word, this is so fun. Versus like kind of the white blood cell people are like, Oh, where did you hear that? I'm so concerned. Well, that's a buzzkill. Like you said, like I want to feel like I'm giving something really good.

SPEAKER_01 31:16

So, what what do we do with all of this information, and what do you want us to do?

Love Your Neighbor With Your Words

SPEAKER_00 31:20

Well, I think I'm really, really passionate about this topic that we could probably do a whole series and I would have a lot more to say. But I said it before, but I want to say it again. This is one of the top most detrimental evils that has come against me personally in my life. The people that I have loved and been harmed by, it's been that I haven't been talked to. I've been talked about. And at the same time, when I have found myself guilty of doing this same thing, I feel so much sadness and grief and shame that I'm as susceptible to it. So I think what I would like to do in this episode is just shine light that if you're a human, you struggle with this. I just don't know any human that doesn't. And we should. Like I had a really good conversation with a friend the other day about what is the fine line between needing to process when our husbands aren't available and we really need to process, and it actually does lead us to Jesus and healing and feeling better versus I need to process this alone. I don't want to talk to anyone about it because that would be gossip. This is gonna spread feelings about people.

SPEAKER_01 32:27

I think what I would like to add, if I could magically hand a pill to you as a listener, it would be this pill: a pill that would open your awareness for what's going on internally when you are either motivated to speak about someone or something else or receive. And I do believe, by the way, that is a byproduct of doing this work, is you begin to be far more sensitive to the passage of reception or giving of information and story or silencing another person. But again, this is for our so much of what we're wanting to talk about, this is for our own soul. Like, I want to be a person who interacts with truth truthfully.

SPEAKER_00 33:06

It is for our own soul, but I think it's about loving people. And if our ultimate goal is to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, strength, and might, and love our neighbor as ourself. It is not loving to our neighbor to talk about them with someone that knows them and there's now information being spread, right? So when we label this episode, can we call this what it really is? Do you need a process? Do you need wisdom? Do you need someone's fresh eyes on a situation? Then go outside of your community to someone that doesn't know this person, who won't then have a different attitude towards, you know, I think all of us have been in a situation where we've shown up at work or church and someone is clearly treating us differently, the way they're talking to us or the way they're avoiding us. We're thinking, did they hear something about me? Did I do something? And because gossip is so acceptable, I think we do kind of assume I'm being talked about. And so I think the way we can love our neighbor is really think, why do I need to talk about them? Like, what do I need to process? So, like prayer requests, that's the old joke of, you know, Bible says, Oh, I have a prayer request. I'm really concerned about so-and-so. Can we see that for what it is? We do need to hear wisdom from friends. We do need to feel comfort. We do need processing, we need to feel felt. But can you do it in such a way that the person that you're talking about is not being harmed?

SPEAKER_01 34:34

You made a statement, you quoted scripture, love the Lord your God and love your neighbor as yourself, which is one of the ways we get the golden rule. And I know that it's super simplistic, and we use the app illustration to open the podcast of would you want them to know? But really, a more godly and biblical question is would I want, if I had done that thing, or this was true of me, would I want that information shared in this way? Because sometimes that can be just shame. Like I'm actually I'm not loving you, I'm just embarrassed for me. And that's the litmus test. Yeah, it's not just it would hurt me if they knew I spoke about them. You just said love and it's beautiful. I want to love my neighbor. Well, who is my neighbor? It's the person you're about to talk about. That's your neighbor. And are you loving them?

unknown 35:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:19

All right. Well, we're gonna end this conversation by asking you to just pay attention this week and in the days to follow. Pay attention to your anxiety and if gossip somehow soothes that. Um, pay attention to your need to want to be heard or feel felt at the cost of someone else. Pay attention to telling people information that leaves someone voiceless. Pay attention to triangulation, meaning a triangle should be equal in the sense of a relationship. But when one draws closer to the other with information about the third party, it by nature pushes them farther away. So we're paying attention to who we're talking about, who we're talking to. The big questions of why are we doing that? If we are in leadership, are we being a white blood cell or are we colluding with our people pleasing in order to feel loved and like we're important, we're the confidant, maybe we're the locked vault, but yet we're not helping. Are we pushing people towards reconciliation and true repair? Or are we just holding information to make them have a false sense of peace because they feel better because they were heard? So these are just some things that gossip. Of course, slander is has been a part of our conversation. It is a slippery slope, but calling it what it is, I think is is a type of shedding a light on it. And I guess just the desire for all of us to be strong in that we aren't gonna just go towards quick fixes or quick judgments, but hold that there's a a larger story, there's a need for a story of redemption, there's a need for forgiveness, and we can play a really important role when we pay attention to the power of gossip.

SPEAKER_01 37:03

What I hear you saying is we are all called to be priests to God, priests of him, like we represent him as priests in this world, whether to believers or unbelievers, and we are never given a pass where we get to just have conversations about people that are harmful or receiving those. So if the church, if you are a Christian, if then you are part of the universal church, if you will do that, we will see a lot healthier congregations, marriages, communities.