The Truth About Negative Gossip: And Why It Only Harms Yourself
A Few Personal Stories On How I've Come To Realize The Consequence Behind This Habit ---> And What Can Be Done About It.
This is a heavier article than most of the stuff I write. Because of that, I want to preface this by saying that you may want to skip this one if you really do not want to see this angle about gossip. Certain things I write here may not fit for some of my subscribers. If you wish to skip this one, I respect that!
Gossip: to engage in casual or unconstrained conversation or reports about other people, typically involving details that are not confirmed as true and are often personal or private in nature. It implies sharing or spreading information that may be sensational, scandalous, or salacious, often without regard for accuracy or the potential impact on those being discussed.
Talking about other people in conversation has proven to be very popular in society. There are many ways that this can occur, and not all are bad. However, talking negatively about other people seems to outweigh talking positively about them.
I have spent many years deeply involved in the dynamics of gossiping about others. This extensive experience has given me a profound understanding of the effects it can have on individuals and relationships. Through this journey, I've learned firsthand how such behavior can impact one's well-being and the fabric of human connections.
Starting with the basics, it is human nature to want to feel important about ourselves. We want to know that we have a secure place in this world and that we are validated and accepted. We also want to feel meaning in life.
This vision that we all seek can be achieved in many forms, but from my experience, one of the easiest ways to fix this need quickly (at least temporarily) is to talk about other people.
Let’s face it. In the world we live in today, negative news is just more attractive to the majority than positive news. It seems to spark more interest.
The thing about sharing negative news is:
It secretly makes us feel better about ourselves. It gives us a purpose temporarily and makes us feel important. We are sharing a negative situation about someone else that we know we are not a part of. We think it makes us look better in the eyes of the people we’re talking to (and in some cases it does) because we don’t currently have that problem. It also can temporarily fill a time void if we don’t have something more pressing to be doing.
I grew up in an Italian American family, and as you can probably already imagine, people were very animated and there were rarely any silent moments. There was always something to bark about, whether it was the clothes people were wearing, the food they cooked, or the beliefs that any outside-the-box thinkers in the family had.
Needless to say, there was always gossip around me from when I was very young, and the GREATER majority of it was all negative.
The matriarch of my family, my grandmother, was a woman filled with so much energy she didn’t know what to do with it. She was a small, scrawny type of woman, but if she ever got into a boxing ring with just about anyone, I would have put my money on her. She had a will to survive like no other, and a rage in her that I haven’t seen matched often to this day. She would clean her house every single day to perfection (as if she was on methamphetamines) and spent the rest of the day cooking any required meals for the family.
And she had the eyes of a hawk; nothing got past her without her commenting or trying to force an opinion down your throat.
As a young boy, I remember her blatantly insulting family members when they would walk into her home for a gathering. They would barely get past the front door, and she would say: “Why’d you put on weight?” or “Do you really think that dress looks good on you?”
This was a woman who could tear you down in minutes, and unlike most people who practice negative gossip, she would say it right to your face. And no one did a damn thing about it. They just took it or tried to deflect it. Even as a young kid, I could see the pain that it caused my family members.
They would tell me that she was even worse growing up, although I never saw her behavior from those years. She was also on better behavior when there were small kids around, but the above examples I spoke of were her idea of “treading lightly.” Her more intense moments would include flinging cutlery at her children from across the room with the intent to hit them, and even once got my uncle right in the forearm with a fork from across the room.
She had a few daughters that also grew up in the house, my aunts, who adopted the same negative gossip traits and to this day have carried that habit all the way into their 80s. If you could see how this habit greatly contributed to the negative cloud in their lives and how it also aged them, it might convince you to give up the habit altogether right there.
I remember one Christmas Eve, 1998, I was just a small boy, and my grandfather (her husband) was in a nursing home, bedridden, and not very responsive. My mom took my grandmother and me to visit him for Christmas. I’m very glad I decided to go.
He was always such a calm man, and although he lost it a few times over the years with her (I can’t even imagine), he seemed to have found a way to cultivate a certain sense of peace among that massive amount of chaos. Watching sports helped, although he did put his fist through a few walls in the house over their time living there.
My grandfather was in some sort of coma and was alive but not responsive and had not spoken to anyone during visiting hours for quite some time. While we were there this time, he didn’t move once with any form of acknowledgement, although he was breathing.
I remember exactly what my grandmother said right before we left, and I’ll never forget it. She looked at him and said: “Look at him, in that bed. He’s so pathetic and weak.”
At that very moment, my grandfather’s body jolted, almost like he was giving his last bit of energy to silence her once and for all. But he didn’t have it in him, and he quickly returned to a relaxed state on his back, still laying in the bed.
“Shhhh. He can hear you,” my mom said.
Later that evening, after we had finished our feast of the seven fishes Italian dinner, we got a call from the home saying that he had passed.
That was the last thing she said to him, and I can’t even imagine the pain she took with her all the way until she died four years later. During her last few days, I watched her gasping for air in a propped-up hospital bed in complete fear and agony. She looked like she was fighting with everything she had not to leave this world.
As a teenager, I didn’t understand this, but as an adult looking back, it seems as though she had no faith in anything after this. I can only hope that she was able to find some sort of peace afterward.
Unfortunately, observing this chaos all around me growing up was not enough for me to identify what negative gossip was doing to my family or even myself when I started engaging in it as a teenager. After all, it was around me almost constantly.
Looking back on the things that I said about people behind their backs, had they ever found out, they would have cut me out of their lives instantly. I was a guy searching for meaning, interesting spikes of dopamine to fill his day with. Anything to get a jolt of excitement. I didn’t have a purpose and spent a lot of time on the phone.
We talk a lot about drugs and alcohol when it comes to addictions, but negative gossip is one of those addictions that just slides right under the rug. We don’t see it for what it is. And most of us don’t know the harm that it is causing us.
I honestly didn’t understand the true magnitude of it until I was in my 30s, not far off from where I am today at 37.
As I observed this behavior within my family and friend network more and more, I started to recognize how horrible it seemed when my friends would talk poorly about their friends and then invite them to their birthday parties shortly after with smiles on their faces. I couldn’t make sense of it.
Then, one day, in a desperate search for meaning and purpose, I decided to sign up for this mastermind that was attractive to new entrepreneurs. I was in my 30s and really wanted to learn some high-performance habits from men and women who had made a mark for themselves in the world.
It was expensive… But it was the best thing I ever did.
I met a man there named Daniel, who I’m proud to still call a good friend. He had a presence that was very rare for me to come across at that time.
I remember a group conversation with him where he said something along the lines of: “My wife and I don’t talk badly about anyone. In fact, we refuse to. It’s toxic, and since we’ve worked on squashing that habit, our lives contain so much more peace and room to discuss really meaningful topics with each other.”
Really? I thought. You don’t talk badly about anyone? Ever? I couldn’t believe it at first and thought it to be impossible. That’s how deep in the negative gossip hole I was.
Then I began to reflect.
I had known Daniel a little over a year, and I could not think of a single time that he said anything poorly about anyone. It was truly astonishing.
I think the worst thing he ever said was when we were camping in the middle of the woods and had cafeteria-style food. “The food could have been better, but it is what it is. Next time it will be.”
And trust me, the food was awful compared to what he was used to eating on a daily basis. There were plenty of things he could have said about it. But there just wasn’t the space for it.
All of these experiences over time led me to realize how toxic this habit was in my life. And then one day it hit me. I realized a few things:
Most of the people I’m gossiping about never hear what I’m actually saying, so I’m actually just trapped in these negative emotions, which is ONLY harming myself.
If I’m gossiping with a friend about someone else, I’m now hurting them and myself with the negative energy and not doing much to the person who is the topic of discussion.
If the person I am gossiping about happens to find out what I said or that I was talking poorly about them, I’m only sending hate their way. Contrary to how many years I gossiped for, that just sounded so awful to me.
There are many reasons why people have a habit of negative gossip. For me, it was to fill silence in conversations, have something to talk about with people and relate to, and also to make myself feel more superior in the eyes of whoever I was talking with.
Looking back, I can say for myself that all the people who I would normally gossip negatively with were not really rightfully suited for me. This meant that we were not as connected as we thought and didn’t have much in common. So I was using negative gossip to pass the time while with them.
From personal experience, this is not an easy habit to kick. I’ve made a HUGE deal of progress and have probably reduced my complaining about other people by over 80%. I feel so much better in life since that change was made.
I started to tackle the problem by saying to myself: “If I was not talking poorly about other people, what would I want to discuss instead?” Or, “What would I want to do instead?” It started to become apparent to me how much time i could free up.
Daniel told me to focus on powerful, positive things that would move people and create inspiration. Things such as goals, positive habits I’m working on nailing down, and interesting things I discovered throughout my day that really meant a lot, such as nature walks, a child smiling at the park as they chase a soccer ball, and that flower that I always pass on my walk but never stopped to admire.
Taking a moment to let these things fill the space in my life instead of negative thoughts and conversations about other people was a real game changer for me. Not only did it allow me to push my goals further, but it gave me a sense of internal peace.
I now feel like I have so much more time in the day to focus on the things I love, and each day that passes, there is just less and less time for hate.
In meditation, I came up with the reasons why negative gossip is so popular and wrote them down:
Jealousy
Envy
Disagreement with someone’s principles or actions
Insecurity
Perceiving someone as a threat
This helped me observe my habits more closely and move more towards the person I wanted to be.
However, there is still the other side of things, which is positive gossip: talking about other people’s accomplishments, drive, character, and really feeling good about what they are doing.
I found that I wasn’t really able to do this unless I myself was happy with the way I was living. So I focused on getting my life in order first by filling it with things I loved, and then the rest came right along.
I’ve come to believe that life is a journey for all and that everyone is in a different place on their journey. It seems to be designed specifically for them so that they can go about life and learn at their own pace.
How beautiful is that?
For life to be happening for you and not to you.
When I think this way, I feel less inclined to judge another person’s situation, even if they send hate my way. Sometimes it’s still challenging though I won’t lie.
Compassion is king, and I’m still working on it in some situations. For me, some situations are still more difficult to express compassion than others.
Sure, I could say that I should have learned this a lot earlier, but I am so grateful to have picked it up now and can safely say that it is never too late to work on switching things around to achieve more peace and joy throughout one’s day.
Thanks to all of you for reading. I truly appreciate your time and interest in this topic.
Hey Nick, I love this post! I’ve had similar instances in my family. We’ve always been extremely judgmental of people, especially people we don’t know. I carried that into high school a lot and I realized just how toxic an annoying gossip can be. But for some reason, I couldn’t stop it. Now that I look back, I realize I gossiped because of my own insecurities to lift myself up when I was feeling down. Now that I’ve reached better security in myself from writing and exercise, I just don’t really have the energy to talk badly about people anymore lol. Drama can be fun sometimes, but it’s annoying and does more harm than good. I’d rather just focus on myself and live my life. At least, that’s how I’ve always looked at it. Thank you so much for posting this! Your newsletter is awesome by the way! Just subscribed! :)
Thank you so much Khadejah, for your comment, and for your support along my journey!
Your story and vulnerability are inspiring, I definitely feel seen.
It seems you’ve found a wonderful comfort inside yourself, what you love to do, and what you’re working on!
It’s hard for negative gossip to thrive in an environment like that!
Much love! I’m honored to have you as a subscriber!