✨Permission to feel✨
Why gossip is like a bag of sweets... and this week's feeling: Schadenfreude.
Schadenfreude is delighting in someone else’s displeasure or pain. Do I have a poem for this? Oh you bet:
Gossip can be seen as schadenfreude. I wrote this at my displeasure of the gossip that can go on around school mums. Three kids in, I have learnt to give the playground gossip gang a wide berth. I’m not interested in the drama.
But why do we gossip?
In another of her books, Braving the Wilderness, Brené Brown writes about how gossip is used to ‘hot wire’ connection. It can easily be something that we fall into as a way to try to connect and share information, but I liken gossip to eating a bag of sweets. At the time it can give you a buzz, a sugar high of salaciousness, but after, you just feel a bit…sick; something Brené calls, ‘an integrity hangover’.
Hands up here, before I move on. I’m not floating on a cloud above all this in a vortex of virtuosity, and I have certainly done my fair share in the past, but nowadays, I try to cultivate a drama free life as much as possible. That means minding my meddling and checking my chatter.
For who wants to forge connections in spaces where your common ground is the character assassination of an unsuspecting third party? And what does that mean for the health of society? If I am in a space where I know that people will speak about someone that they disagree with or have alternative views to, how do I speak up when I have opposing views or values? How does that help us have the shades of grey (not the E.L James kind!) that are needed for societal change and progression?
If I indulge in gossip with other people, then are they going to see me as trustworthy and do I really have a leg to stand on when I feel hurt if I have been the gossip gang’s subject matter?
Yet, as the Time article I have linked to above shares, what is referred to as gossip - when we are talking about someone who is not there - can also have its benefits. It can help us process our emotions about something that is happening within our circle of friends, it can help us to define our values.
The difference is that the gossip such as that in the poem is using people’s information as a form of social currency - a trade of secrets to ensure a place in the pecking order. Beneficial ‘gossip’ will involve you talking about your own feelings: ‘I’m not sure how I feel about…, I’m struggling with knowing how to talk to X about…’
Another side of Schadenfreude is rooted in when we feel that a sense of injustice has been rectified. Neatly portrayed by Amanda Holden’s recent post following the news from Phillip Schofield:
Yet the lingering feelings we are left with when we rejoice in the pain of others, even if we don’t like them, even if they have done wrong, is the same: guilt, shame and a questioning of our values.
When we rejoice in someone else’s pain, the part of the brain that processes empathy is less active, as our reward part of the brain gets activated. Whilst that high - like the sweet high I’ve mentioned - is fast working and easy to get hooked to, it robs us of a sense of peace and authentic connection.
Again, there is a difference between gratitude in seeing someone being held accountable for their poor actions and judgment, because that tunes into our sense of justice and re-balances our sense of order. When you rejoice in someone else’s pain though, do you really feel like the cat who got the cream, or does it leave a sour taste in your mouth?
What are your thoughts about schadenfreude and gossip?
That’s it for now!
‘Til next time.
Jacky x