What’s the difference between gossiping, sharing, and commiserating?
They all feel different.
With gossip there is always a pull, an urge, a compulsion, telling someone else something about another person with urgency. Gossip is being a tattletale – a deflection, to offload the difficult, discomforting energy elsewhere. With gossip we have not opened up with compassion and made room for the discomfort. In Freudian terms it is closest to the defense mechanism of displacement – throwing off your undigested anxious energy onto someone else. The next time you feel that urgency, see if you can pause and feel the discomfort with compassion.
Sharing is an offering. With sharing there is respectful commonality, a ground of equanimity where you are open to receive feelings. With this comes an openness of being heard, acknowledged. There is a respect for those you are sharing with as your share maybe somehow relevant, nurturing or uplifting for them.
Commiserating, like gossiping, is a where undigested uncomfortable feelings are first displaced onto someone else. With this someone else is brought into the discomfort with you. In the discomfort together there can be compassion. It’s the strange comfort you get when you have someone else suffering with you. The key is when you recognize you are commiserating, when you feel the compassion, ask yourself if in that compassionate opening of the you can find peace with the discomfort, rather than anxiety? Can you two team up to comfort each other and find you can be with and tolerate discomforts?