How to deal with gossips: In this discussion, we will talk about dealing with gossips in life. Gossips are horrible and can cause hurtful feelings. We will talk about handling gossips about yourself and others. This will include detailed discussion about each of these steps to handle gossips and prevent them from hurting you.
Most gossips start as a harmless prank. We go into further details of this gossips further through the article. The presentation below provides a snapshot of the direction to handle gossips in summary. The presentation is available for a free download on the link below if you are interested.
What is the meaning of gossip?
Let’s start with the definition of gossip – it means idle talk or rumour about personal life of others. Normally gossips include intimate details of a life which is not generally shared in public. It is a way to reinforce social interaction and bonding amidst people. (Source: Gossip etymology)
Sometimes these gossips can be true or an extension of truth. Some other times, these gossips can be baseless. What makes it fun is that it doesn’t demand any proof, but just a handful people who are willing to spread and share the joy in this activity. You can find some related quotes about gossips to provide you varied perspectives.
Why people gossip?
Gossips are fun, people gossip to create a connection or a social bond. Sometimes it doesn’t matter whether this bonding is real or hurts someone, it is treated as harmless fun. Unfortunately, there’s no such thing as harmless fun when it comes to gossip. There’s always someone who gets hurt.
It is fair to expect kindness and generosity from people. One of the most popular quotes this elucidates this is – be kind, everyone you meet is fighting a battle. But that’s not the reason why people gossip. People gossip because:
- To feel better about themselves
- Social acceptance: Be accepted in a social group
- Have a sense of being special for having privileged information
- Boredom and wanting to have fun
- They are jealous or hate you/ want to hurt you for some reason
People don’t really think about the victim when they gossip. It is just about a juicy matter that can create a sense of fun. You’d have already noticed that people don’t spend time to figure out or find proof for these gossips. Unfortunately with the social media, it has become easier to spread gossip. It is hard for truth to fight against these gossips sometimes. This bring to our next question – how to deal with gossips?
How to Deal with Gossips
There are two types of gossips – the one people spread about you and the type that you spread about them. Let’s talk about the gossips that hurt you first.
How to deal with gossips about you?
- Find the source of gossip – your friends can help you with this
- Confront and ask for an explanation – how they came to know about this gossip, why they spread it etc
- Ignore the gossip – ignorance is bliss, sometimes these gossips don’t deserve your time or attention. If there’s nothing you can do about them, the best course of action is to ignore
- Maintain your image – don’t let this affect your standards or what you feel about yourself
- Escalate and complain if and where necessary
In order to deal with gossips, you might have to use one or a combination of these steps. The ultimate purpose is to make sure that you don’t lose your self image or respect. Gossips can be nasty when they influence your confidence. Don’t fall into the trap. (Related: Building your self confidence)
Dealing with gossips about other people
- Don’t encourage gossip – avoid spreading it and maybe even discourage others from telling you
- Find out the source – identify whether it is true or not. In either case, it is still a bad idea to spread the gossip
- Report the gossip to the right people – can be authorities or the person impacted by it
Remember that a gossip only spreads when you encourage it. The best way to deal with a gossip is to make sure that it stops at you.
With that background, let’s now talk about the detailed steps of how to deal with gossip
Confronting a gossip
Confronting is the first step and often the best one to deal with a gossip. The best confrontations I’ve seen are respectful and often convey your story to the listener. It depends on both your persuasive and listening skills to coney the impact while confronting a gossip.
Talk to the person who’s creating rumours about it. Maybe they started it without knowing that it might hurt someone. Or perhaps it was a playful activity meaning no harm. Your best chance is to be able to convince and confront them respectfully.
A confrontation however is not the same as a fight or argument. Points to remember while confronting a gossip are:
How to talk to someone spreading a gossip about you?
- Start with empathy – ask about why, what they were trying to achieve
- Tell them your side of the story, how it has impacted you
- Make them a part of the solution – to help define a plan about how to reduce the impact of this gossip
This process works when people truly care. If however these gossips are done will malice, the best course of action might be escalation or formal complaint.
Get them to empathise with you
Empathy is the bedrock of effective communication. Before you expect empathy from someone else, the first step is to offer the same to your gossip creator. This is a hard task because this step expects more patience, respect from you as an aggrieved party. But, you’re creating a longer term solution and this is a great way to get earnest support
Tips to create empathy in a gossip situation:
- Avoid the temptation of anger, blaming or self pity. This will push the confrontation further and make your counterpart defensive
- Talk about the emotions you’re going through – get them to empathise with you
- Make them a part of the solution – this is the best escape route from guilt for someone who’s spread gossip about you
Again, this doesn’t always work. You can create empathy with people who want to solve a problem. If they’re aggressive and are doing this out of pure hatred or jealousy, this is still a good option, but maybe have lesser expectations on the outcome.
Find the opportunity in using this gossip
Some gossips might even help you to deal with them or create unforeseen opportunities. Before discarding or ignoring these gossips – think out of the box. The most common reaction to dealing with a gossip is hurt, anger and emotional trauma. What if there was an advantage.
Can you step out of the situation into an objective mode and identify an opportunity in this gossip? A good way to treat an unfavourable situation is by gaining a distance from it. In this case, try to see it from another person’s viewpoint. If not anything, it gives you a different perspective.
Tips to find opportunity in a gossip
- Gain distance from the gossip and its outcome. A big picture view will help you identify opportunities strategically
- Look at the bright side – there might be a few opportunities or advantages outside the box
Ignore the gossip, it is not worth your time
This is the best and most common advice. Ignore the gossips – they are rarely worth your time and effort. I’m not suggesting inaction here. Remember, you’re still responsible whether you decide to do something or not.
This reminds me of a beautiful quote – Don’t waste your time with explanations. People only hear what they want to hear. You don’t have to waste your emotions/energy on things/people that don’t matter. Before delving into a response, take some time. Think about the end result you want to achieve.
Tips to ignore gossips that hurt you:
- Think about how your approach can create a favourable situation for you. If there’s none, is it even worth spending your time?
- Sometimes when you ignore or show that the gossip doesn’t bother you – people will stop deriving joy from sharing it.
Look at the bright side of the gossip
There’s always another side to a story. If nothing, this gossip has brought you into the limelight. Most times, people gossip because they are jealous of you. Find out why they are jealous of you. Isn’t this telling you that you have something that they desperately desire?
There are 2 sides to a coin – At one end, you have anger and hurt caused by this gossips. As you are thinking about how to deal with gossips, the other end shows that there’s an aspect about you that people desire. In a corny sense, enjoy the attention a bit.
Maintain self image, reinforce what you stand for
Gossips are a waste of time. Although they’re fun, they fizzle with time. It doesn’t give a lasting joy to anyone. People will forget it eventually and move on. Why not lead this journey? If you show that you’ve moved on already, maybe it is an indicator for other people to do the same.
The moment someone realises a gossip doesn’t bother you anymore, it immediately loses its value. It’s almost like a fashion style gone out of trend. Make sure that you retain your image and confidence. If this gossip doesn’t bother these elements, people will eventually stop. Make it clear that you won’t stand for gossips – whether it is about you or someone else. The moment someone knows that you don’t entertain gossips, you’ll be amazed how quickly it fades from your life.
Formal complaint about gossips
If none of these tips on how to deal with gossips work, find the official channels. Is there a way you can escalate this? If it is a working environment, you can complain to the HR or line manager about this behaviour. If however, it is a personal network, identify their influencers. Each one of us has role models/influencers in our lives.
Find out who your spreader’s influencers are? Is there a way you can reach out to them to mitigate the impact? This is not fun, but if all informal channels fail, you’ll need to use the formal one.
Show your strength
Gossips sometimes are a softer form of bullying. Weaker people use them to make you feel weak/bring you down. Instead of falling prey to their strategy, show them your strength.
The only way to defeat weakness is strength. If you are wallowing in self-pity and hurt, it only boosts the gossip. It is an evil that you need to weed out. Show how strong you can be and the gossipers will fizzle out knowing that they are not encouraged.
Establish your boundaries for gossips
The quality of our lives depends on the people around us. A nice piece on Forbes talks about surrounding yourself with the right people which can influence your quality of life.
Don’t try to please people and force yourself into bad company. Establish your boundaries clearly. Some might not respect that. The question is – do you want such people in your life?
Your mind is a precious space and only select people can/should be allowed to influence it. Make sure your people know these rules. Some of these rules might sound obvious to you, but it helps to put them out in the open.
How to handle gossips presentation
All these details are compiled into a single PPT about handling gossips. You can find this presentation below which is available for a free download
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Even I am facing same problem. One idiot proposed me 1 year back, I rejected. He said lets be as friend I accepted. After few months later he again started asking love me, so again I rejected. so he got angry on me and started spreading badly on me with others like ” she loved me and cheated, she is a fake girl, she is a flirting girl, she spoiled my life, I lost all because of her.” like this he is saying something badly on me and spreading to all in social media too. He is blackmailing me now by keeping my photo which took when we were friends. It’s just a selfie photo. he is blackmailing by keeping that.” give me 50,000 rs within 24th of this month or else I will come to your home and show to your dad and say badly on you” my parents are strict, they love me, I don’t want to hurt them. So I decided to give him money. I am struggling lot to arrange money because I am still a student, I am not working. I am crying daily by his torture. Need to kill this type of idiots
Even i am facing same problem. one idiot proposed me 1 year back, i rejected. he said lets be as friend i accepted. after few months later he again started asking love me, so again i rejected. so he got angry on me and started spreading badly on me with others like ” she loved me and cheated, she is a fake girl, she is a flirting girl, she spoiled my life, i lost all because of her.” like this he is saying something badly on me and spreading to all in social media too. she is blackmailing me now by keeping my photo which took when we was friends. its just a selfie photo. he is blackmailing by keeping that.” give me 50,000 rs within 24th of this month or else i will come to your home and show to your dad and say badly on you” my parents are strict, they love me, i don’t wanna hurt them. so i decided to give him money. i am struggling lot to arrange money because i am still a student, i am not working. i am crying daily by his torture. need to kill this type of idiots ..
HI Lavanya, our apologies for the delay in responding to this comment. That is indeed very harsh and might I say very immature of the person spreading this rumor/gossip about you. I can certainly understand how challenging this would be in a college set up. People are usually hungry for a gossip and they tend to blow it out of proportion. In this situation, perhaps the best thing to do is talk to your family
– Tell them what this person is threatening
– Explain the photograph to your family. In other words don’t even give him the chance to surprise you. If they already know what it is about, then he really has nothing against you to blackmail
– I think you will need to speak to your college dean/supervisor about this situation. It is impacting your study and I cannot see why a professor would not take this seriously.
Did you actually end up giving him the money? I think he has blown this all out of proportion and there is no reason why he cannot be taken to police. If you have proof of the blackmail, we would certainly advice you to take a legal course of action. He is simply bullying you in this scenario and it spreads beyond blackmail.
I am a straight person. When a shopkeeper stare at me, unfortunately I also stare at him back. Then he and friends started to stare at me and whisper. Me and my friends went to this guys and told them don’t disturb us students. After this incident,they started to spread that I am a GAY.They spread this to the entire residential area.Now Planning to leave that area because people are behaving very badly to me.
I am so sorry to hear that Prash. The society sure is a B word sometimes. It was the right thing for you to go an talk to that guy. I wonder why he started spreading that rumor though, was it just cos his ego was hurt or was he trying to teach some bullshit lesson or some other twisted reason like that?
I sometimes don;t really understand how these gossips stem, they are so baseless and they so easily borderline on hurting the emotions of people. It is quite a pickle mate. Leaving the area will certainly solve the problem for the time being. I am just trying to think out loud if there is an alternate solution to these horrible gossip mongers.
My two cents
1) Maybe talk to him and check with him why he thinks so or why he says so – just a heart to heart conversation. Maybe make him realize how it is affecting your lifestyle and how much you would appreciate him understanding your situation. I know that you have every right to be furious, but that would atleast give him the ego massage he needs and he might actually comply with you and may even stand for you if that works
2) Ignore – Now this is very hard, esp when the society joins in the source of the gossip. It may not be the best idea in this scenario. But maybe treating it wilh a bit of humor might help, making light of it and you joining the laughter? Sometimes people stop when they realize it is not making an impact on you.
3) The simplest thing might seem to be seen with a girl all the time. Now that might defeat the purpose of actually being in a relationship but in this situation, it might give the temporary relief. But again I would suggest you not to do this cos for them, it just fuels in new ideas. The best thing to do sometimes is to not react at all and let that idiotic behavior pass. As long as you don’t give your self respect into the hands of the stupid society, it should be alright..
Hope atleast one of these help, do lemme know your thoughts mate :)
Not all gossips are rumours though….I once became a talk of the town because some aunty saw me talking and laughing with a guy publicly…All she did was spread the word..she didn’t rumour about anything …she just gossiped what she saw and apparently gossips spread like fire and when it passes ear to ear there is coat of spice added to it. I and mom went to confront her and had a heart to heart talk….she apologized to my mom…but the damage was already done….finally what happened, in the fear of society my mom requested me not to speak to guys in public cos, she had 3 daughters to raise in this cruel world….
Gee that’s really sad to hear Vidhya. Perhaps I will never understand why people are so hell bent on imposing their views of the world, society and culture over everyone around them. I mean each one of us has a private life of our own and we would like to live that way. Granted that there will be rumors and gossips about us, but they all do have a limit. As long as they don’t hurt someone – they are ok. But the moment they start hurting someone, it is time to back off and maybe also realize that when it comes to sensitive issues, it is not really cool to gossip or spread rumors. There are a lot of emotions attached behind. I wish there was a way to make them a little more sensitive..
Thank you Indrani :)
Yea, that is also a very strong point and an angle to think upon. Esp when it comes to gossip mongers whose only motivation is to make fun of people or have fun at someone’s expense, everything acts as a feeder and they seem to use it remarkably well. Sometimes it makes me feel that they really do deserve a punch in the nose!
How to Deal with Gossips!! well kill people who spread it :P on a serious note maintain your dignity clarify your stand. Excellent post
Thank you Datta :).. He he, now that’s more like it ;) :)..
Thanks Datta, yes maintaining one’s dignity, clarifying the stand, do go a long way :)
YOUR ROLE AS AGONY AUNTY IS MARVELOUS!
Thank you Uppal. I was really rooting for the agony uncle ;)
BTW I loved this post
Thank you Jyoti, missed you around here. My deepest apologies for not being able to convert that post. I am stuck writing a few essays for application and most of my creativity is stuck. Really very sorry for not being able to take that project ahead :(
NUMBER 9 ! Definitely!… These rumor creating rude people should be tracked down and taught a lesson, these are just gossip gangs who have nothing constructive to do…and unless someone tells them off they won’t understand. Once someone did this to me, I confronted her and served her my ultra-hot sauce in the ear… I added “right now I am dealing with you on one-on-one thinking you will understand but if you didn’t, my next conversation with you would be with more people, I am making a mental list of people who should know all this about you now” after that she understood that behind an all-nice, supportive and smiling ‘me’ lies a person who has no accommodation for nonsense like this. From that day on, not just her but her whole gang understood that I am strong enuf to handle lil stupid morons. hehe.. Her face was worth a pic..sad I couldn’t ask for a pic in that kind of scene… hehe..
Thank you Jyoti :). I agree, they should be caught by the neck and forced to stop sometimes. The worst part is when they realize that it is hurting someone and they still continue doing it because they find it funny. Highly insensitive and horribly annoying from all ends..
That was a really nice way to deal with that person, a good threat sometimes is the perfect requirement. That was some real good action on that front Jyoti. Thanks so much for sharing it here, I am sure this will come in handy for a lot of them :)
Informative as usual. If you ask the person who you think is spreading rumour, the person will deny. If you tell your side of story, be prepared for further distortion. One who is malicious enough to spread rumour, will be unlikely to be open to fact.
Thank you Abhijit :). True indeed, not many people agree to spreading a rumor, not many would take responsibility for it or its consequences and if you confront them, they even dodge it in every way possible. I guess for such people nothing works better than a threat!
Well..rumours sometimes can really be injurious to our health and reputation…I agree to your points but rumours which are spread out of jealousy are more dangerous and there’s actually no help talking to those people…they never admit their fault even if caught red-handed…I’ve witnessed an incident regarding my friend and hence speaking by experience…..
Thank you Maniparna :). True indeed, not many agree at all, infact they slyly move away from it and make you feel guilty for confronting them. They are pretty smart people and come with a strong talent and ability to what they do. I guess we have to keep finding creative ways to hold them by the neck and solve the problem!
Nice post Vinay, I do agree with all your points. Though as Ravish commented that people are free to think whatever they want to think is also true, but then it is also true that we got affected because of rumors.
Thank you Alok. True, people are free to think what they want, but to tell the same, they are really not. I wish there was a way to sue such people sometimes. It would have built in a strange sense of order and a stranger sense of annoyance though :D
Yes, we get affected but only when we allow those to affect us. Suppose If I were to insult you, you’d most likely make the choice of being offended. And if I were to pay you a complement, you’d most likely make the choice of being pleased or flattered. But think about it: it’s still a choice.
True Ravish, when it comes to absolutism and some rumors, we can steer away from them, But when you realize that there is something which is constantly acting as an impediment to you and you know that an action on that front would solve the problem for you, then perhaps it is something which needs an action.
As for the choice of being offended or being complimented, I am still a very normal man who is most likely to be affected by them. But you are absolutely right, it is all about the matter of choice and if the choice is to make the best of it, then nothing like that :)
People are free to think whatever they want to think and what they think of me is none of my business. :)
That’s the most ideal way to go about it Ravish. But somehow many of them take advantage of this and start influencing others as well. I agree that we should not budge about it, but at the same time we have to do something to keep things in order..
What kind of order, Vinay? If we are in order within then no rumor can tarnish us. We have only control on ourselves and our attitudes. The only thing matters is our perspectives.
Perhaps Ravish, I agree that our perspectives will make the most difference. There will be some of those rumors which one can cast off, not even listen to them and move ahead with our lives. But there will be some other which actually undermine the very thing you do, for those we need to give an answer. It might not be a straight forward one, but sometimes it can be a very subtle one and can be shown through our actions. As for the rumor, it is an independent entity, but like you said if we are in control and find a way to use that rumor for the best of our advantage, then life can be quite a blessing :)
Man is the creator of circumstances not that circumstances creates a man.