This week, Wise Heart demonstrates how we can interrupt gossip and redirect toward connection, through either offering empathy or honest expression, two of the 12 relationship competencies within Mindful Compassionate Dialogue.
P.S. If you’re a team lead or part of a team and would love to see your team connect and collaborate more effectively, handle conflict with skill and cultivate psychological safety and trust, please have a look at MCD for Teams.
You’re with your friend Jane and you hear her talking about Eli, who is not there. You start to feel uncomfortable. You are pretty sure Jane wouldn’t be saying these things about Eli if Eli were present. So, you decide to express your discomfort:
You: Um, I don’t like to gossip.
Jane: I don’t either, I’m just telling you what happened.
And then Jane goes on talking in the same manner, telling you about the details of Eli’s divorce.
Gossip, like any behaviour, is something people do to meet particular needs. So, as they talk about others, they are expressing their own thoughts, feelings, needs, and potential requests in an indirect way.
When hearing gossip and wishing for more connection, you can either silently or aloud make some guesses about the needs alive for the person gossiping. Here are some guesses about needs that someone engaging in gossip may be trying to meet:
- Belonging (if I know private information, I am in the “in” crowd)
- Self-acceptance (if someone else is doing worse than me, I must be okay)
- Connection (by talking about someone we both know, we can connect)
- Protection (concern that something someone is doing will cost the needs of others)
- Stimulation (drama in someone else’s life can provide a sense of intensity and aliveness)
Remembering that someone who is gossiping is attempting to meet their needs can help you access compassion when you might feel disconnected.
Interrupting is a key skill in Mindful Compassionate Dialogue, and can be particularly useful in the face of gossip. You can interrupt to connect with either empathy or honest expression.
Interrupting with empathy might sound something like this:
You: Talking about Eli’s divorce, I wonder if you feel sad for him?
Jane: Well, I don’t know, I mean, he brought it on himself. He’s the one who-
You: Yea, are you feeling frustrated, wishing he had more awareness in his relationship?
Jane: He could have listened to me when I told him to get counselling.
You: So you tried to help?
Jane: Yea, I wish I could have helped more.
Interrupting with honest expression might sound something like this:
You: Jane, hearing the details of Eli’s divorce, I notice I feel uncomfortable because I want to hold him in a place of compassion, and I can get muddled with details. Would you be willing to share how it affects you rather than passing on the details of his story?
Jane: If I don’t tell you the details, how will you understand how it affected me?
You: Hmm, if I don’t understand, I can ask a question.
Jane: Oh, just forget it. You make such a big deal out of everything.
You: Yeah, you’d like to just say what you wanna a say.
Jane: Yeah, can’t I just be myself around you?!
You: Are you thinking I’m judging you?
Jane: Aren’t you?!
You: I’m really coming from my own needs and that doesn’t involve a judgment about you. Would you like me to be more clear about where my request comes from?
Jane: Yes.
You: I am really committed to holding others with compassion. And I’ve noticed that hearing about the details of others’ affairs when they are not present has resulted in my own misinterpretations and judgments of that person. So it doesn’t help me in keeping my commitment.
Jane: Yeah that happens to me sometimes too. I guess I don’t even know why I am talking about it. I guess I am upset about it.
Asking someone to express themselves differently can be tricky business. People sometimes identify their mode of expression as “who they are.” As a result, they might interpret your requests as criticism. As in the example above, it can take a few rounds of empathy and honest expression for this perception to loosen and create a space in which mutual care and curiosity arises.
Practice
Take time now to reflect upon a time when you were recently either expressing gossip or participating passively. What feelings and needs were up for you at the time? How might you have interrupted the gossip with connection?
I hope you enjoyed this week’s blog. Do share your thoughts and experiences below.
Thank you for reading, for being here, and for being you.
With love.
Ceferino
If you would like to learn practical and concrete relationship and communication skills to create thriving relationships with yourself and others, then have a look at our upcoming Mindful Compassionate Dialogue course, where you’ll learn the skills, practices and capacity to do just that. Our journey starts on 25th November 2025.
You are also invited to join our free monthly Empathy Circle, where you can learn and discover what empathy is, and more importantly, practice giving and receiving empathy, allowing you to be deeply seen and heard in whatever challenge or celebration you’re navigating.
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