This week I heard a story about a local man who resigned his job. The gossip around the resignation is shared with relish, sympathy and much shaking of heads. Turns out the man was allowed to resign rather than being sacked, as he has been drinking on the job and people are starting to notice. Plus he is about to face his second drink-driving charge in just a few months.
Of course, says the gossip, it’s not his fault. It’s his wife’s fault. She left him after sleeping around on him. And she’s around town with her head held high while he’s suffering, and now he’s lost his job as well.
That bitch.
Now usually I listen to the news of the community and don’t say much. News is one thing; commenting about it and putting your meaning onto it, embroidering it and passing it on with relish, is when it becomes gossip. If you’re not sure something is gossip, put it to the self-test – if someone said it about you, would you feel it was unjustified? Would it hurt you? If the answer is yes, maybe think twice about spreading it around.
And think twice about the television shows you usually watch – is what they’re showing you really news, or is it gossip? Is it the quality of information you want to allow into your thought field?
So, this man in town and his bitch-wife: we don’t know what it was like living in their relationship. Maybe he was a drinker, a workaholic, emotionally absent, impotent, or something else, and that’s why she slept around. Maybe there was something else going on altogether. I do know that people don’t sleep around if they’re happy at home. Regardless, if the best way he could find to cope with the pain of the breakup was to use alcohol during his work day, that is truly sad. Many men do turn to alcohol when strong emotions overwhelm them, because as a culture we’re pretty good at teaching men how to suppress emotion but frankly, we suck when it comes to teaching males how to deal with emotion. In a breakup where there was cheating involved, there is undoubtedly more pain than the average person usually deals with in their day-t0-day life. So what’s a man to do?
Get some real support for one thing, because no one forces anyone to pour a drink down their throat. Talk to other men, ones worthy of respect because they’ve probably got something useful to say. I’m very aware that men have a depth of compassion that surprises many women; they just shift mental gears and get into action very quickly, whereas women spend more time analysing the emotional nuances. (Nothing wrong with either approach, that’s just how we’re wired.) If you don’t know any man like that, or there is no one you’d be comfortable talking with, talk to a GP and ask for a referral to a compassionate counsellor. Do something other than pour alcohol down your throat.
Is it his soon-to-be-ex-wife’s fault that he’s using so much alcohol that he’s now unemployed? How can it be, unless she was filling the glass for him and tilting his head back and pouring the alcohol down his throat?
This kind of leaping-to-conclusion is really common, and really distorted. In the Cognitive Behavioural Therapy framework, a thought distortion is something to be noticed and challenged. We could see a few different thought distortions in this story:
- Mind Reading – the gossiper knows how the people involved are feeling and what they’re thinking, based on just the small part of the story they know
- The Fallacy of Fairness – you think he’s been treated unfairly by his ex-wife; though you have no idea how he treated her
- Shoulding On Others – your ironclad rules about what’s right and wrong have been violated; therefore you will criticise and headshake
- Global Labelling – knowing she slept around means she’s an all-round bitch, regardless of anything else in her life that contributed to that situation
And of course, Over Generalising – filling in all the gaps to make the picture look the way you’ve decided it should look, based on the little bit of information you have.
Challenge the whole lot, I say – if your conclusions still hold up, then keep spreading the story about. Otherwise, leave be…. and find an alternative way to cope with your life’s challenges than pouring alcohol down your throat – EFT, Sedona Method, praying, even just sitting on the ground with some skin making contact with the earth are all good starting points. Most of all, just start making the change.
