Malicious Gossip and Slander

Gossip begins harmlessly. A comment on the sideline, an eye roll, half a sentence about someone who is not in the room. It feels good in that moment — connected to others, superior, alert. A quick kick. A quiet release valve. You do not feel in that moment what it is doing inside you. You feel it later, when you are alone and a heaviness you cannot quite name hangs in you.

Perhaps you know this: after hours of gossiping about colleagues, ex-partners, or in-laws, you feel not refreshed but drained. As if you have been drawing from a battery that is your own. Perhaps you have a dull pressure in the chest, a clenched jaw, a tense diaphragm. Perhaps you sleep poorly during phases of intense hostility. Perhaps infections, digestive complaints, and back tension accumulate. The body does not send random signals — it responds to what lives inside you.