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lisatrevor Asked March 2022

Everyone gossiping? Is this really true?

I spent most of my life tending to trying do good in school and my career. I tend to keep to myself and not make too many acquaintances. What I have discovered in recent years is that large networks of people that I do know of, like friends of parents, sibling, extended relatives talk about others in great detail and I'm not included. In addition the information then goes to people I don't know at all!


 


For example, a few years ago my brother invited me out to see his friends. Some of his friends know people from our old neighborhood from decades ago. We met a couple of them and it was a good seeing them again. In talking with them one mentioned something connected to my work and it occurred to me - this person knows what I do for a living! Apparently he had met up with my brother before and that was part of their discussion. So this person knows what I do and somehow that information was "shared" with many other people! So the woman who lived two blocks away from me, who I didn't know at all "knew" me and knew what I did for a living becuse they knew someone else who knew what I did.


 


I find this almost hard to believe but it must be true - large networks of people are talking about others all the time. I guess many people are "in on it" but a small minority, like me, are not. Does anyone else agree with this?


 


Oh, and you wonder how this fits into eldercare? I currently have no one off-hand to talk too. I have a good friend but it's not a good time to speak with them, so I was thinking about reaching out to an extended relative who lives far away who I haven't spoken with in years. Well, my father mentioned the relative today almost like he was preemptively trying to inform me that this relative would not be a good person to talk to concerning personal family business. My guess is that my recent family issues have already done the gossip circuit. Unreal!

MJ1929 Apr 2022
You have no right to discuss personal family business with anyone -- period. People knowing what you do for a living is not even remotely in the same category.

You know that.
PeggySue2020 Apr 2022
She’s been discussing personal details about bro and his wife since she’s made her debut here to a bunch of random ppl. So she probably is doing that with anyone she feels is gonna be on her side.
lealonnie1 Mar 2022
" I simply meant autism has become a term that describes a whole range of symptoms and behaviors and many in society call anything like it "autism". This word is not science but a word bandied about like it has one meaning for everything. It has become almost a junk word. "

Autism indeed DOES have a specific meaning, scientifically, whether you 'agree' with it or not: the only 'junk words' being spewed are those coming from YOUR keyboard. You 'simply' trying to clarify yourself 'simply' forces your foot deeper into your mouth right now.

"In any event it's my opinion and opinions should be tolerated by everyone. At least in a publicly owned space, which this site is not, opinions are protected by law."

Opinions are NOT tolerated by everyone, in spite of you insisting they should be. Some opinions are cruel and you're going to get heat for those opinions, period, as you should. Thinking that your opinion is protected by law is laughable, it really is, especially on an internet forum! Any and all of our 'opinions' are subject to removal at any time by the admins here.

"When I was a kid we didn't call it autism; we called certain similar behaviors "hyper-active" for example, Like a comedian I heard say "In my day we didn't have "Ritalin"; we had "paddlin." It seems we had a lot less mental conditions back then!"

I'm 65 and 'back then' in 1957 even, my cousin was diagnosed with autism. To put autism and other mental health conditions into the mouth of a comedian is to once again minimize these disorders, poke fun at them, and to compare them to something that should be 'punished' by a parent...to suggest CORRECTION for a child's disorders instead of treatment and society working WITH the child/person to address their difficulties. We didn't have 'a lot less mental conditions back then'; we had a lot less UNDERSTANDING of mental conditions back then, in reality, so they went undiagnosed.

It's people like YOU who make it so much harder for autistic people (or those with any mental health condition) to function in society today. "Just slap that fool upside his head & knock some REAL sense into him, eh hon, that'll show him!"

Ignorance breeds cruelty, as clearly evidenced right here.

You can come back & try to 'clarify' your words again, but I'm done. Have a nice day, have a nice life, and please try very hard to understand how your 'ideas' and words affect others, most especially your family members. You are better off to say NOTHING than to use words that may upset them to the point you lose those relationships entirely. Please try to wrap your mind around that concept, even when you feel you are 'right' and they are 'wrong.'

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Sendhelp Mar 2022
So now you want to talk about others?

GOSSIP STOPS WITH YOU!

PeggySue2020 Mar 2022
LisaTrevor, so No it wasn’t cool for anyone to suggest you’re on the spectrum as that’s a medical diagnosis. That doesn’t just affect everyone.

It appears your whole family is now distancing. Maybe even these friends of bros.

And unfairly or not, dad is siding with bro. And fairly, he will have care needs physically met.

Why are you staying around?
MarkMoore Mar 2022
I'm sorry but knowing that could be an important part of helping her. And frankly her understanding or lack of understanding of regular human interaction makes it sound like a possibility.
BurntCaregiver Mar 2022
Lisa,

I say this with true humanity in my heart and total sincerity.

Find yourself a therapist because you need one. People talking to other people about their lives and families and jobs is called polite conversation. Your brother's friend knows what you did for work because your brother was making conversation with him.
No one is out to get you. I'm so sure that these huge groups of friends, family, and strangers don't all get together to talk about people including you but are also taking great pains to exclude you from the mass conversation.
Reach out to a therapist. Maybe even try that talk therapy texting with a licensed therapist.

lealonnie1 Mar 2022
"No, I have bever been diagnosed as austistic I believe though everyone has some form of "autism". No one is completely "normal". I also believe the subject of autism is very trendy and not something that I consider as real science."

THIS, this is the most ignorant and deluded comment of all the outrageous comments and posts you've had the audacity to leave to date, lisatrevor. To say that autism is 'very trendy and not something that I consider as real science' is over the top. My grandson is autistic and let me tell you something about 'real science', you wouldn't know it if it beat you over the head with a hammer. To say such a thing is to completely disregard science and the suffering real families go through with such a diagnosis.

SHAME ON YOU. I am reporting your comment and I hope the admins remove your post and prevent you from posting ANY MORE of your absolute nonsense on a forum that's serious and meant to discuss HONEST and REAL issues that caregivers encounter.

It's no wonder you have 'no one to talk to.' My condolences to your father and your brother for what they have to put up with dealing with you.
Becky04489 Mar 2022
Thanks for your excellent response. I reported the autistic remark. This OP needs to be blocked.
funkygrandma59 Mar 2022
I think that because you are not a people person, and keep to yourself and don't make many "acquaintances" you are a bit naïve about the way of things when it comes to people and society.
What you have mentioned is all very normal and goes on all the time. Unless you live under a rock(and even then it may still happen)people are going to know your business to some degree. Not because they're nosey or gossiping, but because people talk about other people and what's going on in each others lives.
Perhaps you may need to get out more and try to establish some healthy friendships so you can experience what the rest of us have experienced all our lives. You may just discover how absolutely "normal" it all is.
I wish you well.

JoAnn29 Mar 2022
My opinion, and I am saying this nicely, you think too much. You tend to assume things that aren't there. You blow things out of proportion. You read too much into things. (This one I am guilty of)

"I tend to keep to myself and not make too many acquaintances"

There is nothing wrong with the above statement. My daughter is very much like this, she is not a people person. And because of this she lacks patience with friends faults. She has a hard time getting past them. Right now she has a friend that lives in her complex and they have a lot in common but the girl has this fault my daughter has a big problem with. So much so, she is backing away.

My DH has been deaf most of his life. It has caused him to be somewhat introverted. I find that, though very intelligent, he lacks some social skills because of his deafness. He can be tactless for one.

I see nothing wrong in an old neighbor knowing where you work. I agree with the scenario that brother saw this neighbor someplace and the neighbor asked about how you were and brother told him. And the woman u don't know? I can see her talking to someone who knows you and she tells that person "I am moving to such and such place." And the person who knows you says, "my old neighbor lives there (gives ur name) if you meet her tell her I said Hi" This is not gossip. Meaning of gossip:

"unconstrained conversation or reports about other people, typically involving details that are not confirmed as being true."

I am with Mark here. There are different levels of autism. You can be very high functioning and have it. There was a member on here where her husband was very young but she was wondering if he could have the beginning of Dementia. He was pretty good at most things but there was this one area he had a hard time with and always had. I told her then, have him checked for autism. She told me she set up an appt for him but never updated us. So not sure if he was diagnoised with Autism.

I am trying to find a word to describe this problem. Maybe you have the wrong expectations about people. An ex: My GF over the years has called me for my Mom's sugar cookie recipe at least 3x. She was here visiting her Mom and had us over for a spaghetti dinner. She makes the best sauce and I asked for the recipe. "Oh, its just something I throw together. She was not even willing to tell me how she threw it together. Now, we numerous times have picked her up and members of the family from the airport. I asked her to show me how to do a simple crochet project she was doing. I am very experienced and would have picked it up immediately but I got "I'm too tired" I guess my DH wasn't tired when he picked up her daughter at 11pm at night at an Airport 30/45 min away and he had to go to work at 5am. No one called ahead to see if the time was convenient for us. So what it comes down to, you can not expect from others the same thing you expect from yourself. Yes, as u probably can tell, I still am a little pissed at my friend. My DH, says let it go. He never expects to get back what he gives and he keeps giving. Me, I realize I need to stop expecting people to be the way I am. Just do because I want to and expect nothing in return. If I don't want to do it, I am learning to say No.

😊
BelleMolerab Mar 2022
your husband sees to be a nice guy.
MarkMoore Mar 2022
This may sound bad but have you ever been diagnosed with some kind of autistic disorder?
lisatrevor Mar 2022
No, I have bever been diagnosed as austistic I believe though everyone has some form of "autism". No one is completely "normal". I also believe the subject of autism is very trendy and not something that I consider as real science.
GardenArtist Mar 2022
People are in many cases literally "invited" to become involved with others, especially given the explosion of social media sites and venues.  I don't know if the OP does this, but the trend to become involved if not meddle in others' lives literally exploded as people decided to open their lives to the Internet.  And don't forget that people who started and/or still manage these sites have their own agendas.

AlvaDeer Mar 2022
Just realized who wrote this "question".
Came in to erase my reply.
PeggySue2020 Mar 2022
Well, there’s nothing wrong in keeping a confidence, like someone’s abortion in 1978 or whatever. But things like how Alva is a nurse is uh, not that level of confidence.

It is an elder are topic in that dad is involved. The brother has probably been irrationally mean to Lisa, and she’s screaming at us to hear it. Hear her side. But it really doesn’t matter when it comes to the reasons why she feels she needs validation.
PeggySue2020 Mar 2022
What might be happening is that the family has started to talk around Lisa.

Maybe Lisa’s career had wound down before moving to dad, and she thought she’d regain a family manager status on the move, but then felt like she was being treated as a serf or whatever. Fights escalated, and now people Are telling friends and relatives that Lisa won’t be invited to gatherings, or that no one can deal with Lisa. She senses people are giving stay away vibes, and her reaction so far has been to look only at their part in it, get even more mad, and the cycle continues.

I might be completely wrong, but this theory would explain some of it.
notgoodenough Mar 2022
You're a kind soul, Peggy.

Reading this person's posts, however, makes me think about something my FIL used to say: If you find everybody else in your world are behaving like a**holes, the problem probably isn't everybody else in your world.
Sighopinion Mar 2022
To be fair the delineation between conversation and gossip can be blurred in the work place, especially in today's PC culture and safe space work culture that many are trying to promote.

If someone is impacted or felt slighted by it in some places it can warrant an HR hearing. I once was reported to HR for informing my other colleagues, that someone screwed up the calculations and we have to recalibrate everything from square one. I was reported since as the team leader I was told that info in confidence and should not have said anything cause it could lead to mental health break down.

What I was told. Also we got sh** for having a private work discord that got leaked which is understandable but snowflakes like the OP are we cannot have nice things and everything in the work place must be all inclusive.

Jhalldenton Mar 2022
My mother lives in a senior adult community. Everyone that lives on her block knows my car by sight. They know where I work, where I live and they know who I "know". They even know what clothes I typically wear. They know that I sometimes run errands for my mom and when I take stuff to the dump for my mom. Everyone there also knows I have a sister that does not visit my mom. My mom got a call one time because her front window light was not on at "the normal time". How does this relate to Elder Care? Elderly people have a hidden network of information about Doctors, Pharmacies, Mechanics, Lawyers etc. that they have used in the past. They pass this information on if they got good service etc. They rely more on first hand experience then the Internet etc. I'll share a quote from "Salem's Lot" by Stephen King.

"In a way she was the town, a fat widow who now went out very little, and who spent most of her time by her window dressed in a tentlike silk camisole, her yellowish-ivory hair done up in a coronet of thick, braided cables, with the telephone on her right hand and her high-powered Japanese binoculars on the left. The combination of the two—plus the time to use them fully—made her a benevolent spider sitting in the center of a communications web that stretched from the Bend to east 'salem."

Becky04489 Mar 2022
Another click bait question from lisa trevor. Where you work isn't private information. It's conversation. If someone is giving out your bank account number that's private. Get a life. Quit worrying about what people are saying and your brother and dad.
BurntCaregiver Mar 2022
Becky,

Isn't that narcissism when a person thinks that everyone they know is obsessed with them and their business?
My guess is that probably no one cares what Lisa gets up to one way or another.
del356 Mar 2022
Welcome to humankind. Are you new to it, lol?

I'm a very private person. I might share something private, personal, with a selected individual I trust, if I need to get it out.

What we do for a living isn't a private, personal subject. I just mentioned yesterday on this forum what a friend of mine does for a living b/c it was germane to the conversation. She wouldn't see this as gossiping or invading her privacy.

You've another post about your dad and brother. I'm not saying it is, but it feels like you might be overly sensitive now to most anything regarding your family dynamic. I get it, but try to take some things at face-value, such as an innocuous conversation that took place three years ago.

You need perspective. (We all do.) You're in the middle of the forest and can't see the trees.

It also feels (and I'm saying this with kindness) possible that your father has decided he needs to "handle" situations, and you, b/c you've kind of gone off the rails.

We get in our own way. Not uncommon. We can't get out of our heads. Not uncommon. But there comes a time we need to do both. It's hard. Necessary.

We get so raw that we become internally and openly wounded to every little word spoken, every act done. Paranoia and defensiveness settle in and we can get very cozy having it stick around. It serves no purpose, though, except to hurt us and those around us.

Your energy is at an extremely low frequency right now. It's dark and controlling you. Maybe your energy has a tendency toward low, IDK.

What I can say is....

Shift your energy. Shift the paradigm. The road you are on right now...it won't lead to a better path if you don't start shifting. Be prepared to work at it, it's hard.

Your choice.

Love and light to you (and your dad).

notgoodenough Mar 2022
"Oh, and you wonder how this fits into eldercare? I currently have no one off-hand to talk too. I have a good friend but it's not a good time to speak with them, so I was thinking about reaching out to an extended relative who lives far away who I haven't spoken with in years. Well, my father mentioned the relative today almost like he was preemptively trying to inform me that this relative would not be a good person to talk to concerning personal family business. My guess is that my recent family issues have already done the gossip circuit. Unreal!"

I still don't see how this fits under eldercare.

That aside, you wonder how people know your business without you telling them? Well, are you inadvertently telling them without realizing it? Are you on social media? Facebook? Twitter? Instagram? Or are you one if these people who genuinely believe that if you mark your Facebook listings as "private" that NO ONE but who you EXPLICITELY want to see them will?

People talk about family members all of the time; talking about family members' lives isn't necessarily "gossip"; in my mind, "gossip" has to have the potential to cause harm to the "gossip-ee", so to speak. As said in a previous post, catching people up on other family member's lives isn't abnormal or inappropriate behavior; that you would *immediately* jump to that conclusion might explain why you're having such problems in your family dynamics right now. It might also explain why you have so few people in your life to be able to talk to...if everything that someone says immediately causes you this sort of offense. My nephew's fiance is like this, it gets old after a while; I rarely ever talk to her anymore other than a very generic "how are you", because frankly, it's too exhausting to try and figure out what's going to cause her offense this week.

BarbBrooklyn Mar 2022
Conversation is not the same as gossip.

I had a cousin who could not tolerate anyone having any information about her family, her job or home. She cut her brother out of her life for "leaking" the fact that she was purchasing a house to my parents (her loving aunt ND uncle).

When I talk to friends, I ask about how their siblings, kids and parents are doing. I think it's polite to show an intern other people's families.

Maybe your brother/father are proud of your success and were bragging about you.

You certainly seem to know an awful lot about your brother's finances. I have no idea about my brothers' financial situations.

Did you find that out through gossip? From dad? Or did brother tell you how much he has?

Sighopinion Mar 2022
Bruh, families are not obligated to like each other. For your own sanity accept you will not have a positive relationship with your brother and move on with your life.

Leave your dad and brother alone, leave well enough alone.
BurntCaregiver Mar 2022
Word.

Leave well enough alone is right.
vegaslady Mar 2022
You sound a bit naive. People are always talking about other people. Look at this forum.

BelleMolerab Mar 2022
if you ask me, I personally don't mind when others know about my life. I'm not a private person, but a few people in my family are, and it annoys me. Like: seriously? when a friend asks me how's my sister I'm not allowed to say that she has recently moved to a different neighborhood and that she's planning to get _____ job? why is she so angry at me when I share such trivial information? why does she[and a few others in my family] view these like private info? I wanna understand.

Maggie61r Mar 2022
I don't know if I would consider it gossiping if somebody I was acquainted with knew what I did for a living.
The conversation probably went something like this;
Old neighbor to your brother - "Hey good seeing you! How's your sister doing?"
Brother - "Pretty good. She's doing (enter career here) and works at (enter place of employment).

How a woman you don't know got that information, who knows; but you may have some acquaintances in common and your name came up in casual conversation.
lisatrevor Mar 2022
Thank you. I gave an example of career but you can replace that with anything. I know gossip is more about secrets and the like information about someone. I think my current situation is making me a lot more sensitive and I may be jumping to conclusions. If I contact my relative then they very well may tell others and that would be known for years. That wouldn't be good for anyone.

I wish people simply respected the rights and boundries of others. Then I wouldn't be feeling this way.
PeggySue2020 Mar 2022
Lisa, dad probably told them what you did like I tell people what I did or what my sisters do. Honestly, it’s like in the intro anyone gives for just about anyone.

My guess is that dad is trying to stop you going to the relative because he doesn’t want to get involved in another family fight.

And now you’ve gone on in the other thread about how brother might be doing something illegal without conservatorship. And on. And on.

You gave yourself the best advice. Which was to move to San Diego, or at least somewhere near. Not only do you want that, but most likely so does your brother and your dad, at least right now. In fact if you Airbnb if on a job and housing hunt, you’ll give them and you fair breathing room.
lisatrevor Mar 2022
Thank you for your opinion, I wanted to know though if anyone can verify through experience the type of gossip I am talking about. It's like everyone knows your business. It's more than just one or two people; it's a whole network and some of the people I don't even know!

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