People living in one day at a time recovery learn to recognize when we have harmful conversations. This can happen when our dialogues are critical and scornful of others. These are scathing conversations. These conversations can promote ill will towards others. Perhaps, at times, there appears to be good reasons for such conversations, and we understand the reasoning behind them. Most of us are not saints, and if someone has done us wrong it could be the reason we are caught up in such conversations. We realize this and we are probably just venting, but should such dialogues snowball and start to pick up other scornful people, it could harm others. And what if the harm that was done to us was imaginary or very minor? And what if we are dehumanizing another person? No good could become of this. When the reality of our venting to another person is between two people of principled integrity, we are getting something off our chest. Our reality is we need to be heard. If we are scapegoating and dehumanizing people, we can hurt them. Especially if we get others to jump on the bandwagon. Most of us stop before this happens. Peace.
