Complaining and Venting

Complaining

Complaining is a waste of effort.

We all know it, and yet, we all do it.

While people may be interested in you sharing details about a potentially solvable problem, whining or complaining about it is incredibly off-putting, and will make people look at you in a less respectable way.

Judging something as an issue and raising awareness about it is not an unnecessary complaint. However, whining about something you can’t change is. It lowers other people’s respect for you.

If something can’t be changed, you bringing it up pollutes the vibe with a heaviness that could have been avoided. A famous 1996 Stanford study found that complaining for just 30 minutes can physically damage the brain. The researchers found “links between long-term stressful life experiences, long-term exposure to hormones produced during stress, and shrinking of the hippocampus.”

Instead of complaining, lift others up. Give solutions, rather than whining about what’s wrong with everything and why you can’t change your circumstances.

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Complaining is not the same thing as venting. Venting is what you do when you need to get something off your chest. If you have to vent every single time you see one of your friends, there’s something wrong with the situation that you are in. Otherwise, you’re just in the habit of complaining, and you need to get out of it. It’s ungrateful and, a lot of the time, shortsighted. If you really think about it, you have a lot more to appreciate than you have to stress about, but emphasizing the latter will make your life seem worse than it is, and that’s not what you want.

Venting

Venting When You’re Mad Just Makes Things Worse

https://www.gq.com/story/venting-when-youre-mad-just-makes-it-worse

Anger management therapists say there’s a better way to talk about something that’s gotten under your skin.

By Emily Laurence

April 19, 2024

When you’re mad as hell, it’s human nature to want to tell someone about it. Many work friendships have started over mutual venting about the boss. But while your gut reaction may be to send a “this guy” Slack to your commiserating buddy every time something (or more likely, someone) pisses you off at work, it’s probably not going to make you feel any less peeved. According to research that took different studies on anger into account, venting isn’t an effective way to get rid of anger. In some cases, it can actually make you even madder.

This doesn’t mean the answer is not talking about what’s making you mad. There’s just a better way to do it.

Why anger is such a hard emotion to shake

There are a couple of reasons why it’s not easy to just brush something off that makes you mad. “Anger is rapid and has a strong impulse connection. It’s a survival emotion, the ‘fight’ in the fight, flight, freeze model”.

Anger is a protective emotion. When we feel anger, the prefrontal cortex that is more rational-thinking-based gets hijacked. That leads to a racing heart, elevated blood pressure, and bulking up: physically feeling the anger. Historically, this response had an evolutionary purpose to keep us safe. Anger is still a “healing emotion” when used correctly. But it’s important to calm down first, so you can think logically and not with a hijacked brain.

The studies on anger that the researchers analyzed back this up, showing that anger increases arousal in the body. (In other words, it makes you feel hyped up.) The key to getting out of this angry, hyped-up state is to do something to calm the body down (like yoga or deep breathing).

On the other hand, venting can increase arousal. You’ve probably experienced this first-hand, finding that the more you talk about something pissing you off, the angrier you get. It can also lead to ruminating—dwelling on what happened—which is also unhelpful for getting rid of anger.

Venting can become habitual. Instead of dealing with the core of the anger activation and trying to calm down, you are allowing your brain and body to keep living in the anger state.

How to talk about what’s making you mad (and actually feel better)

Experts emphasize that although venting and ruminating don’t work for getting rid of anger, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t talk about what’s gotten under your skin. The key is knowing how to do it.

• First, do an arousal-decreasing activity so you don’t feel so fired up. This might look like going for a walk or taking a few deep breaths.

  Feeling calmer? Now you’re ready to talk.

• Figure out the best person to talk to.

  Who you talk to about what’s making you mad matters. Avoid someone who is just going to agree with you, offering up little more than saying, Yeah, I’d be mad too. You want to talk to someone who can give you feedback and offer a different perspective on the situation. Go to someone who has a vested interest in you, and who can help you figure out if you’re overthinking what happened or if there are some other factors you need to consider.

• Figure out why what happened pissed you off.

  Letting go of anger requires getting a little introspective. Sometimes, whatever sets you off is connected to a deeper emotional hurt. When used correctly, anger is a healing emotion. It’s like a big neon sign with an arrow that says, I’ve been hurt. Sometimes people say or do things that poke that pain and men react. Anger makes us feel stronger and says, Back off. Leave me alone. Recognizing the deeper pain is part of healing and can lead to feeling less angry. It may sound simple, but the whole “name it to tame it” practice is scientifically shown to help people move on from anger.

  Maybe it’s not that deep. Maybe someone cut you off in traffic and it just really pissed you off. But maybe an insult someone hurled your way, a text going unresponded to, or something else that happened hit a nerve because it’s connected to a past experience. It’s worth considering.

• Determine if it’s a problem you can solve.

  When talking through your anger consider if your feelings can be used as a motivator to solve a problem. Every social movement throughout history—women’s rights, Black Lives Matter, we could go on—was fueled by anger.

  Use the person you’re talking to as a sounding board for possible ways you could use your anger for good. Maybe you’re angry that your workplace doesn’t have a good paternity leave policy or the playground you take your kid to every weekend is littered with trash. You’re angry. So what are you going to do about it? Sometimes that answer is nothing. But sometimes it’s not.

  Not all sources of anger are problems that can be solved. In cases like these, the best way to get rid of anger is by practicing radical acceptance. Just accept it for what it is right now. This is where those arousal-decreasing activities (like deep breathing) can be helpful, because it’s hard to practice radical acceptance when your heart is racing and blood pressure is skyrocketing.

• Reframe how you see the situation.

  Reframing what happened is another scientifically backed way to get rid of anger. One way to do this is by taking a step back and thinking about the bigger picture instead of focusing on the sole source of your anger. This is when having someone to talk to can be helpful, because they can offer up different perspectives or help you see that maybe what happened isn’t as big of a deal as you think. And if it is a big deal, they can help you figure out what to do about it.

  Talking about anger in a productive way isn’t always easy. It can be hard to find objective people to talk to. It’s uncomfortable acknowledging pain points you’ve kept hidden. It’s hard to break the hardwired emotions of being quick to anger. In all these cases, the experts say that cognitive behavioral therapy can help identify certain triggers and teach effective responses to them.

  There’s a big difference between talking about anger in an attempt to understand it and seek a solution, and talking about anger just to get it off your chest. The latter is not healthy.

  So first calm yourself down, and then talk about what’s pissing you off, with purpose.

Why venting is a bad idea

10-28-2024

We all get frustrated - at work and generally, in life. But what you do with that frustration is important.

BY Art Markman

https://www.fastcompany.com/91216038/why-venting-at-work-is-a-bad-idea

At some point, someone at work is going to upset you. It might be a supervisor who doesn’t support a project that you’re passionate about. Or it might be a colleague who undermines your work or takes credit for something you did. Or perhaps it’s a client or customer who treats you rudely.

When that frustration and anger wells up, it’s natural to want to release it. Indeed, one of the most pervasive metaphors for anger and frustration in English would support that activity.

We often talk about anger and frustration as if they reflect heated fluid in a container. We say things like, “the pressure built up inside of me,” or “I got really heated up,” or “I finally blew my top.” All of this reflects a hydraulic view of the way the mind works, in which extended anger or frustration eventually leads to an explosion of emotion.

Given this metaphor, venting your anger at work makes a lot of sense. After all, you’re doing something to release the pressure in a safe way that ensures you don’t have a more violent reaction..

As sensible as this seems, there are three reasons why it is a bad idea.

It rehearses a bad story

A common way of venting is to write out your side of the story. Indeed, people often say that you should write out the source of your anger and then burn the note (or delete the email). Indeed, there is good evidence that when you have experienced a truly traumatic episode, writing about it helps you to come to terms with the event and leads to real physical and mental health benefits.

But, simply telling a story about your anger and frustration is different. When you write that story out, you often focus on the reasons why someone else’s actions were wrong, as well as that person’s flaws. You arrive at this story, because there is a tendency for people to focus on other people’s actions and to assume they take those actions because of an aspect of who they are. As a result, you often ignore the influence of the situation on someone else’s behavior.

This approach is problematic, because if you come to believe that someone else has ill-intent, then it can be hard to deal with them effectively in the future. If you recognize the variety of factors that have led to their actions, it helps you to plan more effectively to get better outcomes in the future.

You might be tempted to tell that story

A second problem with venting at work (particularly in writing) is that you might be tempted in the moment to take what you have written and send it to someone else. It’s important to remember that anger and frustration are emotions that drive action in the moment. You get a buildup of energy that you want to direct at something. Writing out your account of why you are right and someone (or everyone) is wrong is a way of using that energy.

Once you finish writing out that story - even if you intend to just delete it - you may feel like that story deserves to be told. In the moment, your evaluation of your action is likely to focus on the immediate benefit of the action. If you do blast out your side of the story, you will feel good in the moment and also feel like you have helped to tilt the tide of opinion toward yourself - and away from the source of your misery.

But, success at work requires playing a long game. When you’re frustrated, you are biased to do something to correct a problem in the short-term rather than focusing on what is best to do in the long-run. The best way to ensure that you do what is best in the long-term is to avoid venting.

It creates a bad habit

Perhaps the most important problem with venting, though, is that it creates a bad habit. It turns out that this hydraulic theory of anger and frustration is embedded in language, but it isn’t actually a good characterization of how anger and frustration work. Yes, you get energized when you’re angry and frustrated. But, you don’t need to dissipate that energy by directing toward the source of the anger.

Indeed, when you routinely vent, you are actually developing a habit to respond aggressively when faced with an anger-inducing situation. Yet, there are often better and healthier outlets for that energy. Engaging in calming techniques like deep breathing can help to calm your energy levels.

Thinking productively about why an event occurred and what the context was that may have led to a bad interaction can help you to recognize that another person may have been acting with good intentions, even if the outcome was bad for you. Going out for a walk or doing some exercise can also be a positive outlet for energy.

You have to develop your own strategies for addressing the energy you feel when angry or frustrated. But, even though venting may make you feel better in the moment, it is unlikely to be helpful for you in the long-run—both because you may end up thinking incorrectly about the situation and because it creates unhealthy habits for dealing with these negative emotions.