To lower stress levels (ours and others’), practice cognitive reframing instead of venting

We all get upset from time to time—some of us more than oth­ers. Whether we’re sad about the loss of a loved one, angry at friends or fam­i­ly, or fear­ful about the state of the world, it often feels good to let it all out.

That’s because shar­ing our emo­tions reduces our stress while mak­ing us feel clos­er to oth­ers we share with and pro­vid­ing a sense of belong­ing. When we open up our inner selves and peo­ple respond with sym­pa­thy, we feel seen, under­stood, and supported.

But “shar­ing” cov­ers a lot of dif­fer­ent modes of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Are some health­i­er than oth­ers, over the long run? Sci­ence sug­gests that it depends, in part, on how you share and how peo­ple respond to you. Express­ing our emo­tions often to oth­ers may actu­al­ly make us feel worse, espe­cial­ly if we don’t find a way to gain some per­spec­tive on why we feel the way we do and take steps to soothe ourselves.

Why venting feels good…

Our emo­tions are valu­able sources of infor­ma­tion, alert­ing us that some­thing is wrong in our envi­ron­ment and needs our atten­tion. Whether we need to con­front some­one who’s abus­ing us, hide to avoid dan­ger, or seek com­fort from friends, feel­ings like anger, fear, and sad­ness help us pre­pare to meet the moment.

But if feel­ings are inter­nal sig­nals, why do we share them with others?

We want to con­nect with oth­er peo­ple who can help val­i­date what we’re going through, and vent­ing real­ly does a pret­ty good job at ful­fill­ing that need,” says researcher Ethan Kross, author of the book Chat­ter. “It feels good to know there’s some­one there to rely on who cares enough to take time to listen.”

Shar­ing our feel­ings also pro­vides an oppor­tu­ni­ty to gain insight into what’s caus­ing our dif­fi­cult feel­ings and avert future upsets. Some­times, just ver­bal­iz­ing what’s both­er­ing us to anoth­er per­son helps to clar­i­fy the sit­u­a­tion and name the emo­tions involved. Or, if we get caught in emo­tion­al whirl­winds, our con­fi­dants can pro­vide new per­spec­tives and offer sound advice, says Kross.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this lat­ter part of the equa­tion often gets lost in the shuf­fle, he adds.

… and why it has a dark side

When we get stuck in a vent­ing ses­sion, it feels good in the moment, because we’re con­nect­ing with oth­er peo­ple,” he says. “But if all we do is vent, we don’t address our cog­ni­tive needs, too. We aren’t able to make sense of what we’re expe­ri­enc­ing, to make mean­ing of it.”

So, while vent­ing may be good for build­ing sup­port­ive rela­tion­ships and feel good in the moment, it’s not enough to help us through. If oth­ers sim­ply lis­ten and empathize, they may inad­ver­tent­ly extend our emo­tion­al upset.

For many years, psy­chol­o­gists believed that dark emo­tions, like anger, need­ed to be released phys­i­cal­ly. This led to a move­ment to “let it all out,” with psy­chol­o­gists lit­er­al­ly telling peo­ple to hit soft objects, like pil­lows or punch­ing bags, to release pent-up feelings.

It turns out, how­ev­er, that this type of emo­tion­al vent­ing like­ly doesn’t soothe anger as much as aug­ment it. That’s because encour­ag­ing peo­ple to act out their anger makes them relive it in their bod­ies, strength­en­ing the neur­al path­ways for anger and mak­ing it eas­i­er to get angry the next time around. Stud­ies on vent­ing anger (with­out effec­tive feed­back), whether online or ver­bal­ly, have also found it to be gen­er­al­ly unhelpful.

The same is true of grief or anx­i­ety fol­low­ing trau­ma. While we should of course seek sup­port from those around us dur­ing dif­fi­cult times of loss and pain, if we sim­ply relive our expe­ri­ence with­out find­ing some way to soothe our­selves or find mean­ing, it could extend our suffering.

For some time, peo­ple who worked with trau­ma vic­tims encour­aged them to “debrief” after­ward, hav­ing them talk through what hap­pened to them to ward off post-trau­mat­ic stress. But a ran­dom­ized con­trolled study found that this didn’t help much, like­ly because debrief­ing doesn’t help dis­tance peo­ple from their trau­ma. Sim­i­lar­ly, stu­dents who vent­ed their anx­i­ety after 9/11 suf­fered from more anx­i­ety up to four months lat­er than those who didn’t. As the study authors write, their “focus on and vent­ing of emo­tions was found to be unique­ly pre­dic­tive of longer-term anxiety.”

Vent­ing through social media can do the same thing. In one study, researchers sur­veyed stu­dents attend­ing Vir­ginia Tech and North­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­si­ty after mass shoot­ings occurred at each cam­pus to see how vent­ing their grief over social media helped them recov­er. While stu­dents thought that vent­ing was ben­e­fi­cial, their post-trau­mat­ic stress and depres­sion scores actu­al­ly went up the more they vented.

Transitioning from venting to thinking

Besides mak­ing us feel worse, vent­ing can also have a neg­a­tive effect on our audience.

While sup­port­ive friends and fam­i­ly hope­ful­ly care enough to lis­ten and sym­pa­thize with us, it can be frus­trat­ing to sit with some­one who vents fre­quent­ly when that per­son seems to be wal­low­ing in emo­tion with­out learn­ing from their expe­ri­ence. And being around some­one stuck in anger, fear, or sad­ness cycles can be over­whelm­ing for lis­ten­ers who may end up “catch­ing” the emo­tions themselves.

Repeat­ed­ly vent­ing over and over and over again, can cre­ate fric­tion in social rela­tion­ships,” says Kross. “There’s often a lim­it to how much lis­ten­ers, your friends, can actu­al­ly hear.”

I know that I am guilty of want­i­ng some­one to lis­ten to me when I’m upset—and not want­i­ng advice right off the bat. If I’m in the midst of pain, try­ing to talk me out of my feel­ings or to offer pat solu­tions seems insen­si­tive or even patronizing.

How­ev­er, Kross doesn’t advo­cate for that. Instead, he says, there’s an art to being a lis­ten­er. It takes a com­bi­na­tion of empa­thy or sympathy—and wait­ing for the right moment before offer­ing perspective.

Peo­ple are going to dif­fer, depend­ing on what they’re deal­ing with, how intense their expe­ri­ences are,” he says. “Being sen­si­tive to the fact that some peo­ple may need more time before they’re ready to tran­si­tion from vent­ing to think­ing is real­ly important.”

Dos and Don’ts

There is a health­i­er way to vent, Kross says. He sug­gests these guidelines:

Be selec­tive about when you vent. There are lots of ways to deal with dif­fi­cult emo­tions, and not all of them involve oth­er peo­ple. Some peo­ple can gain per­spec­tive on their own, by writ­ing their thoughts down or gain­ing dis­tance from them through med­i­ta­tion. Kross rec­om­mends chang­ing your envi­ron­ment to help you process emo­tions and tamp down rumi­na­tion that might oth­er­wise keep you stuck in an emo­tion­al whirlwind.

When you vent to oth­ers, prompt them to offer per­spec­tive. If you find your­self vent­ing to some­one with­out your emo­tions dis­si­pat­ing (or maybe get­ting worse), you may be caught in a cycle of “co-rumination”—a rehash­ing that can keep you stuck. To get out of that, you can ask the per­son to step back and help you reframe your expe­ri­ence by ask­ing, “How should I think about this dif­fer­ent­ly?” or “What should I do in this sit­u­a­tion?” This will cue them to offer per­spec­tive and assure them that you’re look­ing for some­thing more than a lis­ten­ing ear.

Con­sid­er to whom you vent. Before vent­ing to some­one, ask your­self, “Did this per­son real­ly help me the last time I talked to them, or did they just make me feel worse?” If some­one is there for you, but doesn’t tend to broad­en your per­spec­tive, you may just get more stirred up emo­tion­al­ly. Being more delib­er­ate about who you vent to could help you in the long run.

Be care­ful around online vent­ing. While shar­ing our emo­tions online can help us feel bet­ter in the moment and iden­ti­fy sup­port­ive allies, results can be mixed. For one thing, neg­a­tive emo­tions eas­i­ly spread online, which may cre­ate a herd men­tal­i­ty, result­ing in bul­ly­ing or trolling—especially if you iden­ti­fy a par­tic­u­lar per­son as respon­si­ble for your feel­ings. While it’s unclear if vent­ing online is an over­all good or bad thing, it may not help you gain the per­spec­tive you need to move forward.

Still, all in all, Kross says vent­ing is a good thing, help­ing us cope. If we can get past the let­ting off steam part, we can feel bet­ter in the long run and keep our rela­tion­ships strong, too.

Vent­ing serves some func­tion,” he says. “It has ben­e­fits for the self in terms of sat­is­fy­ing our social and emo­tion­al needs. We just need to find out what the cor­rect dosage is and make sure to offer to sup­ple­ment that with cog­ni­tive reframing.”

— Jill Sut­tie, Psy.D., is Greater Good‘s book review edi­tor and a fre­quent con­trib­u­tor to the mag­a­zine. Based at UC-Berke­ley, Greater Good high­lights ground break­ing sci­en­tif­ic research into the roots of com­pas­sion and altru­ism. Copy­right Greater Good.

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About SharpBrains

SHARPBRAINS is an independent think-tank and consulting firm providing services at the frontier of applied neuroscience, health, leadership and innovation.
SHARPBRAINS es un think-tank y consultoría independiente proporcionando servicios para la neurociencia aplicada, salud, liderazgo e innovación.

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