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. Talking and listening with careīesides making us feel worse, venting can also have a negative effect on our audience. While students thought that venting was beneficial, their post-traumatic stress and depression scores actually went up the more they vented. 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. Venting through social media can do the same thing. As the study authors write, their “focus on and venting of emotions was found to be uniquely predictive of longer-term anxiety.” Similarly, students who vented their anxiety after 9/11 suffered from more anxiety up to four months later than those who didn’t. But a randomized controlled study found that this didn’t help much, likely because debriefing doesn’t help distance people from their 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.įor 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. The same is true of grief or anxiety following trauma. Studies on venting anger (without effective feedback), whether online or verbally, have also found it to be generally unhelpful. 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. It turns out, however, that this type of emotional venting likely doesn’t soothe anger as much as augment it. 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. The dark side of ventingįor many years, psychologists believed that dark emotions, like anger, needed to be released physically. If others simply listen and empathize, they may inadvertently extend our emotional upset. So, while venting may be good for building supportive relationships and feel good in the moment, it’s not enough to help us through. We aren’t able to make sense of what we’re experiencing, to make meaning of it.” “But if all we do is vent, we don’t address our cognitive needs, too. “When we get stuck in a venting session, it feels good in the moment, because we’re connecting with other people,” he says. Unfortunately, this latter part of the equation often gets lost in the shuffle, he adds. Or, if we get caught in emotional whirlwinds, our confidants can provide new perspectives and offer sound advice, says Kross. Sometimes, just verbalizing what’s bothering us to another person helps to clarify the situation and name the emotions involved. Sharing our feelings also provides an opportunity to gain insight into what’s causing our difficult feelings and avert future upsets. “It feels good to know there’s someone there to rely on who cares enough to take time to listen.” “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. 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.īut if feelings are internal signals, why do we share them with others? Our emotions are valuable sources of information, alerting us that something is wrong in our environment and needs our attention. Show love and respect to others this month
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