Why You Shouldn't Complain So Much

Does venting your frustrations make you feel better?
Turns out, not so much. No.
So what we can we do instead?

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And hello to you, and welcome to the Richard Nicholls podcast, the personal development podcast series that's here to help inspire, educate, and motivate you to be the best you can be. I'm psychotherapist Richard Nichols, and today you'll learn all about why you shouldn't complain. And if you are ready, we'll start the show. Here we go again, boys, girls, and everybody in between. It's a new month. Thank you to all my lovely patrons out there for supporting the show. This is one of the free public episodes and I love all you listeners out there in listener land just as much as I do my Patreon people, but I literally couldn't do as much as I do without the patrons on Patreon. So thank you and thanks for all your love on social media as well, by the way. Nowadays, that is where people find new podcasts to listen to and every few days, I snip 60 seconds or so out of an episode and make a little video for the socials. If you feel the urge to say something nice about it in the comments, please do. Saying nice things certainly makes the world a better place than going outta your way to say something bad. I was looking for a pub restaurant last week to go to, 'cause I had a few days off work and I wanted it to feel a bit like an actual holiday. So I was looking around at some different restaurants and things and I read a review of a pub that was just one star and I'm always a bit suspicious about one star reviews. I'll read it out to you. It was the Hare and Hounds in Whitick and reviewer sam Smith says, Surprise, surprise. Yet another Coalville area pub that doesn't serve lavender gin. This is absolutely scandalous. I'm putting in a complaint with trading standards. And I thought, is this a joke or something? And if you tap on Sam Smith, they also left a review for another pub as well. Doesn't serve lavender gin. How can any pub in this day and age not serve lavender gin. Scandalous. And i've been giggling about that all week. I mean, I've never drunk lavender gin. I can't imagine it's actually that nice to be fair, but each to their own. But not being able to get such a specific drink in a pub smacks of a certain type of entitlement that can spoil your life. And I know we're far more likely to leave a review for a restaurant or a film if we've had a bad experience than if we've had a good one, that's just human nature. Although whether it's because we expect something for nothing, or we're unhappy with what we have, complaining has its benefits, but it's got its drawbacks as well. But if expressing how you feel and talking about something that bothers you, doesn't help, well then I wouldn't have become a psychotherapist. So it obviously does. But it needs to be done properly. Only talking about something that has happened and being angry about it, that can actually relive it. And unless you're doing that in therapy where the therapist can help control the session and the direction of where you're actually going, then actually reliving it can keep the emotion in rather than let it out. There's this myth that venting your problems with a friend, moaning about your life makes us feel better. Research suggests otherwise. Now, like I always say, there are no 100% rules to live by. We have to work out what's right for ourselves. But study after study does seem to suggest that if we try to tackle the things that upset us with anger alone, it encourages the brain to replay the event that upset us activating all the same neurons as if it was happening all over again. You've probably heard me say quite a few times that people will say that if you're angry at someone rather than taking it out on them, you should take it out on a punch bag or a pillow, go and hit those things instead, and just imagine that you are hitting the person that hurt you and you'll feel better. No. I'll say it again, no. That's a myth. It's more often the exact opposite because there is no solution provided, and you have definitely heard me say quite a few times. When it comes to the imagination, the brain doesn't really separate fact from fiction. If you imagine the event, then you relive it as well. So it's not that helpful to complain about something unless you have a solution to the problem. And if there's no solution to it. Then reliving it is not likely to help no matter how big or small the problem is. Complaining about having bad parents wallowing in self pity. That doesn't help you just relive the past traumas. But talking about your past traumas with the purpose of teaching your brain that it is the past. And so you can gain insight and have corrective experiences with another person. That's different 'cause that's therapy. But sitting on the sofa and moaning about some rubbish advert on the telly won't make you feel that the world is a very attractive place and we're probably all guilty of that. I know I'm guilty of that. God, I could be a grumpy old man sometimes, but fortunately I'm also a psychotherapist who's aware of it, notices and stops. But it definitely makes me feel something maybe positive in the moment. Maybe not cleverer, but somewhat superior or something, to watch an advert and then turn to my wife and say, what a crap advert. And sometimes I genuinely think to myself, or maybe I'll even say it, who agreed to that? Who signed that off? Who sat round the table and rejected other ideas in favour of that. But no good comes from this. It might make me feel slightly superior. Ooh, look at me. I don't need, um, love island. That's for stupid people. I'm gonna watch things like University challenge 'cause I'm clever, which I don't because I don't understand the answers or even the questions. So no. But to think that nothing else is good enough other than highbrow stuff, well, what's gonna happen is you develop an unconscious expectation that you can't be entertained, that you can't be satisfied, that you can't be happy, all because you got annoyed at the Halifax using clips of Ghostbusters on the TV advert. Am I venting here? Maybe. So, in order to not see the world as a place of dissatisfaction, what do I need to do? Well, what helps is finding an alternative, a solution, something preferred. So instead of just complaining and training my brain to only look for reasons to be annoyed, I need to look for a positive replacement to instead of complaining about that TV advert, but to say to my wife. What a crap advert. They should have parodied Ghostbusters in their own way and not just paid for clips from the film. For example, that sort of thing. If you feel that you need to whinge and moan to someone about a bad meal in a restaurant, don't just say it was bad. Actually look for how it could have been improved, rather than just slagging it off to your friends or leaving a one star Google Review. Instead say I'd have preferred them to have cleaned the table before we sat down, or I'd rather they'd given us a bit more time to eat before rushing is out of the door. Concentrating on the problem narrows down our view of the world. And that's the same no matter what we're complaining about. Whether we're complaining about our partner leaving the bathroom in a mess, or we are complaining in the supermarket that there's been some milk spilt, and the staff just seem to be ignoring it. Bring your brain's attention to what you do want to see happen rather than what is annoying you. And you'll find that your brain is a bit happier about it. This is definitely the case with the big things. I mean the really big things because there is a time for complaining and some things really do need complaining about. If people didn't stick up for themselves and express their concerns, we'd never have had any changes. It might have been over a hundred years ago, but if the working class hadn't complained about not being able to vote, the electorate in England and Wales as it was at the time, it wouldn't have jumped from just a few hundred thousand to nearly 6 million in 1885 and created improvements without revolution. So that by 1928 and the introduction of the Equal Franchise Act, everyone over 21 could vote. And then in 1969, the complaints by everyone aged 18 to 21 created the Representation Of The People Act. But these things didn't happen just because people complained. They happened. 'cause of the actions that were taken. The focus of attention was on the preferred outcome, not the problem itself. And that's the same with the little things, because complaining without the, and this is what I'd like to see happen response creates a shift in our locus of control towards a more external position. And that creates a feeling of hopelessness. That's not good. So often people don't realise they might be doing it 'cause It can become habitual that when you meet people socially, you just sit down and chat and then automatically start looking for something to complain about. I've seen it in friends and I hear it about it in therapy a lot because it's draining for the other person. It's ironic that so often someone comes to therapy for help with their mood and they can spend the first half of the session complaining about people who complain to them. 'cause it's draining to them. It really is. Now it's easy for me 'cause it's my job, and as long as I don't see too many people in a week, I'm not gonna go downhill. I've got the skills to be protected by it. Well, unless you're a therapist, you probably don't and neither do your friends and family. That's why I think we all need to be aware if we do this out of habit, whether it's to moan about politicians you don't like, or newspapers that twist and spin things to their agenda. If the first thing you feel the urge to do when you start a conversation is find something to moan about, then not only is it gonna drag you down, it's gonna drag down the other people around you as as well. And eventually they'll limit their exposure to you, maybe even ignore you, which then gives you more reasons to complain about things, doesn't it? So rather than sitting down with a mate and complaining that your works shift patterns prevent you from meeting up as often as you'd like and moaning about it. Celebrate the fact that you can do though. Talk about the things you're looking forward to doing when you get the chance. That perspective helps to give us a feeling that there's something different in our future, something to look forward to. I guess we're back to the old cliche of counting our blessings, aren't we? And not taking things for granted. Gratitude, again, something that crops up so much in mental health and personal development. But I'm reminded of a study put together by Philip Ullrich and Susan Lutgendorf from a few years ago into journaling and the comparisons between writing about traumatic things and stressful experience in different ways. There was a study. There was over 120 people in this study, and they were asked to write twice a week for a month about something negative. So one group was asked to write about how they felt. A second group was also asked to write about how they felt, but on top of that, they were told to write about their thoughts about the negative thing too. And the third group, they acted as a control group. They were just asked to go through the news looking for traumatic things and write about them, but just factually nothing personal about it. So they did this for a month, and bizarrely the group that only vented their emotions. They reported significantly more physical symptoms of illness. They reported things like congestion, fever, sore throats and coughs. I mean what? But the ones that vented their emotions and also wrote about their thoughts about it didn't. In writing about the thinking about the stress and not just their feelings, they were able to gain insight into it and that made them feel stronger, not weaker. Creating what's generally referred to as post traumatic growth or just positive growth, which is the perceived benefits of coping with a personal trauma. Basically in writing about more than just their emotions, they end up going into detail about how what didn't kill them, made them stronger as the old phrase goes. Creating personal strength, spiritual development maybe, and a greater appreciation for life. And the folks who just wrote about the facts of negative events without any emotional connection, got nothing. So complaining about how you feel doesn't just get you nowhere. It could get you a blocked nose, a cough, a sore throat, and a fever. So complain, do please do. Whatever you're passionate about, if something's not right, yeah, complain about it. But do it with purpose. And if it's the people around you that are doing the complaining and you don't want to have to distance from them forever, then see if you can get them to dig a bit deeper when they complain to you about stuff. See if you can get them to find an action so they can create an internal locus of control for themselves so that they don't only complain, but actually they have a plan to put right the thing that makes them so annoyed. Even if that makes them see that they can't influence the thing and they should just let it go and move on. Right. Folks, I'll best be off. I'll speak to you again at the end of the week, of course, with a short stuff five minute bonus episode. I'll of course be back on Monday as well on Patreon with a full episode and some hypnotherapy as always, and hopefully the next week won't give you too much to complain about. And even if it does, now you know what to do. So go and enjoy it and I'll be back soon. See you folks.