Venting doesn’t work

You'd still vent, if alone on a desert island, maybe to The Gods.

Ever hear yourself saying out loud, usually with expletives, something that you would "never say"? Listen to that voice!

That's communication of unconscious but frustrated thoughts. Sometimes it has to come out verbally because ones inner dialogue isn't strong enough due to social or superego suppression.

After you said it to yourself you feel better.

We are not the singular identities simpler minds suppose us.

My personal experience with Psychodrama and Gestalt in the late '70s and early '80s was that for someone like myself who was very much 'in my head', it was an opportunity to acknowledge my own repressed anger. But in retrospect, it was/is also behavior rehearsal for bad behavior in the rest of my life. More effective was modern Somatic Experience techniques where the impulse to respond in anger is explored with a lot of inner attention and slow-motion movements of pushing away and/or striking back. I would call it more grounded and more present. There is dissociation that occurred for me with so-called cathartic anger.

The variation in 'venting' adds to the complexity of the conversation. Physical venting vs naming sources of anger/frustration. Based on my personal experience, physical venting is far less effective than verbal venting, and of course verbal venting is massively variable. Naming the exact source of frustration strikes me as more likely to be usefully defusing than just shouting that someone is an f-ing a*hole. I can imagine the inclusion of humor, for example, would have a huge impact.

Additionally, one thing that's often obscured in studies (or the reporting thereof) is that different people are different. Studies say that running doesn't help people lose weight, but that's looking for significant effects across a population. For some individuals, it does. The concept of "ymmv" is incredibly important when you care about individual impacts.

One thing is doing something like: I know I am angry at you, my reasons are very clear to me, and now, without adding to my understanding of them, I am going to yell at you for 15 minutes, loudly.

Another is doing this: not really being sure what you're anxious or angry about, so talking about it to explore your muddled thoughts and figure it out, in a regular to soft voice.

I can see how they flow into each other and too much of the second inevitably becomes the first. But when capped (like at 5 minutes) - appropriately modulated (not yelling anger) - in a group context (further modulating the emotions) - you could arguably get the benefits of the 2nd without the downsides of the 1st.