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Venting doesn’t work

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Re: Venting doesn’t work

#111

Post by caddemon »

julianeon wrote: post #69
blhack wrote: post #41

One of the most stressful projects I ever worked on had a really great way of dealing with the stress (a policy that I created). Every meeting, at the beginning of the meeting, everybody was required to complain for 5 minutes. Just talk about all the stupid decisions that got us to this point, how unreasonable the timeline was, any staffing issues you were having, any parts you needed, etc. 5 minutes. You are require…

There's a subtle distinction that I don't think the article addressed very well. 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 figu…

It also depends on what kind of challenges the team faces in the first place. If there are a lot of issues stemming from faceless corporate policies or bugs in external tools or something then venting about these things for a few minutes every meeting could be good team building. If the challenges involve each other or an adjacent manager or something though even 5 minutes could get mean spirited quickly.

Re: Venting doesn’t work

#112

Post by maerF0x0 »

This article talks about "catharsis"

catharsis and processing are key to getting past something, but it also depends on if sufficient (time|mental processing) have past to allow one to not become distraught over the situation.

see: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/798927.Writing_to_Heal

Re: Venting doesn’t work

#113

Post by mcguire »

rectang wrote: post #93
mcguire wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't give up, or train themselves to be agitated and unhappy?

¿Por qué no los dos? I'm not persuaded that those who "stop venting" end up happier in the long run. It seems like a road to letting yourself be mashed down and convincing yourself that you lack power to change your circumstances. I'm glad that Malcolm X didn't pay attention to all the people who wished he'd "stop venting".

Did Malcolm X vent by yelling at trees, punching pillows or griping to his friends?

Re: Venting doesn’t work

#114

Post by meowzero »

Not sure of the validity of the article. But in my experience, my friends and colleagues who vent a lot seem to vent all the time. It seem like their venting is fueling whatever their annoyances is at that moment.

I think it's more about regulating your emotions in a calm, rational way. Venting can get emotional and could add fuel to the fire. But if you can achieve talking about the problem in a more calm, empathetic, rational way, it might work better. Of course, easier said than done.

Re: Venting doesn’t work

#115

Post by PaulHoule »

bduerst wrote: post #80
motohagiography wrote: post #54

Can't help but think the term "toxic," discredits the whole thing as a vehicle for something else. Aggression is natural and universal, but the tools for expressing and self-regulating it are not. One description of it that resonated personally for me was Robert Sapolsky's "depression is aggression turned inward," and while the phrase doesn't do the whole idea justice, it's more useful than hollow and seductive clich…

Maybe this is wrong, but it sounds like you were in toxic relationships, ones which you were able to escape by asserting your boundaries. Asserting yourself is a little different than being hostile and/or violent, which is what aggression is usually considered. In any case and semantics aside, congrats on removing relationships that were pushing you inwards and making you unhappy. Like the article mentions, brain pat…

I have been reading a lot of books by this guy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Stoller

and up until his late book Sexual Excitement: Dynamics of Erotic Life he uses the word Hostility to mean "desire to hurt others" whereas aggression is the desire to make your mark in the world (e.g. it is "aggressive" to try to put the soccer ball in the other team's goal.)

By the time Excitement was written people started splitting the meaning of aggression to frame it as a bad thing (as Stoller said hostility was) and used assertion to describe the positive side of what Stoller called "aggression" and there is a short passage where Stoller talks about this change in terminology.

Stoller uses the terms "hostility" and "sadism" for phenomena that are more common than people might think. If you ever get some pleasure out of causing somebody to suffer, even in some small way (e.g. flag somebody's post and imagine them suffering from the feeling they are being persecuted) you are being "sadistic."

Re: Venting doesn’t work

#116

Post by kashyapc »

mcguire wrote: post #94
kashyapc wrote: post #56

From Robert Sapolsky's Behave , I learnt about the notion of "displacement aggression". We know what it is intuitively, but in short: depressingly enough, the reason stress encourages aggression is that it reduces stress. And we don't yet know the underlying biology of it. - - - Excuse the wall of text, but it's entirely worth reading Sapolsky's description of this: [quote] Shock a rat and its glucocorticoid levels […

You, in combination with the article, are describing an is/ought situation here. Displacing aggression---biting another rat---reduces your stress. (This is an is statement.) Therefore, to reduce your stress, you should bite one of the other rats. (This is an ought statement.) But biting another rat leads to a stack of bad downstream consequences, which may include things that raise your stress. Therefore, not displac…

Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to imply any "ought" here at all. I should've been more explicit. I thought my opening remark of "depressingly enough" was sufficient to note that I was lamenting the "is"ness of the situation, and don't "recommend" it (yikes!).

Re: Venting doesn’t work

#117

Post by PaulHoule »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #109

From my purely anecdotal experience with mentoring younger people, I've seen two main categories of venting: 1) Venting about frustrations by talking them through with someone who will listen. This forces people to put their frustrations into words and elucidate the narrative as they put it into words. This can not only help people identify their feelings and work through them, but it also forces people to decide wha…

Is this

http://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/why-estrange...

and example of type (2)?

Re: Venting doesn’t work

#118

Post by slfnflctd »

Swizec wrote: post #50
JAlexoid wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know of a single study that supports catharsis? Because all studies I know of disprove or end up inconclusive.

Anecdata but a good boxing session after a stressful workday always makes me feel better. High intensity running also works. Great for relieving various undirected frustrations. Especially of the angry kind. Writing in a journal does wonders for the more subtle things. When your mind is running in circles trying to process something. The act of writing it out helps me avoid circles and get to a conclusion. The only t…

Almost 100 comments as of me adding mine, and you're the first to mention journaling so I have to chime in. It's better than some therapy I've had. Therapy can of course be hugely helpful if/when you find a decent therapist, but writing things down really is the next best thing.

I haven't felt the need to do it in years, since I replaced it with a concise log which doesn't usually get bogged down in details. Mostly because I purged the majority of my worst freakouts into text files no one else is likely to read years ago. This wasn't the only thing that helped me, but it was at least half of it.

Re: Venting doesn’t work

#119

Post by kodah »

zasz wrote: post #55
awb wrote: post #9

It sounds like the aggressive behavior was measured pretty soon after hitting the punching bag. It would be interesting to run the test again after the adrenaline has worn off. I don't think proponents of catharsis are claiming that screaming at a tree if going to instantly make you calmer, it's that later that day you might feel better. Also, participants were instructed to focus their anger on the perpetrator of th…

There's also this implicit conclusion that venting must not work if the levels of aggression don't change, but the article did say that blood pressure dropped. I thought the paragraphs on venting to friends didn't make much sense to me either--honestly, if something terrible happened to a friend, and they didn't vent to me about it, at least a little, I'd be wondering if we were still friends.

As an aside, I'd be curious to see the effects of venting on the subject as well as people that surround them. I'd also be curious to see the effects during a one-time episode and through repeated exposure.

I say that, because one of the worst things about social media is the venting. It's almost like folks are trying to suck you into a weird codependent relationship with them.

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