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Venting doesn’t work

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Re: Venting doesn’t work

#151

Post by _rs »

Enginerrrd wrote: post #128
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…

Yeah, I know it's anecdotal... but when I've had issues with people that "stuck", and didn't go away on their own, I've had a lot of success writing those people a letter. It forces me to present all the information factually, how I feel about it, why I feel that way, etc. which helps elucidate the charitable and less-charitable interpretations of what happened. In writing, I have to reread and edit what I wrote a do…

Do the situations ever get resolved if you don’t send the letters, or do you use the letters as a basis for having a more mature conversation after?

I sometimes do the same thing, and after I get my ideas out/vented, I end up rewriting the letter with gained empathy/understanding, and then use that as an outline for a conversation (if not reading the letter verbatim for especially difficult subjects) with the person. Otherwise, even if I feel a little better, nothing actually was resolved.

Re: Venting doesn’t work

#152

Post by GauntletWizard »

bittercynic wrote: post #143
Llamamoe wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak for everyone, but as a person with unmedicated ADHD and chronic fatigue, I feel pretty hostile to sentiments like this. In my experience, people who engage in #2 aren't - as you seem to be implying - people who are immature and lazy. A lot of the time they're people who struggle with the executive function necessary to actually change their life, who feel helpless and just want validation after having b…

I do not want to diminish the importance of your perspective in any way, only to add that some in the #1 camp are teetering on the brink of "able to take care of self" and not withholding help to be cruel, but because they think helping might pull them over the cliff, too. Wellness has big steps sometimes, and if you tumble down a step it may take a long time to get back up, and your ability to help yourself, and any…

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Re: Venting doesn’t work

#154

Post by Llamamoe »

GauntletWizard wrote: post #152
bittercynic wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not want to diminish the importance of your perspective in any way, only to add that some in the #1 camp are teetering on the brink of "able to take care of self" and not withholding help to be cruel, but because they think helping might pull them over the cliff, too. Wellness has big steps sometimes, and if you tumble down a step it may take a long time to get back up, and your ability to help yourself, and any…

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Re: Venting doesn’t work

#155

Post by Llamamoe »

Blackstone4 wrote: post #148
Llamamoe wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak for everyone, but as a person with unmedicated ADHD and chronic fatigue, I feel pretty hostile to sentiments like this. In my experience, people who engage in #2 aren't - as you seem to be implying - people who are immature and lazy. A lot of the time they're people who struggle with the executive function necessary to actually change their life, who feel helpless and just want validation after having b…

I can see where you are coming from. At my work for instance, we will take on those with good people skills and the intelligence to learn the technical skills they are missing. We are reluctant to do it the other way round. We avoid those who have the technical skills but not the people skills because common wisdom and experience indicates it is much harder to teach the people skills… I would add that we are not equi…

This is valid and I don't blame you. Over the years, I've experienced both sides of that coin, and nobody could be rationally expected to put up with it.

But it sure hurts to have spent a decade unable to leave my house or take basic care of myself while continuously being told I'm exaggerating, making it up, just lazy, and worse, by people who couldn't even imagine just how bad my issues are.

I don't think I will ever get over the trauma of either how helpless I was, or how people treated me.

From my perspective, "it's mental health" seems like a throwaway diagnosis meant to get a patient to go and listen to a therapist, take their pills, and fit into society a little better.

Based on my knowledge, I firmly believe that a lot of the perpetually mentally unwell people - especially ones experiencing sleep disorders, GI distress, and other chronic ailments - likely have an underlying physiological condition responsible for their predisposion to mental disorders.

Re: Venting doesn’t work

#156

Post by Llamamoe »

bittercynic wrote: post #143
Llamamoe wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak for everyone, but as a person with unmedicated ADHD and chronic fatigue, I feel pretty hostile to sentiments like this. In my experience, people who engage in #2 aren't - as you seem to be implying - people who are immature and lazy. A lot of the time they're people who struggle with the executive function necessary to actually change their life, who feel helpless and just want validation after having b…

I do not want to diminish the importance of your perspective in any way, only to add that some in the #1 camp are teetering on the brink of "able to take care of self" and not withholding help to be cruel, but because they think helping might pull them over the cliff, too. Wellness has big steps sometimes, and if you tumble down a step it may take a long time to get back up, and your ability to help yourself, and any…

I know. I do not blame people. At least not for that.

What I blame people for is shaming, infantilizing, and treating people who struggle like nutjobs worthy only of ostracization for "refusing to accept help".

Acting "whiny" is almost universally seen as extremely repulsive, and nobody would act this way if they weren't genuinely helpless - whether perpetually or only in the moment.

Re: Venting doesn’t work

#158

Post by cryptica »

For me, venting is absolutely essential. It's my greatest source of motivation. Once I can clearly identify and describe flaws which I see in the system which are holding me back, I can start to look for alternative paths... At the same time, venting helps to raise awareness of systemic flaws; it increases the probability that the flaws will be fixed at some point in the future.

So if I vent about some issue today, there is a chance that it will be resolved in maybe 20 years from now... So if I managed to keep working for 20 years straight, I will be among the first in line to benefit from the system being fixed because I'd have been waiting for that fix for so long and keeping tabs on it.

For example, I've been venting my frustrations about the fiat monetary system for years while being involved in crypto. I'm just building software while at the same time waiting for the monetary system to get fixed so that my work has a chance of becoming relevant.

I'm also benefiting from mainstream crypto projects (not my own) acting as an 'alternative path' since they benefit from the flaws in the monetary system due to the wealth concentrating forces of centralized money-printing. Unfortunately, my own projects cannot benefit from the current fiat system because me and my community are socially too far from the money printers... Though obviously, the Bitcoin network is very close to the sources of freshly printed fiat...

Re: Venting doesn’t work

#159

Post by effingwewt »

krinchan wrote: post #142
dvtrn wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sheesh I was not ready to read that, nor get as hooked in as I did. Some of those bullet-points are things I've witnessed first hand in an 'IRL' parenting group from some now ex-members.

As an estranged child I was not ready to read that. Sent it to my other sibling (also recently estranged from the family) and we're both just...in shock.

I had the same reaction. Pretty mind-blowing that it's so common, and that they encourage each other in their... what I can only describe as 'Evil'.

The abusers and their mental gymnastics not only hit home, it drove home the point that I was most definitely right to distance myself as much as possible rather than ever hope for some sort of reform.

Re: Venting doesn’t work

#160

Post by nine_zeros »

I have vented - about management and to management - often to give a signal that I am frustrated (managers can't read between the lines, they are humans) and to get management to realize that they are doing a bad job.

Venting is a very important social tool to account for mediocrity or lackadaisical attitude of others.

Venting is not useful if you yourself can do something about it.

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