Complaining can harm one’s health and wealth if it becomes a person’s only way to self-regulate.
In other words, when a person feels discomfort, stress, intense emotions, or tension, complaining is the only thing they do to feel better.
3 mechanisms by how complaining affects the psyche:
1 – Chronic stress background due to regular focus on the negativity.
The psyche reacts to complaints as to a problem or threat, releasing negative emotions and micro-doses of stress. It’s like constantly showing scary videos or bad news to your brain. You read “micro” and thought you could ignore it. But no – the problem with stress arises not so much from the dose, but when there are no breaks from tension (according to Robert Sapolsky, a well-known stress expert).
2 – Focus on negativity changes the perception of reality.
Each of us constructs our own version of reality with the help of the psyche (you can imagine it as a mediator that translates the external world into the internal world, and vice versa). As a result of excessive complaining, the psyche can create a distorted picture of the world: as more negative than it really is. The wolf you feed is the one that grows stronger. When it seems that everything around is bad, people get stuck and are afraid to change anything.
3 – Decreased self-esteem and adoption of a passive attitude towards problems.
A person who believes that they can do nothing, copes with any life stress worse, and misses good opportunities.
Here’s how it happens, watch the hands:
Imagine that we complain about the same thing for months and do nothing to solve the problem. Accordingly, the psyche may perceive this problem as one over which we have no control. The lack of control – intensifies how strong our stress response will be.
Eventually, the psyche creates an associative chain:
problems arise ->
they make me feel bad ->
I complain (and usually, our complaints sound like a passive attitude towards the problem) ->
I do nothing about the problems ->
the problems don’t go away, so it’s likely I have no control over them ->
I am powerless over my problems ->
learned helplessness, powerlessness.
This can eventually turn into a total feeling of not believing in oneself or one’s abilities
Even if it doesn’t reach the point of complete helplessness, a person’s self-esteem still declines. Self-esteem is always the result of successful ACTIONS, not praise or affirmations. At the same time, on the outside, a person may look too self-confident and aggressive. And on the inside – unstable.
A person with low self-esteem or a sense of powerlessness will act and make decisions from the mindset that they “can’t”, “are not worthy”, “will not succeed”, and will be afraid of mistakes, etc. As a result, they might avoid using new technologies, learning, applying for jobs they aren’t 100% qualified for, accepting opportunities that require them to prove their abilities, taking their health and longevity seriously, building trusting relationships, etc. The list goes on.
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Let’s summarize:
Complaining is a valid and natural way for people to cope with stress and receive support.
However, if complaining becomes the dominant way a person responds to their discomfort, it becomes a huge obstacle.
Because the person does nothing in essence to solve their problems. This leads to:
– constant micro-doses of stress
– a change in the world’s perception to a more negative one
– a decrease in self-esteem or a feeling of powerlessness.
A person who does not feel in control of their problems experiences any stress much worse. As a result – health problems (mental and physical) and avoidance of opportunities.
In the next post, I will talk about useful alternatives to complaints.
In the previous post, I mentioned the antistress potential of whining, because that’s why we all do it from time to time.
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Chronic complaints may simply be a habit or a symptom that hides a real problem (for example, with personal boundaries or an unresolved traumatic experience for self-esteem).
If you want to understand your situation, we can do it together at individual consultations. More information about consultations here