Aparna’s Weekend Musings on Life – Series 1 – Complaining and its Effects

All of us as human beings look for support and attention from our family and friends. It is a natural reaction for all of us but why do we do look for support and attention? Because we look for emotional validation.

Emotional validation is recognizing someone’s feelings and acknowledging them. We want attention, a little of pity for what emotions or trouble we go through in our day along with understanding and recognition for whatever emotions we feel. When we narrate our daily happenings to a closed one, we feel relaxed when we release our stacked up emotions for the day or it when we habit of writing a journal / diary everyday narrating what happened followed by 5 things we are grateful for every day.

People complain because their dissatisfaction reaches the maximum limit they could take. If we feel we can no longer tolerate our dissatisfaction we attempt to verbalize our dissatisfaction as nagging, whining and complaining to our closed ones. If a particular situation is in our hands to change we will do so but only if we are unable to do anything, then we resort to complaining.

We complain about key things like:

·        Behaviour – action or inaction of another person

·        Personal characteristics – personality / beliefs of another person

·        Performance – about how someone else perform an action

·        Complaining – about another’s complaint behavior

·        Personal appearance – about how others looked

As William Bowen says, we complain to

1.     Get Attention

2.     Remove Responsibility

3.     Inspire Envy (Self Bragging)

4.     Needing to Exercise Power

5.     Excuse their poor performance

What if we complain, how it affects those around us?

You could ask me, So what if we complain Aparna? Why does it matter? It matters because it destroys peace of mind, creates a negative mood to everyone around us. It makes those around us get defensive and may lead to unwanted arguments.

Over a period of time, some of us become chronic complainers? Why?

Some behavioural traits of Chronic Complainers are:

1.     Repeated looking for people to join their pity party

2.     Nothing seems good enough

3.     Expect the worst or if not expect disappointment

4.     Little perplexed and irritated by those who seem cheery most of the time.

5.     Keep seeing the glass half empty all the time (look only at the downside of life for every situation)

6.     Constant venting and whining without any action to change it

7.     Each situation is a perfect opportunity to find faults

8.     Chronic complainer will rarely let any situation go without offering some observation about something that’s gone wrong or isn’t to their liking

9.     Emotionally manipulating others with their words or actions

Chronic complainers fall into a negative cycle of thoughts :

Finding faults => Feeling negative mood and feeding the same negativity to everyone around => Unable to face the next situation with an open mind => Eventually capacity to feel joy or happiness is lost and life seems miserable to them always.

How Long time Complaining Rewires Our Brain and Makes Us Negative Minded?

When we complain over a long period of time, our body releases stress hormone especially cortisol. Excess cortisol affects our immune system and makes us susceptible to various ailments. It even makes the brain more vulnerable to strokes. Scientists long term complaining actually shrinks our brain. Standford University researchers have found that complaining shrinks our hippocampus which is critical for problem solving and intelligent thoughts. Repeated complaining rewires our brain to make future complaining more likely and over time we find it easy to be negative instead of thinking positive. A pattern of negative thoughts sets in and is very difficult to break without conscious efforts and help.

Why People Stay Away from Chronic (Long Time) Complainers?

The general mood is affected on a regular basis. It leads to tension, anger, shouting, disagreements, anger and defensive action by others. It hurts near and dear ones and strains relationship with everyone. The more we complain the more self-centered we become. I believe a self centered person is someone who is only concerned with their own wants and needs and never thinks about other people. Over a period of time, they demonstrate narcissism. Narcissism is a condition in which people have inflated sense of their importance, deep need for excessive attention and admiration, troubled inter personal relationship and inability to consider other’s feelings.

How Do You Deal With Complainers in Your Circle / At Work?

1.     Listen, nod, validate

2.     Understand what they want: try looking beneath what they complain. It could be attention, emotional validation, pity.

3.     Avoid arguing with them

4.     Reframe or restate the complaint

5.     Ask for a solution

6.     Confront them: Try to have an open and honest conversation about how their patterns of complaining is affecting you and your relationship with them (official / personal).

What To Do If You Want to Change Yourself from Complaining?

1.     Try Complaint Cleanse For AS Long As You Get Over It : Be conscious of complaints when they pop up in your head, instead of saying aloud just let them go!

2.     Watch what you speak and mind your language for any negativity

3.     Think of 5 things in life you are grateful for daily before you hit the bed. It is even better if you could write it down every day – a gratitude journal.

4.     Every time you have a negative thought, take a deep breath and look at the bright side of it.

5.     Start your day everyday with the phrase Life Is Beautiful!!

6.     Get professional help if you struggle to change.

Regards,

Aparna Subramanian,

CEO & Founder,

Transformational Business Solutions

#weekend-musings#Aparna’s musings on life#complaining#how complaining affects our family#