You don’t always want to complain – but maybe you should do it more often! Why it’s important to complain.
It boils inside you, not long and you explode. But no, you didn’t want to get so upset anymore, you didn’t want to be “the bad guy” all the time, or preferably the “grieving aunt” who always complains and thus offends and is exhausting everywhere.
But, you know what? Not only is it perfectly fine to complain, it’s incredibly important! Both for your mental and physical health. At least if you consciously complain. We’ll explain what it’s all about and how you can do it.
The social double standard when it comes to emotions
It’s exciting to think about how emotions are evaluated: Hardly anyone would advise a person who is happy about something to restrain themselves a little and not put so much effort on the others with their good mood. But a person who is upset about something is often thrown at that head. Our society determines which feelings are “positive” and “negative”. So anything associated with joy, happiness, and contentment is positive and desirable, while sadness, worry, and anger are treated as emotions to be avoided. Even that is anything but healthy.
It makes a difference whether we avoid (suppress) a feeling for a short time or ignore (suppress) it in the long term: There are situations in which we simply cannot “afford” to lose ourselves in our emotions, for example when we separate from our relationship and have to give an important presentation at work the next day. It is important that we then give these temporarily suppressed feelings the space they need.
However, if we avoid emotions in the long term, this has very negative effects on our psyche and ultimately also on our body. Many of us tend to suppress particularly strong, uncomfortable emotions, such as:
- Fury
- frustration
- sadness
- Fear
- disappointment
And that is hardly surprising, since we hear from all sides and are shown that such feelings are bad. “That’s no reason to cry”, “Be thankful for what you have”, “Calm down” are just a few common phrases that do one thing above all: deny us supposedly negative emotions. Many people hear such phrases from childhood and internalize them throughout their lives.
Why we shouldn’t suppress our feelings
And if you don’t always give your own emotions space, you run the risk of not feeling the feelings, then at least the consequences – mentally and physically. Of course, there is no direct evidence that sadness leads to the common cold or that anger leads to tumors. But actually she has Research already found a connection between repressed emotions and a weakened immune system. Other possible physical symptoms include:
- muscle tension and pain
- nausea and digestive problems
- loss of appetite
- tiredness or trouble sleeping
How we learn to consciously complain
In short: It is good and important to give your own emotions – even the supposedly negative ones – space. However, this does not necessarily have to be in front of others. We tend to “park” our feelings with our fellow human beings – but that doesn’t help either ourselves or our counterpart. We often only look for confirmation from outside, but it is much more important that we are at peace with ourselves. And for that we need other people much less often than we might think.
Now for the conscious complaining: You need a quiet place and a bad mood. Now you look for an object in this place where you can complain about all the things that are annoying you right now. This can be a piece of furniture, a flower pot, a picture – whatever suits you. And now there’s whining, cursing, maybe even a little screaming. As soon as you can’t think of anything else, you thank the object, say goodbye and do something that you enjoy.
This exercise is so helpful because we call things as they are, we verbalize our displeasure and, if necessary, the reasons for it. It is then no longer an abstract feeling that puts us in a bad mood, but has shape, form and colour. We break through the repression and immerse ourselves in the “negative” emotions that our environment likes to deny us. And best of all: We don’t hurt anyone because we are alone with ourselves and our feelings. Once we’ve unloaded everything, we can go about fixing the source of our anger with renewed energy – our energy is ultimately in much better hands there.
Sources used: oprahdaily.com, healthline.com, openaccesspub.org