Does Venting Really Help?

Venting. It’s one of those things most of us do on a relatively regular basis. When we encounter a situation that doesn’t feel good, we find the closest person we trust to listen. 

We talk. They listen. They might even offer feedback. But at the very least, they nod understandingly and gasp or ahh, when appropriate, to show their support.

When we’re all done, we feel SO much better. The weight has been lifted, our stress has fled, and all is right with our world.

Or is it?

So many of us have bought into the belief that free-range venting is like hitting this imaginary relief button. We think it helps us process the circumstances surrounding our stressful situation, so we can move through it and get on with our lives. 

But that isn’t often the case.

Relief doesn’t always come because while we consciously know the situation has passed, our bodies don’t. We recount what happens, and the same hormones that came when we encountered the situation flood our system, making our bodies believe we’re still in danger.

Instead of bringing us the release we’re hoping for, we get all twisted up again.

So what’s the solution? Should we never ever vent again? Not exactly. Venting does have value, especially when you need someone to step into the situation to assist. We don’t need to stop doing it, we just need to change how we go about it.

In these situations, I have an exercise I’ve adopted that helps me see the circumstances differently. Reconstruing the experience (make meaning of it) through a series of questions helps me better understand what happened and make sense of it. The result is it allows me to process it in a way that provides greater value.

Here’s an example: my family is in the middle of buying a house and selling ours, all at the same time. The house we’re buying has quite a few issues, but we’ve only requested a basic A/C maintenance service and for one drain to be fixed. Pretty simple, right?

Not to the seller. In fact, initially, they refused it. And to be honest, it really irked me! Out of all the things we could have asked for them to do, we felt this was pretty basic and probably would have been requested by most buyers (hello, we live in Texas — we need our A/C working!). 

But instead of just letting it go, it kept bothering me! I couldn’t shake the thoughts surrounding it from my brain.

Next thing you know, I was venting about it to soooo many people. You’d think that would have helped alleviate the stress the thoughts were bringing me, but it didn’t. I eventually realized what I was doing and was able to acknowledge that it wasn’t helping. I knew I needed to do something different.

So I sat down and asked myself the following questions…

1. Why was this so stressful for me?

2. Why do I think I’m reacting to the situation/person that way?

3. Why do I think the other person reacted the way they did?

4. What have I learned from this experience?

5. Does looking at the “big picture” help make sense of this experience?

Here’s the gist of what I came up with:

The reason I was so upset about this is that we’ve been bending over backwards to give the buyer of our home everything they wanted — like painting under the bathroom cabinets. We did them without a second thought because we wanted our buyer to be happy.

But the seller of our new home wasn’t doing the same. In fact, they weren’t even trying to make us happy. We weren’t being given even close to the same consideration we were giving our buyer. And that ticked me off. Know why? Because it felt unjust.

I finally came to this conclusion: not everyone is like my husband and me. Not everyone cares if their buyer is happy. And not everyone cares if someone will pass on their property because it isn’t in great condition.

But you know what? They’re entitled to that. They have every right not to care just as much as I’m allowed to care.

Once I was able to get into that headspace, I felt so much better. I was able to be content with giving grace to our buyers without expecting it in return from our sellers.

I can almost guarantee that if I’d kept on the path I was on — venting to everyone willing to listen — I would not have reached that place of peace I did when I finally decided to figure out the whys of the situation instead of just sharing my frustration with others.

But here’s even better news: you can do the same thing, too. Next time you’re upset, frustrated, angry, or disappointed with a situation you’ve been involved in, take a few minutes to dial into the why of it all using the questions above.

It can make all the difference.