Venting doesn’t work

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 what a mature response would be. Once you start venting to someone you know, especially someone you respect, you have an incentive to present a mature interpretation and approach to the situation. This can help immensely.

2) The other group tends to want to avoid the mature response part, and instead wants to seek sympathy and confirmation for their frustrations. They deliberately avoid discussing these issues with respected peers or mentors because they know their response is unhealthy and not a good look. They embrace online forums like Reddit and Twitter where they're free to give one-sided stories without fear of their peers calling them out for exaggerating or stretching the details. This type of venting doesn't solve anything because they don't really want solutions in the first place. There's something rewarding or perhaps freeing about hunkering down in the victim role and being showered with sympathy from random internet strangers.

I haven't seen any reason to believe the first type of venting (discussing with respected peers, seeking feedback and solutions in the process) is anything but helpful. However, the latter type of venting (online venting to collect sympathy) does seem to be quite damaging from my limited experience. There's something dangerous about going online to bond with others and seek personal affirmation in a way that's fueled by venting frustrations and victimizations. Once inside of those circles, there's an incentive to continue bringing more frustrations and more victimizations to the table to keep the bonding and community contact flowing.

The story in the article about going to a park to scream together raises my red flags as such a situation: It becomes an in-group thing where you need to adopt an outward appearance of being very frustrated to fit in with the other people in the group. Not a good incentive for improving the situation.

It sounds like the aggressive behavior was measured pretty soon after hitting the punching bag. It would be interesting to run the test again after the adrenaline has worn off.

I don't think proponents of catharsis are claiming that screaming at a tree if going to instantly make you calmer, it's that later that day you might feel better.

Also, participants were instructed to focus their anger on the perpetrator of the criticism, whereas it's probably healthier and more effective to simply focus on releasing your aggression.

Or, a combo study would be interesting where participants are instructed to hit a punching bag and then try to empathize with themselves or others, vs. only trying to empathize.

Anyway, it's an interesting study, but I'm not sure I'd rule out catharsis just yet.

One of the most stressful projects I ever worked on had a really great way of dealing with the stress (a policy that I created).

Every meeting, at the beginning of the meeting, everybody was required to complain for 5 minutes. Just talk about all the stupid decisions that got us to this point, how unreasonable the timeline was, any staffing issues you were having, any parts you needed, etc. 5 minutes. You are required to complain.

It helped a LOT, and almost a decade later when I interact with that team, we still all look back glowingly on that practice as something good.

It was a tense project, and that "you have to complain for 5 minutes" completely broke all of the tension, and let us all work together effectively. If we hadn't implemented that policy, we might not have finished the project on time.

I've found the problem with venting can be that it cements an idea in your head.

This is particularly true with people. If I find myself venting that <X> doesn't know what the heck they're doing, I've internally solidified that belief. If <X> improves, if I'm on another project with <X> where they clearly have a lot of knowledge, then it can still be too late. I've verbalized to myself ( and worse, my partner ) that X is incompetent and I'm not going to easily let that go.

I think it's true with other things. <Y> is a terrible idea, <Z>'s code base is a mess. If I let it role over me, notice things without forcing an opinion, I'm more likely to realize I've judged to soon.

I think they've missed the point.

Venting isn't for catharsis; It's for seeking validation. When you vent TO someone and they lend a sympathetic ear, it's a huge help.

Venting is a social bonding ritual.

You generally don't get this online because most of the audience is NOT sympathetic, so you'll get criticism after criticism, making things even worse.

From Robert Sapolsky's Behave, I learnt about the notion of "displacement aggression". We know what it is intuitively, but in short: depressingly enough, the reason stress encourages aggression is that it reduces stress. And we don't yet know the underlying biology of it.

         - - -

Excuse the wall of text, but it's entirely worth reading Sapolsky's description of this:

[quote]

Shock a rat and its glucocorticoid levels [a key stress-signaller] and blood pressure rise; with enough shocks, it’s at risk for a “stress” ulcer. Various things can buffer the rat during shocks—running on a running wheel, eating, gnawing on wood in frustration. But a particularly effective buffer is for the rat to bite another rat. Stress-induced (aka frustration-induced) displacement aggression is ubiquitous in various species.

Among baboons, for example, nearly half of aggression is this type—a high-ranking male loses a fight and chases a subadult male, who promptly bites a female, who then lunges at an infant. My research shows that within the same dominance rank, the more a baboon tends to displace aggression after losing a fight, the lower his glucocorticoid levels.

Humans excel at stress-induced displacement aggression—consider how economic downturns increase rates of spousal and child abuse. Or consider a study of family violence and pro football. If the local team unexpectedly loses, spousal/partner violence by men increases 10 percent soon afterward (with no increase when the team won or was expected to lose). [...]

Little is known concerning the neurobiology of displacement aggression blunting the stress response. I’d guess that lashing out activates dopaminergic reward pathways, a surefire way to inhibit CRH release [a hormone involved in the stress response]. Far too often, giving an ulcer helps avoid getting one.

[/quote]

There is likely no good medium- or long-term benefit to venting, especially when it's defined as physical violence directed at objects or verbal aggression directed at people. That's pretty clear.

But one of the best pieces of advice my therapist gave me was that under extreme stress, sometimes the only path to making it to the next minute intact is to do something where the long-term benefit isn't clear, or even negative. In those moments, the best we can do is focus on preventing harm to others and minimizing harm to ourselves. (This isn't just about venting, but other stress and trauma reactions.)

If a situation is so terrible that there's a chance of having a more brutal breakdown (or in my case, a suicide attempt) if we don't throw a plastic cup at a wall, or scream out the pain, or otherwise do something stupid for that short burst of peace with a relatively high cost, then we won't make it to a point where we can reflect on how we got there, and how to actually get to a better place in the medium- or long-term.

Cycles of venting are bad, because constantly venting means constantly being under stress, which means it's harder and harder to step away from it to recognize the sources of the stress and break that cycle. But as a response to a peak in stress, or a sudden trauma, it's a tool - not the best tool, not even a good tool, but if it's the _only_ tool I can reach in time, the advice I got (for myself, which I am not a therapist, and which may not be relevant to you) was to not second-guess whether to use it.

> Venting anger is like using gasoline to put out a fire.

There could be some truth to it. Since I started venting on HN about how bad ads, drm, social media, and patents are, their prevalence has increased!

> Recent headlines have shared tales of venting by everyone from Olympians to Russell Westbrook to moms meeting in a park to scream.

Russell Westbrook is an Olympian...

"Stop Venting" doesn't just "work" either. Processing your emotions and letting go of them does. David Hawkins' book, aptly named 'Letting Go,' covers this in detail.

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...

If true, wouldn’t this undermine the entire psychiatric approach of behavioral cognitive therapy and ideas such as confronting one’s fears and talking through problems?

Doing good science around this kind of stuff is extremely difficult ...

My personal experience with Psychodrama and Gestalt in the late '70s and early '80s was that for someone like myself who was very much 'in my head', it was an opportunity to acknowledge my own repressed anger. But in retrospect, it was/is also behavior rehearsal for bad behavior in the rest of my life. More effective was modern Somatic Experience techniques where the impulse to respond in anger is explored with a lot of inner attention and slow-motion movements of pushing away and/or striking back. I would call it more grounded and more present. There is dissociation that occurred for me with so-called cathartic anger.

The variation in 'venting' adds to the complexity of the conversation. Physical venting vs naming sources of anger/frustration. Based on my personal experience, physical venting is far less effective than verbal venting, and of course verbal venting is massively variable. Naming the exact source of frustration strikes me as more likely to be usefully defusing than just shouting that someone is an f-ing a*hole. I can imagine the inclusion of humor, for example, would have a huge impact.

This seems like a great case of a bad headline derailing discussion. The first study quoted uses hitting a punching bag as an example of venting. I’d contrast that against what I think of as venting: talking about what’s bothering you without looking for the discussion to solve anything other than providing space to say what you’re feeling. When they say venting doesn’t work, they’re referring to a specific kind of venting.

> In more general terms, embracing our feelings isn’t the same as expressing them, and not all forms of expression are created equal. Realizing “I’m angry” (always OK) is a different beast from telling someone “I’m angry” (sometimes OK), and it’s even further from berating a loved one for causing your anger (not OK).

It’s a good article with a nuanced point, and all the discussion reacting to the shitty headline is a shame.

Not sure of the validity of the article. But in my experience, my friends and colleagues who vent a lot seem to vent all the time. It seem like their venting is fueling whatever their annoyances is at that moment.

I think it's more about regulating your emotions in a calm, rational way. Venting can get emotional and could add fuel to the fire. But if you can achieve talking about the problem in a more calm, empathetic, rational way, it might work better. Of course, easier said than done.

A proper venting process, like a heatsink or coolant, needs a mechanism to absorb the unwanted energy efficiently, and then disperse it. Asking folks to express anger or spend energy without it specifically drawing from the negative emotions within is like pouring coolant fluid from a bottle over your CPU box.

I think carefully channelled energy, however, can really help calm. I don't necessarily think it's catharsis really, as it would tend closer to meditation. Practising a martial art, trying to focus on something creative, going on a long run, playing a mentally demanding game (chess, go, starcraft) — with the right mindset, these allow you to harness your negative feelings into an activity that exists in its own sandbox, and then get processed in a way that only makes sense inside that sandbox. It's important that your activity is one where you have practised not getting further enraged (no 'tilting', as we say in video games) when you fail/perform badly inside your sandbox.

When you leave the sandbox, you find a tiny bit more peace with whatever enraged you.

People do not vent anger. People vent frustration. Anger is usually a follow-up because the person does not have a motion forward or solution to the frustrating element.

In my experience people vent their frustration because they are stuck in their thinking and instinctively want to share it with others in hope the trusted person can give a way out, or comfort them.

Can't help but think the term "toxic," discredits the whole thing as a vehicle for something else. Aggression is natural and universal, but the tools for expressing and self-regulating it are not. One description of it that resonated personally for me was Robert Sapolsky's "depression is aggression turned inward," and while the phrase doesn't do the whole idea justice, it's more useful than hollow and seductive cliches like toxicity.

Arguably, aggression is necessarily an artifact of ideas of self and how we relate to others, and "venting" aggression safely lets you accept it (and yourself) in its totality and gives you a sense of how to manage it, instead of suppressing it and fearing that it will be exposed, only to have it come out in perverse other ways anyway. What bothers me about a lot of psychology is it seems mainly like a critical theory for deconstructing mental suffering as a means to relieve it theraputically - which is noble and useful, but it has been adopted as a scheme for moralizing coarse political interests.

Some years ago I turned a lot of my aggression outward and into disagreeableness, replacing a few intense relationships that enabled turning it inward with many new ones that did not, and it has made me more likeable, honest, trustworthy, reliable, fairer, and more sincerely compassionate, and as a result I have never been more content. It sets a healthy boundary where your natural aggression doesn't get triggered nearly as often, and you can manage it in other ways. Yes, some people will think you are an asshole, but the little bit of friction and occasional loss of a connection does not compare to relief and peace of just not caring what they think, and being free to engage people for only the enjoyment of it instead of some absurd sense of obligation. Or not.

>The idea of venting can be traced as far back as Aristotle, but Freud is the one who really popularized the notion of catharsis. Most of what we assume about the need to “let it out” comes from his assertions about the danger of unexpressed feelings.

When it comes to 'let it out', it should be traced back even further to the Iliad. At least according to this [1] video by Lindybeige, the Iliad is all about forgiving, after having exhausted every other option, aka after letting it all out.

Having said that, the article seems to make a negation error. The opposite of not expressing feelings is not expressing all feelings but expressing some feelings.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aofPdMbXzUQ The Iliad - what is it really about?

This piece is all over the place. And i don't give the studies any value at all. Emotions cannot be measured as such, it's far more complex than that.

The underlying emotions caused by so-called venting is the thing which is interesting. Not the venting. It's a side effect of the real emotions underneath.

How you express your feelings towards yourself and others is what this is basically about.

Anger is most often a layer around grief or sorrow, so the anger-feeling is no more than a hint to that something else is going on deeper inside you[0].

[0] https://www.mentalhelp.net/blogs/peeling-the-onion-uncoverin...

Venting does work, but there's differences in how you do it. Mindlessly ranting about bullshit doesn't help. Mindfulness is the key. Feelings want to get out. Keeping them inside doesn't do any good.

Venting totally CAN work in customer support situations. You let someone pour out confusing and undirected anger/fear/frustration and then you get to work solving the underlying problem or pain point.

Thought experiment: two groups of people, a control group and one told "stop venting".

1. Which group achieves more success in solving their underlying problem?

2. Which group exhibits higher levels of psychological satisfaction?

> The idea of venting can be traced as far back as Aristotle, but Freud is the one who really popularized the notion of catharsis. Most of what we assume about the need to “let it out” comes from his assertions about the danger of unexpressed feelings. In the “hydraulic model,” frustration and anger build up inside you and, unless periodically released in small bursts, cause a massive explosion. Starting in the 1960s, this theory was debunked by so many lab experiments that researcher Carol Tavris concluded in 1988, “It is time to put a bullet, once and for all, through the heart of the catharsis hypothesis.”

I think there is some truth to the original theory, but not all "venting" is equal. I definitely have at times experienced growing resentment towards people in my life due to not fully confronting the feelings I had about my interactions with them, but in general I don't think that angry outbursts are a healthy way to deal with this. In an ideal relationship (general term, not necessarily "romantic relationship"), I think honest but empathetic and non-judgmental conversations between the parties is often going to be the only way to truly alleviate those feelings; being able to tell someone why you were hurt by their actions without judging them and then being able to hear the same without reacting defensively is much more effective than complaining to a third party, but it requires a level of trust and understanding that is usually not going to be present for anything but close family members or long time friends. Given that, I think there is value in talking through the issues with a neutral third party, but it can be hard to avoid falling into spiral of anger and resentment, which I think is why seeing a therapist or psychologist is such a common treatment. I don't think that being able to neutrally help someone deal with their feelings of anger or resentment is some kind of superpower or anything, but like any skill, there are some methods that are more effective and some that are less effective, so having some sort of training on the matter generally is helpful. Most importantly though, they still need to build that same level of trust and understanding with the patient, which I think is the most common reason that therapy isn't able to help some people; if you're not open to the idea of learning to trust and get helped in therapy, it's going to be hard to actually resolve anything.

> As one researcher put it, “Venting anger is like using gasoline to put out a fire.”

The analogy holds only if the problem is one that is in some way exacerbated (i.e. fueled by) anger (even if only by growing worse due to appropriate action not being taken due to focus on anger).

If anger is not relevant to the problem, then no. For instance, if you're angry that 2 + 2 isn't 5, venting will not make that issue escalate; 2 + 2 will not get farther away from 5 just to spite you for venting.

Work for what? People vent for pleasure, not as part of a plan. Clearly a more rational response to anger is to let it dissipate without losing your cool, then let your best self decide what to do.

But sometimes sharing a beer with a friend and going over the sins of those rat bastards that are fucking everything up is by God really fun. Like many pleasures, it is best in moderation. And should probably be done once you aren't so mad that you disturb your equanimity.

> Neuroscience—specifically, neural plasticity—explains why venting reinforces negative emotions. You can think of our brain circuitry like hiking trails. The ones that get a lot of traffic get smoother and wider, with brush stomped down and pushed back.

That is so bad. It assumes that the brain uses one pathway for (different forms of) aggression and one neural mechanism for adapting behavior. It also assumes that the effect is cumulative. None of these are true.

I've noticed situations on the job where I've had little issues with management on my own, but experienced going out with drinks/coffees with gossipy venting colleagues and me internalizing their anger. This prima-facie seemed like the primary reason they did it.

If venting is instead a coalitions/tribal consensus building exercise, the psychologists might need to wait until after the revolution to retest the subject's well-being.

This naturally human response thats existed for longer than commerce needs to be suppressed because it doesn’t further your career. Yup. Makes sense to me.

This article talks about "catharsis"

catharsis and processing are key to getting past something, but it also depends on if sufficient (time|mental processing) have past to allow one to not become distraught over the situation.

see: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/798927.Writing_to_Heal

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.

I think Freudian psychological ideas still have a lot of hold on people, even though in general his theories are generally not taken seriously these days. Under Freud, your emotions are almost like physical substances: you can have “too much” of them, and need to release them. “Releasing” your anger literally removes it from your body in Freudian psychology. I believe this (incorrectly) makes a lot of intuitive sense to people, as it is difficult to maintain a state of full-fledged rage and yelling. ie, you will calm down and the emotion will pass. This is more akin to a biological state: you cannot maintain any feeling indefinitely. But, I do not believe that this means that someone is releasing the emotion in the Freudian sense of the word. In practice, if you “release” your anger in this way often you are simply practicing feeling angry. In other words, you are training your mind to focus on this emotional state, and are therefore most likely increasing the amount of anger you have. You cannot “vent” all this anger because it is not a discrete substance that you can run out of. Instead, you’re behaviorally training yourself to experience anger more often: the opposite what was intended.

To the extent that people can “keep emotions bottled up inside,” I believe this simply means just not addressing a point of contention which makes you angry. The point is not to “release” the anger, but to address this issue which is causing the anger. If you’re not addressing it (either by preventing it or coming to peace with it) then you will keep experiencing the point of contention. In that narrow and non-Freudian sense, you are keeping your anger “bottled up.” But, you cannot just “release” your anger: you must address it. Really, there is no releasing anger; there is merely expressing it.

Catharsis(aka venting) has had a multiple studies saying that it doesn't work. Stop venting.

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1967-02716-001 - it's even in the abstract.

This kinda makes sense. I belong to the group of people that either vents or keeps ruminating in the head, while my wife is the opposite. I have suffered from occasional bouts of high blood pressure, while my wife doesn't face any such issues.

This is true, I suspect.

Except if you make it funny.

Funny venting -- exasperated joking -- is an enormously effective stress reduction tactic.

The key point really I guess is that you have to have gone looking for the laugh before you let it out; that is likely the therapeutic value.

"HELLO POLLLLLLYYYYY!"

You just need to make sure no one is around when you vent, otherwise you look really sus.

The conclusion here presupposes that other benefits such as increased clarity of the situation and one's own feelings are not present, but in that context vacuum? Sure, I agree.

I find that when and if I vent something I usually always feel anxious about it afterwards. Like I have said something I shouldn't have.

I vent by dancing and swearing in the basement with the music blasting. No harm done and I feel better in the end ;)

Tamping down emotions and keeping them wrapped up has always worked well.

From the title I thought this would be about ventilation and COVID.

As it turns out, Stoicism was the way all along.

The hell it doesn’t! Let me tell you … ;-)

Unpopular opinion, I expect, but until, and unless, there is a reckoning with the replication crisis in psychology, Hacker News should treat this kind of article the same way they would treat one which takes homeopathy seriously.

I've flagged it as irrelevant and suggest you do so also.

serenity now!

Stop using small sample sized studies done on college campuses (n = 600, 178, 60) to push clickbait headline articles.

Sounds like saying, "Don't cry when you're sad it Doesn't Work"

How about let people do what they want? People vent because they want to know they aren't crazy or at fault. Not because they're trying to be calm or forget grievances.

I hate it when oft times, a completely unrelated picture is inserted into a blog post with seemingly no relation to the actual content of said post.

what a selfish mindset

venting produce effects, it make the reader understand other people's feeling without knowing them

if makes them learn about people and their frustrations

ultimately, it gives them the opportunity to come up with a direct or indirect response to them

There's a saying "the squeeky wheel get's the grease".

People usually do what works for them. thats exactly why we still see fist fights, disinformation, yelling, racisim, war, complaining, etc. It does what it was intended to do. Otherwise, people would do something else.

Whoops accidentally submitted to HN instead of LinkedIn.

To stop venting would mean to stop going to therapy, lol