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Comment by sudden_dystopia | Hacker News Reader

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?

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From TFA: “chatting with friends can bring closure when they help you reconstrue an event, rather than just recount it. What does that look like? Asking why you think the other person acted that way, prodding to see whether there’s anything to be learned from it all, and just generally broadening your perspective to ‘the grand scheme of things.’ Unfortunately, this type of meaning-making is far from common outside of therapy”

Article also mentioned the “The thoughts you water are the ones that grow" idiom.

CBT is often about reframing or "reconstrueing" a negative or damaging viewpoint into something less emotionally charged. Venting is just watering and reinforcing the emotionally charged pathways -- the "gasoline on a fire" analogy.

CBT is nearly the opposite of venting. Venting is just pouring out raw emotion, no confrontation.

Venting is "John is an asshole who couldn't find his way out of a wet paper bag. I hope that fucker's entire dick just falls off. He doesn't deserve jack shit."

CBT is more measured. You acknowledge the feeling, but you separate yourself from it. "Yes, I'm mad. I'm mad because of THING. THING upsets me because I believe it should be like THIS. My options are THESE."

Venting is letting your emotions drive your actions. CBT is letting your reason temper your emotion. You control your actions in spite of your emotions.

I went through a Veterans Administration course of CBT and In Vivo Exposure Therapy and it was nothing like the "primal scream" therapies I did in the 90's that you may be thinking of. I thought "venting" was disproven to work in the late last century. That said, anything that interrupts a looping thought process is good. I've gone to the beach and rolled around in the cold pounding surf just to reset my head.

https://centerforanxietydisorders.com/treatment-programs/in-...

In my experience, therapy wasn't venting, it structured approaches to deal with the reasons that led to the need for venting.

Those are entirely different concepts.

"Confronting one's fears" is usually about forcing yourself to accept and internalize that your fears are unfounded. Good examples are a fear of roller coasters, fear of flying, or basically anything else that is 99.999% harmless.

Talking through problems is way to guide you (and potentially another person) into understanding, acceptance, and compromise.

I’m not sure why. “Venting” doesn’t seem to have much overlap with CBT other than words being involved.

I think there's a difference between mindlessly venting and mindfully stepping through thought processes.

If the headline is true, yes. If the article is true, the opposite.

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