Comment by hypeatei
1 day ago
Venting all the time can actually be quite harmful to the venter. Negative energy drives change and if all you're doing is offloading then you're going to get stuck in a loop of feeling bad -> vent -> repeat while the underlying problem doesn't get solved.
The next trap is loudly announcing how you’re going to get yourself out of that situation, getting the neurotransmitter hit that comes from the announcement, and then never doing it.
I have a person who has distanced themselves from me because I don’t provide the feedback they crave when they do this for the eleventieith time. I only have so many spoons and that passion play feels like throwing them in the garbage disposal. I just can’t for my own well being. Sorry.
Being stuck in any emotional overreaction state is harmful.
There are a lot of people reciting the academic concept of validating emotions without endorsing them in this thread, but in the real world when you consistently "validate emotions" of someone who is over-reacting, it becomes an implicit endorsement.
In the real world, the people I've known to get stuck in negative emotion states did much worse when they surrounded themselves with people who constantly validated their emotions in the academic speak that's being used in this thread.