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Complaining gets such a bad reputation. I have men in my office all the time who are suffering and struggling with all kinds of issues. Just as they touch on something from their family life or their career, they’ll stop themselves saying, “Oh, I don’t want to complain.” In doing so, they’ve self-censored something that could have led to a better understanding of what’s really going on for them.
The Message That Complaining = Evil
We get a lot of messages along the way about how bad it is to be a complainer. We can all point to that person who just won’t stop mouthing off about their boss, their job, their partner, their kids, the weather—you name it. Often, they’re the same person who always seems to be feeling sorry for them self. We look down on them. We do not want to be them.
The problem is that some people spend so much time trying to avoid becoming that person that they belittle the parts of themselves that could bear some looking after. It seems that there’s a fear that once you start complaining you’ll fall into an endless pit of “woe is me! woe is me! woe is me!”
I don’t want to do that—and I don’t want you to do that. However, we need to start somewhere.
In therapy, we talk about ventilation (or “venting”) as a helpful thing. The trick to venting is to not stop there. It’s not a simple matter of emotionally speaking about how angry, upset, disappointed, or sad you are. That can be helpful, don’t get me wrong, especially if you’re a person who’s been holding all those feelings back—many men hold back those emotions, aside from anger—but it’s not the end of the story.
What do you do next?
Using the Complaint As An Entryway
Did you ever watch a TV show and the characters are arguing over something that we think is trivial? Someone forgot to do the dishes or a detail was missed somewhere. One of the characters is freaking out, reacting very strongly to something and finally, someone says to the person—”I don’t think it’s about that.”
Sometimes a guy comes into a session and is railing about some slight or some insult or something that someone else did or didn’t do—and soon he’ll catch himself and say out loud,
“Now this is stupid. Why am I still talking about this?”
Good question: why are you? In real life you’d catch yourself, laugh at yourself (maybe), and move on, thereby missing the point, missing the life lesson.
“Why do you think you’re responding so strongly to this thing?”
“What else might be going on for you that this is such a trigger?”
Now that person gets to think about it, now they get to dive underneath what we’d call in the therapy circles the “manifest content,” and search for the underlying issue. The hurt feeling. The humiliation. The reminder of someone else, or a dynamic with someone else.
Then we sit with that together and find a way out of the cycle.
The complaining about something insignificant often leads to a deeply laid down pattern that we tend to push away in the moment. Complaining can be the doorway to so much of your suffering and once you enter that doorway you can find your way to the other side.
So don’t just avoid complaining.
Don’t just complain and let everything end there.
Complain and try to figure out what’s underneath.
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What’s your take on what you just read? Comment below or write a response and submit to us your own point of view or reaction here at the red box, below, which links to our submissions portal.
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