Last update: October 20, 2015
Very often we complain about people who are always in a bad mood or who, we don't know how, always manage to ruin our day with their irritated expression since the morning. Well, the amazing thing is that many of the people who complain all the time are actually using an emotional remedy unknown to many, and which is effective in releasing frustration: complaint.
The act of complaining allows us to eliminate stress, release frustration and regain the energy we need to face and overcome the problems that arise.
This attitude has highly recommended positives for our emotional health, and today we will talk to you just about how complaints can turn into a beneficial tool in our life.
Complaint as a means of releasing frustration
To understand what we are talking about, it is important to clarify three points that will allow you to understand how our thinking works. This will allow you to apply it also to the problems that will present you, in a positive way.
1. There are different types of complaints, not always one is the same.
They change according to their origin, the emotions that person is feeling, the emotional context, etc. It is important to be clear that not all complaints follow the same process, some are more positive than others.
You must keep this point in mind if you want to use grievances in a beneficial way. A clear example is the difference between complaining about a situation that is part of our everyday life, such as the fact that our partner is always late, or complaining about how our boss treats us at work. Even though we use the same words when expressing these negative emotions, the context is completely different.
It is important to distinguish the emotional tone in which we are complaining, bearing in mind that a single isolated complaint will not help us much; but if we feel angry, complaining will allow us to release that malaise and that excess of negative energy. It could be said that it is good to choose to release negative emotions at a specific moment, rather than get out of frustration in the wrong way.
2. Practice grieving as an emotional resource.
Complaining is an emotional action that is easy to integrate into the set of tools we have at our disposal to release tension. Its mechanism is simple, but the responsibility it entails is not.
It is crucial to emphasize the importance of being responsible when using this liberation mechanism, as if we carry it out with people we can have a negative influence on, it will not help much. We will ruin our personal relationships by becoming too heavy, and we will not show respect for the unconditional love that the person who is giving us is giving us. he is listening to us in that moment.
To understand how this mechanism works in a positive way, we just need to identify with the situation. If we are experiencing a very intense negative feeling and at that moment there is a problem with another person, we will probably exaggerate our reaction due to our initial emotional state.. For this the feelings and negative emotions they must be processed separately, as far as possible, otherwise they could contaminate our relationships.
In this way you will reduce the possibility of generating a negative situation with a person who is not at fault. For example, imagine you wake up and find that your milk has run out and no one has bought it. If you are not complaining at that moment, you will not be releasing the negative energy that that situation generates in you, and later you could make a person who crosses your path pay for it, for no real reason.
Finally, it is good to know that an excess of complaints towards the outside or a continuous negative attitude towards everything that happens to us are clear indications that we are not managing our emotions well.. We are going through a chain of events that arouse in us emotions of the same type, in this case, negative.
When we realize that we are in such a situation, one of the most advisable strategies is to increase control over what happens to us.. It may be a good idea to leave work a little earlier and go home to enjoy some activity that, from experience, can recharge us with positive energy.
After a working day, we often return home tired and with a head full of thoughts, because we have not been able to discharge that energy when it was necessary. Being able to complain in silence or loudly, even just for ourselves, will allow us to release that accumulated tension, eliminate the possible bad mood and rest much better when we go to bed.
3. Complaint is useful, but we must not exaggerate
When we make a complaint, we need to consider what we want to achieve with it.
Imagine your boss is about to raise our salary or you have submitted a formal request to him and told you he will think about it. Complaining to him at that moment about the chair we're working on, the location of our desk or our working day can cause him to focus only on solving that problem and that, once he has satisfied your complaint, he decides to don't give yourself that raise anymore, because he feels he has already done enough for you. If that complaint wasn't critical to you, you need to be careful not to submit it along with other more important requests. Always complain about one thing at a time.
This article is meant to make you understand that a well-presented and timely complaint can be very helpful, both to free you from a negative emotional state and to achieve the changes you want in the real world. But remember that if the situation gets out of hand, your complaint can also negatively affect you, making the situation worse.
Being reasonable is always vital if you want to mature as a person and improve the quality of your emotional life; therefore, if something is making you feel bad, it is not necessary to focus our attention on something else, to complain about that and discharge your frustration.
It is good to be aware that complaining can be useful in the moment, but that the discomfort and emotion we feel inside of us will come back to the surface if we do not work to find a solution. For this reason it is good that the complaint is only an ally when it is strictly necessary, without losing sight of the most powerful strategies we have available to solve our problems.
