Why is it wrong to complain about your life? How it can harm you and those around you

Complaining is a natural process of life. Every human being sooner or later feels the need to whine. In moderation, this technique is good for our brains. The key word here is moderation.

If you think you don’t complain at all, you may just not be noticing it. The process happens unconsciously. Typical complaints: no mood, annoying weather, annoying coworkers, child disobeying, etc. It all happens on automatic.

Clinical and business psychologist

If you constantly cry to others for no reason at all, you can get nervous breakdowns, fall into despondency and lose friends. Close people will get tired of your whining and stop communicating. How to prevent this from happening? The first step is to understand the mechanics of the process and its goals.

Reasons for automatic whining

Many of us were raised with the learned helplessness syndrome. This term describes the habit of complaining about our lives, believing that nothing can be changed. In fact, it’s about the most common and easily solvable problems. For example, a bad mood can be corrected by sports, delicious food; weather – by choosing the right clothes, etc.

Often constant complaints are related to low self-esteem. A person believes that he can do nothing, no one will ever love him, he is unlucky, he will not find a good job.

In this case, complaining is the easiest way to get the long-awaited attention and care. By the way, many people, without noticing it themselves, tend to those who constantly complain. For what purpose? For their own secondary benefit. To give someone support and feel needed.

The dangers of whining

1. For those around you

People with constant complaining are a quagmire that drags on. If you want to help yourself, ignore such people. They will become uninterested in you. They will stop pulling emotions out of you.

You can’t ignore them? Then use the “counterstrike” technique. On the phrases that someone is unhappy, say that you are twice as unhappy.

For example, you’re standing in line for rides, and your neighbor starts complaining that he’s come an awfully long way to the park and has to wait again. Instead of sighing sympathetically, make him consider this inconvenience as nothing compared to yours. If he took an hour to get there, you took two, and the car broke down on the way, etc.

Psychologically stable people do not perceive a systemic complainer in any way. They try not to do business with him and not to start a relationship with him. This takes a lot of energy and is emotionally draining.

Who makes friends with complainers? Either the same unhappy people, or people who unconsciously look for a secondary benefit against the background of complainers – you feel sorry and feel like a helper, a protector, a useful person.

2. For you

Any unjustified complaints affect the well-being of the “unhappy” person himself. It is one thing to go to the doctor and tell him that you have a headache. In this case, complaining is a way of dealing with the problem. The doctor will prescribe a pill and the suffering will stop.

The other situation is when you spend all day complaining to close (and not so close) people about your migraine, while making an emphatically mournful appearance. These people can’t solve the problem. But you don’t need them to. It’s important to shut down the need to care, to be pitied.

A little secret – headache or any other pain does not come with a sorrowful face. They are independent processes. Except when the pain is really so intense that it is impossible to control facial expressions. A grieving face can be just the tool of the “feel sorry for me” category. But one can affect the other.

A constant state of pain and tragedy will lead to a decline in energy, nervousness. You will feel more and more unhappy and depressed. At the same time, a similar state will also haunt those with whom the whiner is.

Is it possible to change a whiner?

No. No one can be changed unless they want to be changed. You can say directly that you do not want to communicate, because it is difficult to constantly absorb negativity and hear the wailing. Will that work? Not necessarily. Maybe he’ll just go complain about you to someone else. Here a person you will not help, but help yourself.