Can Complaining Really Harm Your Brain?
We all know that one person who is continually negative. The person who never seems to be satisfied with anything or anyone.
Negative people are almost always complainers, without fail. Worse, complainers are not satisfied in keeping their thoughts and feelings to themselves; instead, they’ll seek out some unwilling participant and vent.
Undoubtedly annoying to their friends, family and co-workers, our reaction is to chastise these “Debbie Downers”. Instead, let's seek to understand their motivation so that we can be part of the solution.
If we're honest with ourselves, we'll acknowledge our own tendencies and make adjustments. In fact, that's the focus of this post - not to pin others, but to humble ourselves enough to be better.
Complainers generally fall into one of three groups:
- Attention-seeking Complainers: People who seek attention through complaining; always dwelling on about how they’ve got it worse than everyone else. Ironically, (rational) people are apt to ignore outright the person rather than waste mental energy focusing on their negativity.
- Chronic Complainers: These folks live in a constant state of complaint. If they’re not voicing about their “woe is me” attitude, they’re probably thinking about it. Psychologists term this compulsory behavior rumination, defined as “repetitively going over a thought or a problem without completion.” Rumination is, unfortunately, directly relayed to the depressed and anxious brain.
- Low-E.Q. Complainers: ‘E.Q.’ is short for emotional quotient, and constituents within this group are short on E.Q. What I.Q. is to intelligence, E.Q. is to emotional understanding. These people aren’t interested in your perspective, thoughts, or feelings. You’re a sounding board – a brick wall. As such, they’ll dwell and vent at every opportunity.
Is the Brain to Blame?
The answer is (mostly) “Yes.”
You see, most negative people don’t want to feel this way. Who the heck would?
Harmful behaviors such as complaining, if allowed to loop within the brain continually, will inevitably alter not only thought processes, but brain chemistry as well. Altered thoughts lead to altered beliefs which leads to a change in behavior. Read that again... your continued complaining negatively alters your brain chemistry!
Our brain possesses a something called the negativity bias. In simple terms, negativity bias is the brain’s tendency to focus more on negative circumstances than positive.
Repetition is the mother of all learning. When we repeatedly focus on the negative by complaining, we’re firing and re-firing the neurons responsible for the negativity bias.
We’re creating our negative behavior through repetition!
No, we don’t have to be “happy-go-lucky” all of the time. It's not about being positive for the sake of being positive. Even in the midst of extreme challenges, we should "think possibility" Yes, we're going through a rough patch, but what do we have control over? What are the possible solutions?
CHALLENGE: Take these steps to counteract negative thinking -
- Be intentional with your words. Think before you speak! If what you're about to say isn't kind or helpful, think again.
- Start every weekly vision session with what's going well. Don't discuss anything else until everyone on the team has shared one positive thing.
- Evening Huddles are for celebration an acknowledging others. Table all other topics for your weekly vision session
- Remember to protect your brain - NO BCD! (Blaming, Complaining, Defending)
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