Skillful Venting

At this time of year when you and everyone around you is exhausted and just trying to make it to the end of the school year, there is likely to be a lot of complaining and venting of individual and collective frustrations.

Unfortunately, it can often take the form of "unskillful venting". While we all have been there and this is a part of being human, I explain how this approach doesn't lead to the catharsis we crave and can actually make us feel worse.

Kristin

Transcript

Hey there everybody,

This is Kristen from Teaching Balance and I am here with you at this week's mindfulness meditation practice.

We are now in the month of letting go.

I have done so much stuff with letting go personally of course,

But in this context as well I feel like I talk about it a lot because it is such a deeply transformative and powerful practice.

Now it takes lots of different forms and we're going to explore it from a few different angles,

But as almost like a segue from last month's working with difficult emotions,

I thought it would be interesting to talk a little bit about skillful venting.

Now here's what I mean.

So you know of course when I say you know we've all been there where you know you are dealing with something that's really challenging and you want to talk to someone and you just want to vent.

And I think it's interesting when you reflect on even the term venting of course when you think of like an air vent or venting off there's this quality of like heat and kind of like steam and combustion built up and that's why it needs to be vented out right.

And there is a quality of heat to the emotions associated with the experience that seems to you know require if you will venting.

You know so for example you know you're not going to vent to someone about how great everything is,

How in love you are.

You know there's no venting involved there,

But you probably would be interested in venting to someone about something very frustrating that you're dealing with or you know a circumstance that you don't have as much control over that is really making your life difficult or whatever it might be.

So the emotions that I think that are associated with this idea of venting have a heat to them,

They have an intensity to them and they can be on a spectrum from you know rage down to like typical anger down to frustration or even like annoyance and irritation.

You get the idea.

Now there's nothing wrong with venting,

The activity of sharing your frustrations and your anger you know and your emotions of that ilk with others.

And I think there is a lot to be said for doing so in a way that is more skillful.

And what I mean by that is I myself have experienced and have also witnessed in friends and former colleagues what sometimes people can get caught up in is retelling their story over and over.

So you're venting a lot almost in this automatic way where you're not even giving the listener the opportunity to say you know what I'm not really capable of handling this right now.

Like some people it's just automatic and they,

We,

Whomever it might be tell this story over and over again.

And there's a seductive quality to doing that because what it does is it reinforces your rightness,

Right?

If you're feeling frustrated you clearly think that you are the one in the right,

Perhaps even the victim if you want to go so far as to use that term and that the circumstance or the person or whatever it is that's causing this is wrong.

And so there's this quality of sort of like you know feeding your own sense of rightness.

There's a word that's escaping me self something you probably already have figured out what it is but you know what I mean.

And so the dilemma around that is that not only can it be negatively impactful to others by getting them kind of worked up particularly if this is something that is a rather automatic habitual behavior in you or in anyone.

But the other thing is is that you are re-escalating your physiological emotional state by telling the story over and over again.

So you're actually agitating yourself and recreating as far as your body is perceiving and you're recreating this frustration in a way that is not productive.

Now again we've all done it it's just kind of human nature I think but the point I want to make is it's not something that it's not as though you don't have other avenues to work with these challenging emotions and to go back to our theme for this month to let things go.

So here is my suggestion to you when you notice that you're on this kind of like train of telling that story over and over again or venting a lot to the point where some of you even described it as you're almost like a bird like you're regurgitating all of your pain and like kind of like throwing it all up into like you know like a bird's nest you know you're the bird and now now we all have to deal with it.

So trying to avoid that and instead when you do really feel like you need to work with these elements of frustration and anger and irritation and etc to do so in a way that feels more productive.

First of course checking in with the people who you want to share with and making sure that they're feeling you know emotionally equipped and up for that.

I mean how many of us are asked hey I have something I really want to talk about and you know it's very triggering for me and I want to see if you're you know in a headspace to help me with that.

That'd be nice if people were to ask first so if you're in that circumstance allowing yourself to ask first and then not so much getting yourself all worked up about it but only sharing really the highlights that are worth sharing because your outcome your purpose in sharing is less about venting per se and more about asking for input.

So for example you know I'm dealing with this frustration and it's not even so much that you think someone's going to solve your problem because some problems can't be solved that way but if nothing else the person can express some empathy they can express some support you know their advice to you might not be here's how you solve your problem but their advice might be something more akin to I've been there I know what that feels like and just try to continue to be kind to yourself and try to not let it get to you too much and and all of that really supportive empathetic emotional you know scaffolding that I think we all would benefit from.

So that's what I think of when I think of skillful venting sharing what the things are that you're dealing with in a way where you really are perhaps looking for input and an alternative alternate perspective and if nothing else looking for some productive advice regarding how to relate to it in this moment as opposed to just this not particularly productive reinforcement of you're right and they're wrong and I'm angry now too or whatever that might be.

So take all of that with a grain of salt that was kind of a long one so I'm going to get into it right now but I think there's a lot to be said for that and of course I know that you know that gratitude practice and all the things where you emphasize the things that you do have to be grateful for and the beautiful parts of your life allowing your energy to rest there as well can also offset that a little bit of a afterthought but still extremely valuable.

All right so let's go ahead and get our meditation started now that I may have possibly triggered and churned up some of those negative emotions because we all know what that's like and we deal with it all the time but for our purposes here we're going to do what we can just to not tell ourselves the story and allow ourselves just to rest in what I would describe as the peacefulness of observing the present moment.

So even if this present moment where you're sitting trying to be mindfully aware even if it doesn't feel optimal maybe you're a little cold maybe you're hungry maybe your back hurts whatever it might be even if that is the case generally speaking you're fine.

Right now in this moment again it might not be optimal but you're fine and just let yourself rest in that and savor this quality of neutrality neither pleasant nor unpleasant but you're just here it's fine and the good news is you're going to get this opportunity right now just to get a taste of deep rest.

You've heard me say before there's nothing wrong with thinking and going through your day thinking and evaluating and fixing and all of the things that we have to do it's part of the human experience in day to day life and you can take breaks and that's what we're doing right now.

So getting this very rare opportunity this rare break from following our thoughts like we do all day long and instead just resting I use that word very intentionally resting your awareness on the breath resting your awareness on sounds or resting your awareness on the body.

Inevitably your mind will wander into thought that's fine but this is your opportunity to choose to whenever you notice it not continue following that thought instead to come back to this point of rest you'll do that over and over and dare I say even allow yourself to savor what that rest feels like.

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