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We all have that one friend who just won’t stop whining about his breakup. No matter how many times you hear him out, your support never seems to be enough. He seems to enjoy a pity party. It cheers him up for a while, but he inevitably gets angrier with each passing day. It becomes a burden. One so heavy that you begin to avoid him.

Related: <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/the-downside-of-being-a-good-listener">The Downside of Being a Good Listener</a>

<a href="https://blog.uwgb.edu/alltherage/four-questions-on-the-catharsis-myth-with-dr-brad-bushman/" target="_blank">Sigmund Freud</a> theorized long ago that bottling up emotions could lead to serious mental health problems. So get it off your chest, he advised. In the world of psychology, this is known as catharsis theory. But that’s not what the latest science shows. In fact, the theory has been long discredited. But for many people, “venting is good for you” is still considered conventional wisdom.

It’s time to set the record straight.

A <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0146167202289002" target="_blank">compelling 2002 study</a> published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin outlines the dangers of venting. Researchers divided 600 college students into three groups: distraction, rumination and control. Each group was asked to write a short essay on abortion. Participants were told that their essay would be evaluated by another participant—their so-called partner in the study. There was no partner. The researchers provided negative feedbacks to every essay. The unsuspecting participants thought their partners had given them bad reviews.

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<h3 class="rtecenter">The theory has been long discredited. But for many people, “venting is good for you” is still considered conventional wisdom.</h3>

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The participants in the rumination group—now noticeably upset by the <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/how-to-overcome-the-fear-of-feedback">negative feedback</a>—were asked to hit a punching bag while they thought about their partner. A photo of the partner (a random person) was displayed on a computer screen. The distraction group was also assigned to hit a punching bag, but they were asked to visualize their fitness goals during the task while looking at a photo of a physically fit person. The control group did nothing.

Following the venting exercise, participants completed a survey detailing their anger levels, and then they participated in another task to gauge their levels of aggression. After all, according to Freud, they should be calmer by now. People in the control group were the calmest after the study. Conversely, the rumination group was the angriest and most aggressive.

Related: <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/how-to-control-your-anger">How to Control Your Anger</a>

Similarly, a <a href="https://online.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/cyber.2012.0130" target="_blank">2013 study</a> found that people who routinely visited and posted on rant websites were more likely to develop anger-management issues. They picked fights easily and received frequent warnings about their behavior. Many of the participants admitted that posting on ranting sites made them feel better.

It begs the question: Why does it feel good to release our anger by venting?

“When people vent their anger, they want to hit, scream or shout, and it feels good to do that, and so they think, Oh, it feels good it must work,” says Brad Bushman, professor of communication and psychology at Ohio State University. He was the lead author of the 2002 venting study. “But it also feels good to take street drugs and eat donuts. But just because something feels good doesn’t mean it’s healthy.”

Venting makes you angrier, and it could jeopardize <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/rohn-how-to-build-good-relationships">your personal relationships</a>. Imagine this: You’ve had an argument with a colleague at work. You come home and complain about the incident to your partner. The act of complaining might provide momentary relief, but your anger doesn’t subside. In that state, you might even channel your anger toward your partner, saying or doing things you’ll later regret.

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<h3 class="rtecenter">“It’s OK to be angry. We don’t have control over when other people make us angry. But we do have control over how we respond.”</h3>

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“People who vent are angrier and more aggressive not just against people they know or love, but even against total strangers,” Bushman warns.

Of course there are problems that need discussion. “Venting is when you express your anger just to get rid of it,” Bushman says. “<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/blog/the-positive-side-of-anger">It’s OK to be angry.</a> We don’t have control over when other people make us angry. But we do have control over how we respond.”

So how do we deal with anger? Bushman suggests the delay tactic, among others. If someone’s temper hits the roof, their blood pressure and heart rate rise rapidly. This is known as a state of high arousal. “Arousal decreases over time,” he says. “So that’s why delay works. When you count to 10, it goes down. When you count to 100, it goes down even more.”

Related: <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/19-calming-quotes-to-help-you-stress-less">19 Calming Quotes to Help You Stress Less</a>

Bushman also recommends what he calls incompatible response. “You can’t feel anger and love at the same time or anger or humor at the same time,” he says. “So you try to push these angry feelings out.”

For example, playing with a puppy invokes feelings of love. You can’t possibly feel frustration while petting a golden retriever puppy. If you <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/4-ways-helping-others-helps-yourself">help out someone</a> in need, you will experience feelings of empathy and compassion, and it’s impossible to be jaded in that state.

Although Bushman advocates for a venting-free life, David M Reiss, M.D., a San Diego-based psychiatrist, sees another perspective. “There’s certainly an advantage to <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/7-qualities-of-people-with-high-emotional-intelligence">acknowledging your emotions</a> and being able to express them,” Reiss says.

Reiss believes there is a right way to vent: Find the right person. “It has to be someone who is not just going to join you in the anger but is also going to help you to come to terms with it and help you calm down,” he says.

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<h3 class="rtecenter">“If you vent to someone who is going to validate you whether your feelings are valid or not, that’s going be destructive.”</h3>

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Reiss adds that your co-venting sessions shouldn’t snowball into lets-get-angry-at-everything fests. Think: a bunch of <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/4-reasons-complaining-to-your-co-worker-about-another-co-worker-is-a-bad-idea">colleagues slamming their boss</a> at an after-work pub.

“If you vent to someone who is going to validate you whether your feelings are valid or not, that’s going be destructive,” he says.

Also try some calming tactics that don’t require scientific evidence: listening to your favorite music, watching a feel-good movie or binging on cat videos on YouTube. After all, laughter is the best medicine.

Related: <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/9-mood-boosting-ways-to-inject-positivity-in-your-life">9 Mood-Boosting Ways to Inject Positivity in Your Life</a>

Venting might feel good, but it’s hurting you. Here’s how.

Venting might feel good, but it’s hurting you. Here’s how. | SUCCESS

The Dangers of Venting

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The Dangers of Venting | SUCCESS

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Dinsa Sachan

When Angelina Jolie announced her divorce from Brad Pitt last year, I put work aside immediately and started to lap up news and videos that promised any scoop on the unfolding event. It’s not as if I cared about the two actors; it just seemed like fun.

I continued to consume filthy gossip about the ex-couple—and possible reasons for their split—throughout the week. I hated myself for wasting time, but reading about celebs’ dirty linen is like munching on a bag of potato chips. It’s comfort food. There’s a mischievous pleasure to be derived from watching the enviable and rich fall from grace. There is even a name for it: schadenfreude. It’s a German word that means secretly enjoying seeing other people go through rough times. Schadenfreude even had its <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B01e7n4RzZc" target="_blank">TV moment in the third season</a> of The Simpsons. Homer Simpson’s daughter, Lisa, loathes him for expressing joy when his neighbor’s store failed.

<h2>Is schadenfreude even a thing?</h2>

Schadenfreude is the exact opposite of empathy. The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer denounced it as the worst possible emotion a human can demonstrate.

Related: <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/5-traits-of-emotionally-wealthy-people">5 Traits of Emotionally Wealthy People</a>

The emotion has been the subject of much research in the past few years. Scientists are now slowly unraveling its neurological underpinnings. They use <a href="https://www.gruberpeplab.com/teaching/psych3131_spring2015/documents/6.1_Smith2009_ExploringWhenAndWhyOfSchadenfreude.pdf" target="_blank">three broad theories to explain schadenfreude</a>. First off, it is borne out of envy. That’s simple: If you are envious of someone’s achievements, you’re very likely to be uplifted by their losses. Some people experience it when they feel others are deserving of misfortune. Case in point: flashy and arrogant celebs or politicians. One can even go through this complex emotion when they have something to gain from another person’s loss. Think green-eyed colleagues doing mental fist-pumps when you screw up a big project.

A <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/54238bf2e4b068090a9b54bb/t/54342454e4b00594d750a8f4/1412703316863/Cikara+%26+Fiske%2C+2013+-+ANYAS.pdf" target="_blank">2013 study</a> published in Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences corroborated some of these theories. Researchers conducted several experiments. For the first one, they showed participants pictures of individuals such as an elderly woman, a student, a drug addict and a well-dressed businessman. These pictures represented stereotypes and were meant to evoke feelings of pity, pride, disgust and envy, respectively. The pictures were paired with everyday scenarios such as “won $5.00,” “got soaked by a taxi” and “sent to the bathroom.” The participants were asked how they felt about the various pictures and the scenarios they were paired with. The researchers also tracked the movement of the participants’ cheek muscles through electromyography—they were interested to see how often the participants smiled.

Here’s what the team found: The participants smiled more often when their targets of envy, such as businessmen, were paired with negative outcomes, such as getting soaked by a taxi. In another experiment for the same study, the participants were shown the same combinations of targets and scenarios, and asked to report how they felt. Their brains were scanned using functional MRI. Not surprisingly, they felt happier when they saw their targets of envy facing a negative outcome. In an online survey, they were even willing to give their target of envy an electric shock! “A lack of empathy is not always pathological,” said Mina Cikara, lead author and a Harvard University psychologist, in a press release. “It’s a human response, and not everyone experiences this, but a significant portion does.”

People who just can’t seem to stop feeling good about other people’s failures may have self-esteem issues. In a <a href="https://www.goallab.nl/publications/documents/2011_Emotion_Van%20Dijk%20et%20al.pdf" target="_blank">2011 study</a> published in Emotion, researchers found that people with a low self-esteem felt more schadenfreude toward high achievers, but individuals with a high esteem didn’t.

Related: <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/videos/youtube/how-to-stop-comparing-yourself-to-others">How to Stop Comparing Yourself to Others</a>

In fact, in a <a href="https://www.wcas.northwestern.edu/nescan/2008-2009%20papers/Takahashietal2009.pdf" target="_blank">2009 study</a> published in Science, neuroscientists even spotted the part of the brain where schadenfruede originates. It’s called the ventral striatum and is involved in the brain’s reward circuitry: the same loop that is responsible for beer cravings and sexual desires.

<h2>Could you feel this way about your friends?</h2>

I have to admit that I feel schadenfreude for real people around me as well—sometimes even friends. Even though I try to curb the malicious pleasure and go to great lengths to help friends in trouble, it’s hard not to feel a little relieved that I’m not the one in the soup. At least, that’s what some of the research seems to suggest. Maybe I’m not such a terrible person, after all.

But wait, there’s another twist here: gender. A <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/pere.12081/abstract" target="_blank">2012 study</a>&nbsp;published in the journal Personal Relationships showed that women experienced pangs of schadenfreude for other female friends when it came to misfortunes related to physical attractiveness, such as gaining weight. To some degree, men felt the same way for their male comrades when it came to losses associated with social status, say, <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/4-simple-reasons-you-didnt-get-the-job">failing a job interview</a>. The researchers speculate this happens because people view their same-sex friends as competition in the cut-throat world of mating.

But here’s some news to bring you relief: A study has found that schadenfreude starts young in humans. It also means we might have evolved to experience it every now and then. A <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/pere.12081/abstract" target="_blank">2014 study</a> published in PLOS ONE found that schadenfreude is demonstrated by even 2- to 3-year-old kids. In this experiment, there were two conditions: equal and unequal. In the equal condition, a mother sat next to a table reading out loud to herself, while two kids (one her own child and another a friend of her child) played with toys. After two minutes, she would pretend to accidentally spill water on the book and stop reading. In the unequal condition, the mother would place the other kid on her lap and start to read the book out loud to him. Just as she did in the equal condition, the mother would spill water on the book and stop reading. When the reading stopped prematurely, the mother’s own children expressed joy by jumping, clapping or rolling on the floor. Clearly, the little ones were enjoying their little moment of schadenfreude.

In a press statement, the study’s lead author, Simone G. Shamay-Tsoory, a professor of psychology at the University of Haifa in Israel, said: “The study strengthened the perception that schadenfreude is an evolutionary mechanism that develops within us as we cope with situations of inequality.”

Recently, one of my breathtakingly gorgeous friends had a terrible case of acne breakout. I quickly banished the evil glee I felt momentarily when I saw a white ointment smeared across her face. And then, I began to empathize with her.

Related: <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/want-to-win-anything-thats-going-to-take-true-empathy">Want to Win (Anything)? That's Going to Take True Empathy</a>

The science of a complex emotion called schadenfreude

The science of a complex emotion called schadenfreude | SUCCESS

Why Do We Feel Happy When Others Fail?

Why Do We Feel Happy When Others Fail? | SUCCESS

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Dinsa Sachan

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The Dangers of Venting

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