Someone call Myth Busters and let them know the truth about venting. Not only doesn’t it help in most situations, but it can also be quite harmful. Unless you are incorporating an energy healing technique like EFT/Tapping while venting, or sharing with someone who can help you see things from a higher perspective, you do yourself a great disservice almost every time you vent.
Don’t believe me? Pay attention to how your body feels next time you do it. Venting actually gets us more riled up, and takes others along for the ride. Most people believe it’s healthy, but that’s one of the biggest lies we’ve been sold on mental and emotional health, and what keeps people in therapy for years with slow (or no) progress.
Yes, it’s healthy to honor your emotions. But not by obsessively spewing the details they’re connected with to anyone who will listen! Complaining about what someone else said or did, or about a life circumstance, drains – get this – 30% of your energy.
The only time venting can be helpful is when an event first occurs, and you are already in the throes of passionate emotions. Once you’ve calmed down even a little bit, venting to a second person is like putting unpleasant feelings on a charger.
Venting is like watering weeds. Thanks to the laws of quantum physics, venting attracts more experiences that will trigger the same feelings, and thus keep you locked in a perpetual state of victim consciousness.
One of the biggest stages this plays out on is within social media or forum support groups, which have either grown too large to attend to members’ needs or are run by people who are either relatively clueless or more interested in having big groups than healing ones.
Members provide play-by-plays of the challenges they’re growing through; responses come from riled-up egos, going through the exact same thing at the exact same time, or at least recently enough that they haven’t healed and/or seen the experiences from a new perspective that only time and personal growth can provide.
These groups have no idea the harm they are actually doing to their members. I’ve been checking the ones for people growing through narcissistic abuse out, and I’ve been absolutely horrified.
Yes, it can be helpful to know that you’re not alone. That you’re not losing your mind. That people actually heal from this. It can be very beneficial to ask questions, and seek guidance from people who are further along in their healing. But sharing details of a painful experiences in a group that isn’t being moderated by someone well-trained to support you through it will keep you in victim consciousness, and all the pain that surrounds it – indefinitely.
People who are asking and answering questions like “What is the biggest lie your narc ever told you?” are not healing, and they’re not going to any time soon. Neither are the people who assess all the lies they’ve been told to selected and share their answer.
Stop! Even thinking about the answer to that question is taking you in the opposite direction of healing and empowerment.
Need even more incentive to stop? Every time you blast your partner, you feed the beast. Narcissistic Personality Disorder is fed by attention and energy – good, bad, it doesn’t matter. Whether or not your partner or ex sees the post or hears you talk about them also doesn’t matter. They feel it.
Believe me, I understand the temptation. I obsessively shared my play-by-plays also. I did just about everything that was the complete opposite of helpful – because I didn’t know better. I had no idea what I was contending with the first 20 months of my partnership. And once I did learn, it wasn’t like there was a magic switch to shut down behaviors that had become compulsive and even addictive.
I didn’t have the shortcuts to healing, recovery and empowerment that I teach today. I share some of them in my novel, Love Without Traffic, which I will publish soon. And I’m hosting a training next week May 25-27. Link to details below.
It’s a preview training, which will prepare you for the longer and more intensive one coming later this summer. I’ll share ways to identify narcissists, and some techniques that will greatly serve you.
If venting was one of them, wouldn’t you feel better by now?