Sick of the Chronic Complainer? Here’s How to Fix Their Behavior by Sophie Deutsch

Sick of the Chronic Complainer? Here’s How to Fix Their Behavior By Sophie Deutsch

Notice what the article excerpts below say about emotions being contagious.

If you’re around someone who is more or less negative on a regular basis, regardless of the reasons why they are negative, that can rub off on you and harm you or negatively impact you.

Someone else’s negativity being able to rub off on you can be even worse if you suffer from depression, or, like me, you’re largely over clinical depression but can still, at times, be susceptible to falling into depressive funks that last hours, if you’re around one of these chronically unhappy, sour people (who may have clinical depression themselves, or they may just have a pessimistic personality type).

If you don’t want to end up in a bad mood yourself, if you don’t want your old depressive disorder (or anxiety) triggered, please start avoiding or limiting your time around these negative types of people.

I myself WASTED too many years of my life thinking (thanks to the type of parenting I got growing up, and the Christian faith I was raised in) that it was my duty and job to fix these hurting, negative people who were always yammering my ear off about their physical health problems, financial problems, job or martial problems, or whatever problems.

Consequently, all that listening to their complaining, me absorbing their negativity and, in some cases, me also trying to take on and fix their problems for them, could make my depression worse (when I had severe depression), or just ruin my day and leave me feeling worn out and bummed out the rest of the day.

I’ve also noticed that many of these articles that talk about emotional vampires, chronic complainers, unhappy people, clinically depressed persons (especially the ones with victim syndrome), and other types of negative and/or wounded adults…
Also mention that relief and healing for these people can only become possible whenever these people start taking responsibility for themselves, when they start making changes or modifications in their actions, life styles and/or their thinking processes (attitude). The article below is no exception.

(Link): Sick of the chronic complainer? Here’s how to fix their behaviour
By Sophie Deutsch

Excerpts:

What’s with all the whining?

Complaining is an expression of internal discomfort.

“It’s the externalisation of a feeling,” says psychologist Dr Amy Silver, who runs workshops with organisations on managing emotions for high performance. “It’s pushing something away that is internal and then voicing it in such a way to make it somebody else’s problem.

It’s typically employed as a psychological strategy to avoid confronting difficult feelings and experiences.

“By externalising or pushing the attention somewhere else it means the chronic complainer doesn’t need to recognise that they don’t feel positive, or that they don’t have the skills or energy to fix the problem themselves, or that they don’t feel they have the control over their own life to make choices.

Being stuck in a chronic state of complaining is also highly stressful, which can have a damaging impact on the brain.

What is a chronic complainer doing to our brains?

Unrelenting whining doesn’t just affect the complainer; it’s also drawing others into an orbit of pessimism.

Being Bitter and Blaming Others Can Ruin Your Health by Elizabeth Cohen

Being Bitter and Blaming Others Can Ruin Your Health by Elizabeth Cohen

(Link): Being Bitter and Blaming Others Can Ruin Your Health

Excerpts:

August 2011
By Elizabeth Cohen, Senior Medical Correspondent

…Feeling persistently resentful toward other people — the boss who fired you, the spouse who cheated on you — can indeed affect your physical health, according to a new book, “Embitterment: Societal, psychological, and clinical perspectives.”

In fact, the negative power of feeling bitter is so strong that the authors call for the creation of a new diagnosis called PTED, or post-traumatic embitterment disorder, to describe people who can’t forgive others’ transgressions against them.

“Bitterness is a nasty solvent that erodes every good thing,” says Dr. Charles Raison, associate professor of psychiatry at Emory University School of Medicine and CNNHealth’s Mental Health expert doctor.

What bitterness does to your body

Feeling bitter interferes with the body’s hormonal and immune systems, according to Carsten Wrosch, an associate professor of psychology at Concordia University in Montreal and an author of a chapter in the new book.

Studies have shown that bitter, angry people have higher blood pressure and heart rate and are more likely to die of heart disease and other illnesses.