Are You Guilty For Complaining: Do You Gripe?
By Wendy Glazier
Someone lovely emailed me the other day and I could not help but notice their opening line was about feeling guilty for complaining.
It got me asking: Does complaining or griping about things help us. Specifically, does it serve a function? As someone who has made a living caring about others via sincere and attentive listening, I am downright curious this month. I have decided that complaining fascinates me. The timing to study this topic seems spot-on as there have definitely been valid challenges, changes, and adjustments to
make– or/and to complain about, every single week.
So— I took a moment to reflect on the circle of people in my life. You may wish to try this too. I found I could readily place into categories both my familiar, treasured complainers and my non-complainers. Think about it. Who are your people that enter your mind this moment, the ones who always gripe or vent, or conversely, never complain! Crazy hey.
Basic human attributes or behaviors usually stand out fairly clearly. Very fascinating to me, there are quite likely value systems, demographics, and lifestyle variables that impact how we complain or if we complain. Note to self: look more into this later. And who do you know including yourself who definitely chooses to utilize complaining as even a self-care strategy? Or, is it all the same? Is complaining just and always complaining!
I will come clean to get us started. I do. I complain. I choose to use complaining as an outlet, as a means to an end. I want to feel better and know that being listened to assists me greatly. The latter is especially so when I wish to move on from something that I am irked by.
To be clear I hope we can talk here mainly about important matters of the heart that we might complain about. Things that are fairly troubling and concerning. Things that totally make us feel down or notice that life sucks a bit. The hard stuff. You know what I mean.
We all have daily, small-sized complaints. There are gazillions of small gripes are there not? Yesterday, for instance, my newest, favourite waterproof snow boots definitely had my socks getting wet. Groan!
Solution: I guess I will need to spray them with a protector.
I find it funny as I write this as I made myself stop to try to remember what else I griped about yesterday. I told you about my boots and wet socks. However, all other things are now forgotten! I moved on I guess. Or, I found fast enough solutions. I think I cope fairly decently and use solution finding in such a way that I never get too down about most things. This of course certainly makes me realize our gripes fall on a revolving continuum of small to large for sure. It is those larger complaints or heart troubling items I hope to focus on with you. My goal is to explore how each responds to things in our face, our amidst, in our relationships, or in our environment. Do we utilize complaining in a way that serves us? To answer this I hope to do a little research, and some very casual interviewing to catch a little snapshot of how we all complain, to feel even worse, or… to perhaps feel better.
Stay tuned?
Warmth and elbow bumps, wendy the explorer.
