I’ve been talking about trauma and loss, so I want to talk about complaining.
We are experiencing a loss of freedom, connection and fear of economic fall during this pandemic. We are not used to this kind of prevalent, lengthy and collective grief in the air.
Grief has six stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, and meaning. Any given day we are cycling through some or all of these emotions. It’s hard to find the meaning when we don't know when this prolonged uncertainty will end.
What works against us is that many of us are fighting our feelings. We wake up and say to ourselves: “this will be over soon,” “things will get better,” “let me stay productive through it.” This forced optimism of compartmentalizing the problem, bypassing the pain and focusing on a solution is how we deny the complexity of our experience and run away from our feelings.
In psychotherapy there is a term called spiritual bypass. When we engage in spiritual bypassing, we use spiritual practices to compensate for low self-esteem, social isolation, or other emotional issues.
People who use spiritual bypass are dexterous at covering up their actual feelings with either spiritual practices, discipline, productivity, or plain old (tragic) optimism.
They run away from their feelings in the name of enlightenment, psychological strength or self control. They may feel enlightened and in control for a short period of time, but soon enough they are triggered by the same issues that sent them to be more disciplined, productive or spiritual to begin with.
It’s like holding a beach ball under the water, it will keep popping up. All that effort, work and drama, yet nothing gets accomplished.
When we don’t take time to acknowledge and accept our emotions, we don’t learn how to handle them. The most effective thing to do is acknowledge and accept the emotion, sit with it and honor it without repressing it. We have to work through our emotions, we can’t work around them.
Some signs of spiritual/emotional bypassing:
Overemphasizing the positive and avoiding the negative
Starting sentences with “at least..”
Being overly detached
Being overly idealistic
Having feelings of entitlement
Exhibiting frequent anger
Being overly compassionate
Pretending everything is ok when it’s not
Engaging in cognitive dissonance (when your beliefs and actions don’t align)
Thinking that anger or sadness are “bad”
Rarely or ever yelling or crying
Need to be in control of things or people
Feeling uncomfortable around overly emotional people
Avoiding conflict or uncomfortable conversations
We think by avoiding, escaping and even redirecting our emotions we don't give them power, but the opposite happens. By engaging in spiritual and emotional bypass we repress our emotions and give them more power.
Just like that beach ball that won’t stay under water, repressed feelings don't go away. Until acknowledged, felt and worked through, they haunt us forever. Even worse, repressed feelings metastasize in our bodies and change our biochemistry, which can cause depression and chronic illnesses.
So what’s complaining got to do with any of this?
Complaining gets a bad rep unmindfully and rashly. We underestimate and minimize the healing aspect of complaining.
Complaining is another way of acknowledging and processing our emotions.
So when you complain to your partner:
“I’m tired of walking around with a disinfectant spray.”
“I want to go out and see my friends.”
“Stop telling me what I could or should be doing during lockdown.”
And he responds: “we are lucky to have it as good as we do”, you are both right. Gratitude is deeply important, and you're allowed to complain!
We can’t be grateful all the time. When we try to be grateful at the expense of not acknowledging our emotions, we spiritually and emotionally bypass.
Gratitude is important for healing, but often we jump straight into gratitude without feeling our feelings. This is when gratitude becomes a coverup and an insidious way we repress our true feelings. This isn't gratitude at all, it’s an emotional bypass at it’s finest.
Complaining is a valve of release. It’s a way to still feel that you have some control over your life even when you don't control squat.
So, do what you can to get through this crisis and get back to your complaining. We can be grateful and complain. We can be responsible and lazy. We can be loving and supportive and vent and talk shit.
Complaining helps us get through this frightening time. Complaining is a survival tool. Complaining helps us feel our feelings. When we feel our feelings, we can change them. When we feel our feelings, no matter how scary, we ensure that lessons we learn from this tragedy stay with us forever.
Week by week, we have been going through phases. First it was mad hoarding and stress. Then planning and anxiety. Now the stagnation and lethargy. It’s ok, if not beneficial, to complain.
He is what I’m complaining about:
I am tired of hunting for damn paper towels every week
I’m over these home workouts, they don't work for me. Yes, I know it’s not the home workouts, it’s me not taking it seriously, but I need to go to a MF GYM
I’m over wearing a hideous bandana over my face
I’m sad watching people scatter away from each other in public places. I know we do it for the greater good, but watching people avoid each other still breaks my heart
I am tired of watching stale faces on Zoom
I’m pissed that my never ending project list is still not complete
I miss seeing my mother
I’m sure I’ll have new complaints next week..
As I advocate for complaining’s cathartic effects of emotional release, there is actually a way to complain effectively and intelligently.
Know the purpose of your complaint.
The purpose of complaining is to achieve an outcome.
It can be to vent, work through your feelings or to solve a problem. Know what the purpose is. If it’s to solve a problem, you may need to call customer service instead of complaining to your partner.
I am pro complaining, but against misery that tries to invite company.
Choose the right words to express your complaints.
I know that we are usually frustrated, irritated or hurt when we complain, but our message can be misinterpreted or lost if we are not conscientious about how we deliver it.
If our voice gets too loud or our tone is too harsh the recipient of your complaint may not be able to move past your tone. Feeling angry is fine, but if you use put-downs or cursing to decorate your message, attention will go to the anger and not your message. As a result, you’re more likely to get resistance or start an argument instead of getting the result you’re after.
Choose the right person to complain to.
Rarely do we voice our complaints to the people who can actually do something about them. We complain to our partners about our friends and to our friends about our partners.
We complain to people who are in our close proximity but are too selfish to listen and hold space for us.
When you need to vent or work through your feelings, choose the person who lets you do that freely and without judgement. This person will let you express your fears and longings without pointing out everything else that's going right in your life.
They won’t urge you to be grateful. They won’t try to minimise your complaints or redirect attention back to themselves by saying: “oh thats not so bad, guess what happened to me..”
They will let you get your words and feelings out fully. They will hold space for you. They will say things like: “that’s really hard,” “I can’t believe you're going through this,” “you have every right to feel that way,” They won’t say things like: “I told you so,” “you should have known,” or “what are you gonna do about it?”
They don't scold you. They don't cheer you up. They just hold space for you to express yourself and work through your own emotions of fear, sadness, anger, disappointment or guilt. They stay in the uncomfortable and painful feelings with you.
After complaining to these people you feel lighter. You feel like you have some say-so about the situation. You feel heard, seen and valued regardless of your complaint.
***
Finally. If we turn a complaint into action it becomes useful, otherwise it remains just a self absorption.
I am bored with hearing myself complain, so I am shifting to accountability.
Sometimes this is the process of working through our feelings: we need to complain first, then we are ready to take responsibility. That's the cathartic power of complaining.