Friends of Dave #437: 🤗 a meaningful life 👍
Mastering the Art (and Rules) of Venting
Friends, we have all been there.
POP QUIZ: Someone close to you — a friend, family member or colleague — corners you and says the following 5 words:
“I just need to vent.”
What do you do? What do you do?
Sure, we all need to get things off our chest or blow off some steam every once in a while. More healthy to do that than to keep things all bottled up — and sharing these feelings with someone you trust will listen and show empathy can just be the salve you need in the moment.
We commonly refer to it as “venting.”
But venting without some rules and strategies can quickly make things go off the rails for both the Ventee (the person on the receiving end) and the Venter (the person doing the venting).
Friends, I am going to share a couple of basic strategies for you to think about the next time you get sucked into a Venting Vortex.
The Ventee
Rule #1: Your job is NOT to FIX ANYTHING. Your job is simply to LISTEN.
People who are venting do not care about your opinion. They don’t want to problem solve. They don’t want your help. They DEFINITELY don’t want to hear about what they “should” do or “could have” done.
They just want an immediate, therapeutic outlet to express their feelings — and don’t have instant access to or want to pay for a professional therapist or counselor. As a Ventee, you need to understand are basically there to provide a free therapy session.
So, if someone makes their intentions clear about venting (see Rule #2 if not), know that your primary directive is to allow the person to unload. Say “Uh huh” or “Hmm” or “That’s valid.” Put those phrases on shuffle, and that is it.
Rule #2: If you are not clear if a person is venting or truly wants your advice, ASK BEFORE YOU ENGAGE.
A lot of serial venters don’t state their intentions overtly. They just start bitching or kvetching or whining about their problems and feelings and try to bait you into a confrontation because they are not fully aware of their feelings.
To keep yourself out of the Venting Vortex, it is important in these instances to ask a simple question: “Do you want my help or do you just want to vent?”
There are only three answers they can give you:
“I want your help.” In this case, feel free to proceed with caution to problem solving mode. Listen, understand the challenge the Venter is presenting, provide guidance if you want, but ABORT the mission if you see the conversation drifting back to venting or into a toxic or repetitive cycle of rumination.
“I just want to vent.” Simple — refer to Rule #1
“I don’t know. I’m not sure.” Clearly a novice venter. They need help that is way beyond your pay grade unless you are a trained professional. Recommend you gracefully exit the conversation ASAP. When in doubt, refer to Rule #1
Rule #3: Put a time limit on the venting.
As a Ventee, you are providing a service in the form of counsel. Like any counselor, remember that your time has value — and the return you get from allowing someone to vent is limited and diminishing.
Once you know you are engaged in a venting session, it is incumbent upon you to set the boundary on the time because the Venter (particularly a serial Venter), who does not care about you in that moment, will vent until they feel they have some sort of resolution. This could go on for hours…in some instances even days or weeks.
In order to stay out of the Venting Vortex, make sure you set a firm limit on how long you will allow the venting to go. You can state it up front if you feel the Venter will respect the terms (as in “Okay I am free for you to vent for 30 minutes…GO.”) or make a graceful exit from the Venting Session at the expiration time you set — your call.
IMPORTANT NOTE: At any time, if a venting thread starts to repeat (as in, something is vented and then you hear the exact thing again minutes later), end the session immediately. ABORT. Repetitive venting is toxic and a fast track to the Venting Vortex.
Rule #4: When in doubt, observe Rule #1.
The Venter
Rule #1: Venting is a privilege, not a right.
Yes, as a I said before, it can be a good, healthy thing to vent from time to time. But just recognize that venting is selfish and, with all due respect, kinda makes you an a$$hole.
Why? Because no one is required to give you their time to let you vent. So when you vent to someone else (and we all do at one point or another), recognize they are giving you a privilege to use their time, their patience and their emotional intelligence for your benefit. Be grateful for that privilege and use that privilege wisely and with respect.
Think about that…so whenever possible, you should be mindful of your venting. Don’t over extend yourself. Don’t be a habitual venter. Don’t take a shotgun approach to your venting and vent the same exact things to multiple people. That doesn’t make you healthier — it just makes you a bigger selfish a%%hole.
Despite all of that, if you find you need to vent to another person on a regular basis, do the smart thing — find one person whose job it is to let you vent, and pay them for their time, patience and emotional intelligence. That converts the privilege to a RIGHT to vent. By the way, the most qualified person is a professional, trained counselor or therapist.
Rule #2: Make your intentions clear about your venting.
People are wired to want to help others — particularly those that are close to them. But when you vent, you don’t necessarily want help. You just want to unload an emotional burden and receive validation.
I get it. But a lot of times what seems like innocent bitching and moaning can turn into full on venting which can quickly spiral into a vortex.
Don’t put the people who are letting you vent into a tough spot where they may feel the need to offer you unwanted help or advice. Just ask them — “hey, do you mind if I just vent to you for a few minutes?” Give them the chance to say no.
If they don’t want to engage with you, which is WELL WITHIN THEIR RIGHTS, refer to Rule #1.
If they do agree to give you that privilege, don’t waste their time. Be thankful. You are essentially getting a free therapy session from someone. Use the time wisely.
Rule #3: Understand what you want to achieve from your venting.
What is the main thing you need from being able to vent?
Is it just to get something off your chest?
Express a feeling out loud so you can figure out what it means?
Receive some validation of the feelings you have from someone else?
Venting to just vent is a waste of time — yours and the person to whom you are venting. To stay out of the Venting Vortex, you should have a strategy to your venting BEFORE YOU START (or at least pause early on in the venting if it comes out of the blue so you can establish this) so you can ultimately move past it.
Here’s the thing: if you continually find that you don’t know why you need to vent before you actually vent, then you have a bigger problem — it means you lack emotional control. All of the venting you do is then just a false errand. It will never give you peace of mind — and in the process, it will likely frustrate your Ventee(s) of choice.
Rule #4: When in doubt, observe Rule #1.
Hopefully, whether you find yourself a Venter or a Ventee, this primer gives you some tools to think about to avoid the dreaded Venting Vortex.
And, Friends, if all else fails, I suppose you could employ another strategy: just start an email newsletter on Substack (or your platform of choice) and rant, bitch, moan, kvetch and vent to your hearts content on a regular basis. People can actually SUBSCRIBE to it and then CHOOSE to read your BS if they want or just delete it or ignore it.
Yeah….that’s what I would do…..😜
XOXO
Dave
And now a few things to make you smarter…
Nearly four straight years of rising inflation followed by worries of a looming recession has Americans scrambling to save to get them through tough times.
But where is saving money easiest and hardest in the U.S.? To answer that, personal finance advisers Bankrate analyzed and ranked all 50 states on three main indicators. They are: bank deposit interest rates, state and local taxes, and the performance of the economy.
Everyone seems on edge these days. A source of protection from feelings of anxiety and despair is the sense that one is leading a meaningful life. When people feel that their lives are meaningful, they feel that they have a purpose that guides them, and their life seems to make sense. They feel that what they are doing really matters, that they are capable of making a difference in the world. With a sense that life is meaningful, one can stand stronger in the face of the slings and arrows thrown at us by these uncertain times.
Books have the power to change our lives on a fundamental level, shift our thinking, influence our beliefs, put us in touch with our feelings, and help us understand ourselves and one another better. Here’s a list of inspiring reads you need to check out.
The election of an American Pope, the first American Pope … there’s a signal here that the church is taking a side in what’s happening around the globe.
Pope Leo is unlikely to match perfectly the positions of either American political party and will disappoint many as he runs a church that operates far outside of any local political faction. But he knows the U.S. political culture more intimately than any other pope in history — knowledge that may prove useful, as he is unlikely to escape politics altogether.
Over the past few years, generational warfare has only ramped up—so much so that it’s become boring to even reference: Gen Z hating on millennials for being cringe, millennials hating on Gen Z for being puritanical, and everyone hating on boomers for being, well, boomers. But Gen X—born somewhere between 1965 and 1980—has been largely forgotten about.
👉What if the cool ones are actually those unbothered people that nobody talks about? 👈