Got Problems? Keep Them to Yourself

Next time you have a tough day at the office (in the unlikely event that you're gainfully employed), pour yourself a stiff drink or ten and keep quiet.

When encountering stressful events in daily life, venting to a friend about them may not always be helpful, a new study concludes.

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"Venting is not an effective strategy for anyone trying to cope with daily stress, ..." said social psychologist Brad J. Bushman, who teaches at Ohio State University and has researched aggression and coping, but was not involved in this study. "Research clearly shows that venting increases rather than decreases stress."

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"It's no use ruminating about small failures and setbacks and [dragging] yourself further down," said study author Dr. Joachim Stoeber, a psychologist at the University of Kent in England.

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The fact that venting is an unsuccessful way to cope with failure may seem counterintuitive to those who have been taught to share their negative feelings to try to "purge" them. But it actually creates more stress "because it keeps arousal levels high, aggressive thoughts active in memory, and angry feelings alive," Bushman said.

"People say that venting feels good, but the good feeling doesn't last, and it only reinforces aggressive impulses," Bushman told MyHealthNewsDaily.

He said that anger often precedes aggression, and venting is behaving aggressively (against people or inanimate objects). The reasons why we vent may simply be tied to evolutionary causes of aggression in humans.

[Yahoo! News]