How complaining rewires your brain – your brain loves efficiency and likes to avoid unnecessary work. Repeating a behavior like complaining makes your neurons branch out, easing information flow. This makes it much easier to repeat that behavior in the futureâso easy, in fact, that you might not even realize youâre doing it.
Research shows that most people complain once a minute during a typical conversation. Complaining is tempting because it feels good, but like many other things that are enjoyableâsuch as smoking or eating a pound of bacon for breakfastâcomplaining isnât good for you.
How complaining rewires your brain and is bad for your health
You canât blame your brain. Whoâd want to build a temporary bridge every time you need to cross a river? It makes a lot more sense to construct a permanent bridge. So, your neurons grow closer together, and the connections between them become more permanent. Scientists like to describe this process as, âNeurons that fire together, wire together.â
Repeated complaining rewires your brain to make future complaining more likely. Over time, you find itâs easier to be negative than to be positive, regardless of whatâs happening around you. Complaining becomes your default behavior, which changes how people perceive you.
And hereâs the kicker: complaining damages other areas of your brain as well. Research from Stanford University shows that complaining shrinks the hippocampus. Damage to the hippocampus is scary, especially when you consider that itâs one of the primary brain areas destroyed by Alzheimerâs.
1. Complaining Is Also Bad for Your Health
While itâs not an exaggeration to say that complaining leads to brain damage, it doesnât stop there. Complaining triggers your body to release cortisol, the stress hormone. Cortisol shifts you into fight-or-flight mode, directing oxygen, blood, and energy away from everything but the systems that are essential to immediate survival. One effect of cortisol, for example, is to raise your blood pressure and blood sugar so that youâll be prepared to either escape or defend yourself.
Excess cortisol from frequent complaining weakens your immune system, raising the risk of various illnesses. It even makes you more susceptible to high cholesterol, diabetes, heart disease, and obesity. The brain is also more vulnerable to strokes.
2. Itâs Not Just You…
Since human beings are inherently social, our brains naturally and unconsciously mimic the moods of those around us, particularly people we spend a great deal of time with. This process is called neuronal mirroring, and itâs the basis for our ability to feel empathy. The flip side, however, is that it makes complaining a lot like smokingâyou donât have to do it yourself to suffer the ill effects. You need to be cautious about spending time with people who complain about everything. Complainers want people to join their pity party so that they can feel better about themselves. Think of it this way: If a person were smoking, would you sit there all afternoon inhaling the second-hand smoke? Youâd distance yourself, and you should do the same with complainers.
3. The Solution to Complaining
One solutions is to cultivate an attitude of gratitude. That is, when you feel like complaining, shift your attention to something that youâre grateful for. Taking time to contemplate what youâre grateful for isnât merely the right thing to do; it reduces the stress hormone cortisol by 23%. Research at the University of California, Davis, found that daily gratitude improves mood and energy, reduces anxiety, and lowers cortisol. When experiencing negative or pessimistic thoughts, use them as a cue to shift gears and think about something positive. In time, a positive attitude will become a way of life.
How Complaining Rewires Your Brain – Bringing It All Together
- Have a clear purpose. Before complaining, know what outcome youâre looking for. If you canât identify a purpose, thereâs a good chance you just want to complain for its own sake, and thatâs the kind of complaining you should nip in the bud.
- Start with something positive. It may seem counterintuitive to start a complaint with a compliment, but starting with a positive helps keep the other person from getting defensive. For example, before launching into a complaint about poor customer service, you could say something like, âIâve been a customer for a very long time and have always been thrilled with your service…â
- Be specific. When youâre complaining itâs not a good time to dredge up every minor annoyance from the past 20 years. Just address the current situation and be as specific as possible. Instead of saying, âYour employee was rude to me,â describe specifically what the employee did that seemed rude.
- End on a positive. If you end your complaint with, âIâm never shopping here again,â the person whoâs listening has no motivation to act on your complaint. In that case, youâre just venting, or complaining with no purpose other than to complain. Instead, restate your purpose, as well as your hope that the desired result can be achieved, for example, âIâd like to work this out so that we can keep our business relationship intact.â
Just like smoking, drinking too much, and lying on the couch watching TV all day, complaining is bad for you. Put my advice to use, and you’ll reap the physical, mental, and performance benefits that come with a positive frame of mind.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Travis Bradberry, Ph.D.
Dr. Travis Bradberry is the award-winning coauthor of Emotional Intelligence 2.0 and the cofounder of TalentSmartEQÂź the worldâs leading provider of emotional intelligence tests and training serving more than 75% of Fortune 500 companies. His bestselling books have been translated into 25 languages and are available in more than 150 countries.
Dr. Bradberry is a LinkedIn Influencer and a regular contributor to Forbes, Inc., Entrepreneur, The World Economic Forum, and The Huffington Post. He has written for, or been covered by, Newsweek, BusinessWeek, Fortune, Fast Company, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The Harvard Business Review.