The Best Way to Help People Who Need to Vent

People need to vent. When friends are upset, they need us to listen to them. Their co-worker was condescending, a customer was awful, a partner triggers them, or a parent touches a nerve. Often, the first thing people do after these situations is find someone to tell about it.

We’ve been encouraged to vent when we’re feeling strong negative emotions — let it all out, tell a friend, scream if we need to.

Which makes the following confusing: in studies, venting has been shown to increase our negative feelings. Contrary to what we’ve been told, it doesn’t resolve issues or calm us down. It makes people feel worse — the more they vent, the worse they feel.

In his book Chatter: The Voice in our Head, Why it Matters, and How to Harness it, University of Michigan psychologist and neuroscientist Ethan Kross writes about Bernard Rimé, a Belgian psychologist and research professor. Rimé found through experiments that when people have a negative experience, they are strongly driven to tell someone about it (unless it involves deep shame or certain traumatic experiences). The stronger the emotion, the more people want to talk about it — returning to the subject multiple times throughout the days, weeks, and months that Rimé observed them.

In his studies, he found two main problems with this:

1. Continually returning to the same negative experience without attempting to resolve it doesn’t make us feel better.

2. Our friends get tired of hearing us complain and can be driven away, making us feel even worse.

Kross mentions other studies that reinforce Rimé’s findings. After several tragedies in the United States (9/11 and school shootings at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University) researchers worked with people who experienced the events first-hand and invited them to share their thoughts and feelings about the events through writing, connecting with others, and on social media.

The goal was to see if sharing their feelings could help them cope with the tragedies. It didn’t work. After one year of sharing, the studies found that the more people shared their negative emotions, the worse they felt. The subject’s symptoms of depression or post-traumatic stress were the same as or worse than when they started.

After many years of being encouraged to vent, we’re now finding that venting doesn’t help. What can we do instead? Burying our feelings inside doesn’t solve anything and can make us ill, so that’s not the answer. How can we support our friends and family who need to vent?

In Chatter, Kross tells us what science says.

The good news is, seeking connection when struggling is ideal. Kross explains, “research indicates that affiliating with others while under stress provides us with a sense of security and connection. It triggers a cascade of stress-attenuating biochemical reactions…and feeds the basic need humans have to belong.”

When people hide their feelings and don’t seek connection, they may engage in rumination — the endless spinning of painful experiences that can lead to (or exacerbate) depression and anxiety. By connecting with others, “we allow our emotions to cool down, pulling us out of dead-end rumination and aiding us in redirecting our verbal stream,” Kross says.

But it’s important to connect with people in productive ways when they come to us to vent.

Kross explains that when we share negative emotions, “we display a strong bias toward satisfying our emotional needs over our cognitive ones. In other words, when we’re upset, we tend to overfocus on receiving empathy rather than finding practical solutions.”

In the height of emotion, people aren’t thinking about logical solutions to their issues. They’re looking for emotional support. But they’ll eventually need to be steered away from negativity and towards a solution. Otherwise, the negativity will simply continue — especially if their confidant feeds into the negativity.

According to Kross, “The most effective verbal exchanges are those that integrate both the social and the cognitive needs of the person seeking support.” We should acknowledge and validate the person’s distress, then (when the time is right) start working to help them find a solution.

As Kross points out, the FBI’s Behavioral Change Stairway Model shows how we can meet people’s social-emotional needs, then guide them towards a solution:

1. Active Listening

2. Empathy

3. Rapport

4. Influence

5. Behavioral Change

It may seem strange to use an FBI strategy to help a friend in a jam, but this model is a science-based approach used in hostage negotiations. While it’s unlikely you’ll ever help a friend with something as serious as that, applying this method helps with the same basic strategy: practicing empathy, building trust, and trying to resolve the issue.

It makes sense: First, we carefully listen to the other person, so we can find out why they’re bothered. Next, we put ourselves in their shoes and try to understand how they felt in the moment. When people feel listened to and understood, they’re likely to be receptive to our offer to help find a solution. Both parties can pivot from focusing on the negative situation to how to resolve it.

Here’s what can be tricky: when people are highly emotional, they are often not ready to work on a solution. At first, they need active listening, empathy, and validation. Kross says, “studies show that people prefer not to cognitively reframe their feelings during the very height of an emotional experience when emotions are worked up; they choose to engage in more intellectual forms of interventions later on.”

This means we should analyze the situation and choose the right time to start helping them put things in perspective. This is where active listening and empathy is crucial. We can’t force them to work on the problem before they’re ready. Unsolicited advice at the wrong time can ruin rapport. Instead, ease in to helping them find a solution.

Dealing with overwhelming emotions is difficult. Psychologist and researcher Dr. Jonice Webb has an excellent guide for resolving painful emotions that includes seeking out the help of others.

The next time someone comes to you to vent, you now have science-based tools that you can use to be a supportive partner or friend — you can meet both their emotional and cognitive needs, and hopefully reduce their suffering, anger, and/or anxiety.

They may not realize what you’re doing, but they’ll appreciate it.