Venting Anger May Do More Harm Than Good

[Blind groper]

The general principle applies to a lot more than anger. It applies to grief, sadness, hate, and indeed to all emotions.

We have a little mechanism for helping us to deal with undesirable emotions. It is called 'forgetting'. However, reminders stop us from forgetting.

This is why counsellors who hang around a traumatised person for more than a couple days need to be locked up. If you remind people of a source of emotional pain too much, it is like trying to make a wound heal by picking off the scab. If people need to talk out a problem, that is fine. But only for a little while. Then let them forget it.

[SteveB]

I don't vent anger at people, more at things that don't work. For example, today I took a hammer and punched two big holes in the shed walls because things keep breaking. I hit the truck like a month ago with a snow shovel because it was very stuck in the snow. I also scream and swear out into the wilderness. I live in an acreage so this is all perfectly appropriate.

Venting anger at inanimate objects seems to work for me.

[Audley Strange]

The general principle applies to a lot more than anger. It applies to grief, sadness, hate, and indeed to all emotions.

We have a little mechanism for helping us to deal with undesirable emotions. It is called 'forgetting'. However, reminders stop us from forgetting.

This is why counsellors who hang around a traumatised person for more than a couple days need to be locked up. If you remind people of a source of emotional pain too much, it is like trying to make a wound heal by picking off the scab. If people need to talk out a problem, that is fine. But only for a little while. Then let them forget it.

Well I agree, to a point. Not to the point where counsellors should be locked up. For many people getting things of their chest and dealing with trauma is not just about letting them talk through and forgetting it, but rather to pick off the scab and clean the festering wound, to continue with the physical metaphor. Some people cannot forget and it can take time for them to come to terms with such before they can even begin to think about forgetting, especially those whose traumas were embedded in childhood and who have chronic mental health issues because of such which do not manifest until years sometimes decades later.

Don't get me wrong, not all these childhood traumas can be serious. I became terrified of moths (almost paralysed with fear) because my father once joked that "moths eat eyebrows" when I was very young. It took me till I was 30 and was laughed at by two tiny african children by freaking out at some huge moth before I ever got rid of that stupid phobia, even though I knew he was joking and that it was nonsense.

[Scott1328]

Maybe someone should point a certain RatSkep suspendee to this research. The blood vessels he saves could be his own

[FBM]

Real research available here: http://illinois.edu/lb/files/2009/03/26/9293.pdf

Spoiler: The OP seems to be correct.

[Blind groper]

Well I agree, to a point. Not to the point where counsellors should be locked up.

Note that I restricted that fate to counsellors who hung around too long.

There was a study in Britain a bit over a decade back, where they looked at grief counselling. They divided the patients into two groups, one of which was sent home to deal with their grief on their own. The second group received the full recommended course of grief counselling. After 21 months, the two groups were tested, and the 'sent home' group had shown significantly better recovery.

Counselling may have some value initially (though I think sympathetic family and friends is a better option). In that early stage, it may indeed be like washing a wound. But counsellers should get the hell out fairly soon to permit the wound to heal.

[DaveDodo007]

I don't think people on the whole get angry enough to be honest. How can accepting all the shit throw at you and pathetically tolerating it be good for anyone? In the West at least we are pharmacy pliant machines who seem to forget we evolved from animals.

[FBM]

Here in Asia, visibly losing your shit is considered to be a sign of weak character. Self-control is a virtue.

[Robert_S]

I don't think people on the whole get angry enough to be honest. How can accepting all the shit throw at you and pathetically tolerating it be good for anyone? In the West at least we are pharmacy pliant machines who seem to forget we evolved from animals.

We still are animals.

We are animals that have a lot of power over our personal and collective environments.

[Clinton Huxley]

One doesn't have to get angry to get even.

[pErvinalia]

BULL FUCKING SHIT!!1!

[Clinton Huxley]

I'm a firm believer in devastating politeness.

[mistermack]

I think that the best medicine is facing the truth. Realise what's happened, and that you can't turn back the clock, and take it.

Look at what happened at Hillsborough, when Liverpool fans crushed nearly a hundred of their own fans to death, by pushing and shoving to get into the stadium.

They've been avoiding the truth for the last twenty five years, blaming the police, the ground, anything but themselves. And they are still whining about it now, 25 years later.
If they had faced the facts, and accepted the blame at the time, they would be over it now.

[Jason]

BULL FUCKING SHIT!!1!

So you did go outside.

[DaveDodo007]

I think that the best medicine is facing the truth. Realise what's happened, and that you can't turn back the clock, and take it.

Look at what happened at Hillsborough, when Liverpool fans crushed nearly a hundred of their own fans to death, by pushing and shoving to get into the stadium.

They've been avoiding the truth for the last twenty five years, blaming the police, the ground, anything but themselves. And they are still whining about it now, 25 years later.
If they had faced the facts, and accepted the blame at the time, they would be over it now.

What the actual fuck, seriously are you retarded. Fuck me even the AA were saying that the police excuses aka traffic were bullshit before the match. Liverpool had more fans than Notts Forests will ever have and if you had been to Hillsborough as a away fan you would know their away end sucked herpes infected cocks; as it sucked bigtime. All the evidence showed what a almighty fuck up it was from anybody charged with the safety of the crowd, yet the cover up was the lowest from of propaganda at its worse. Just reading this is more evidence that atheists are scum sucking maggots. Skeptics, critical thinkers and people capable of analytical though are all wonderful people but atheists in and of them selves have proved time and time again to be just as delusional as any creationist.