Let's see if this situation sounds familiar.
Something negative has happened at work. It's a case of outrageous unfairness in favor of an undeserving co-worker, or perhaps a unscrupulous co-worker has engaged in dishonest or backstabbing behavior and gotten away with it. The actual event doesn't matter as much as the fact that you are furious.
When the workday ends, you meet up with a friend and another co-worker because you just need to blow off some steam about this. After all, everybody knows that freely expressing your anger will make you feel better, right?
So you start telling the story, adding in angry comments and scathing details about the perpetrator as you go. Your co-worker, who knows other details and side stories about the whole mess, joins in. Your friend, who doesn't work with the two of you, is taking in the story with disgust and growing ire and starts chiming an outsider's observations on the whole scandalous event. Pretty soon you are all self-righteously hopping mad at the the perpetrator and the seemingly blind management members that allowed this all to happen.
Do you feel better? Has your anger gone away? Do you feel that you have a constructive solution to the problem?
You may feel temporarily better. Your co-worker and friend have rallied around you and you're all full of adrenaline from your anger fest. You are momentarily emotionally drained, but nothing has been done to eliminate or mitigate the situation that caused you to be angry.
Far from being gone, your anger probably has increased. Your discussion with your supportive co-worker and friend has most likely contributed quite a bit more information to support and nourish your anger. In fact, it wouldn't be surprising if you caught your supportive co-worker's eye at work the next day and you both start feeling all the anger surge back.
While potential solutions to a problem might be bandied about in a venting session, they are often of limited practical use. It's not uncommon to fantasize about truly extreme measures, perhaps even violent and illegal ones, in the inferno of rage. Look up any website where jilted love partners talk about revenge on their faithless exes and what I refer to will be crystal clear.
Catharsis, the time-honored concept that the unbridled expression of aggression and anger is a healthy way to dissipate aggression, is a myth. Research has found repeatedly that the expression of anger without constructive problem solving to address the source of the anger only drives anger and aggression levels higher. Here's a brief article courtesy of the Association for Psychological Science (APS) addressing this myth with an excerpt from the book 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology.
So is having a venting session with supportive friends always a negative thing? Absolutely not. It becomes problematic when it goes on for an extended period of time without shifting gears to considering constructive ways to deal with the issue. Perhaps a good practice would be to devote 20 minutes or so to purely blowing off steam and then shifting to practical problem solving mode.
The crucial component in effectively dealing with anger is dealing with the source of it in a calm and assertive manner. This is the step that is too often left out in dealing with anger, but it is the most productive one in reducing present anger and lessening the likelihood that the anger-inducing situation will occur again.
