Venting or Belaboring- Hurt or Heal?

When is venting or expressing one’s concerns healthy, and when does it simply perpetuate negativity. This is quite the question. When we feel wronged by someone, we often find someone we think is in our court with whom to share those wrongs. The scenario is often the same. Someone upsets us, we get our feelings hurt, we find an ally to “vent” to in order to “get it off our chest.” That person oftentimes (because we selected the person carefully) validates our feeling and often continues the drama by telling us exactly why the person was wrong for wronging us. The question is this: What did we solve? Do we feel better afterward or just justified in our feelings. Is that justification worth perpetuating the situation. 

If we have a small fire, we can squelch it by suffocating it, but if we add air to it, the fire will grow. If we add breath to our negative feelings over being wronged, will the negativity grow?

The next time you feel the desire to “vent” to a third party about a situation where you felt wronged, ask yourself, will talking about this help or hurt my healing process?