A lot of people think that
the key to feeling better
is to vent your emotions.
There's research on this.
Venting is good for strengthening
bonds between people.
It's good to know that, you
know, we're buddies now.
I could call you up if I'm struggling.
You're going to listen to
me and empathize with me.
That's great for our relationship,
but if all you do is just
validate what I'm going through
and you don't take the next step
to additionally help me
look at that bigger picture
and problem solve, I
leave the conversation
feeling really good about
my relationship with you,
but the problem is still there.
So just venting ends up leading
to what we call co-rumination,
which can be pretty harmful.
The people on my Chatter Advisory Board,
they know to first
validate, empathize with me,
learn about what I'm going through.
They've got my back.
They communicate that powerfully,
but then once they do that,
they start working with me
to broaden the perspective,
to try to think through that problem,
which I'm having
difficulty doing sometimes
when the chatter is really, really loud
and you know, typically
when I get to that stage,
I'm in pretty good shape.