What Complaining Every Day Does to Your Health
Our brains are incredible, it is the most complex part of the human body, and controls everything from, intelligence, movement to controlling our behavior.
But just like every other muscle in our body, we often forget that it needs to be looked after and trained to help us improve and not get stuck in bad, often unhealthy habits. A perfect example of this is if you complain every day. It can have some very interesting impacts on your health and mental well being.
While it can be good to vent your frustrations and annoyances from time to time so that you don’t bottle up and repress emotions, complaining everyday is basically like you are training your brain to think negatively. Therefore you start to develop unhealthy patterns of thought that have other effects on the body.
1. It creates a negative filter
The more you complain, the more your brain begins to filter everything through a negative perspective.
While venting on occasion is healthy, complaining regularly on the daily actually changes your brain’s perspective and how it processes information.
Instead of having a neutral or positive perspective that all events and situations are processed through, complaining daily creates a negative filter that information goes through.
For example, instead of seeing beautiful flowers blooming outside your office and thinking how lovely they are, you will see them and think about how they affect your allergies.
The negative filter takes every interaction and encounter and puts a negative spin on it which makes it even more difficult to find joy in the little things.
2. It reduces serotonin levels
Complaining daily literally makes it harder to be happy because your brain isn’t being exercised in the capacity that would prompt it to release serotonin. Serotonin is the “happy” chemical that is released in your brain.
Instead of seeing those flowers and getting a rush of serotonin happiness, you get no natural chemical boost and just keep feeling cranky.
3. It causes physical strain on your body
Complaining every day not only creates a more negative outlook on life for yourself, but it also takes a toll physically.
It can cause or enhance tension headaches, muscle fatigue, lethargy, muscle tension and soreness.
It physically drains you and hurts you, making everything feel more unpleasant and even painful.
4. It increases your stress levels
While venting on occasion can help to reduce stress levels when done properly to release emotions in a safe outlet, complaining daily can actually cause higher stress levels.
Because your brain is filtering information through a negative process, you’re more prone to be aggravated and stressed out by situations or activities that normally wouldn’t have that effect on you.
Stress, especially prolonged stress, has many negative and harmful effects on your body, mental health, and emotional health.
It causes unnecessary wear on your organs, strain on your heart, and causes or increases depression.
5. It puts a strain on your relationships
Your daily complaining not only affects your bad mood, it also negatively impacts the people around you.
You can start to pass your negative mood on to them. In some situations it is difficult to listen to someone you care about constantly complain about every little thing. Eventually that stress and the negativity will wear a person down until they want to distance themselves.
When you complain everyday, it not only makes your company less desirable to be around, but it causes your loved ones stress as they try to deal with your negativity and your bad mood transfers to them.
To sum up, just as you’ve conditioned your mind to think negatively, you can re-condition it to start thinking positively. The first step to changing the way you think is awareness of the behavior you want to change.
If you catch yourself complaining or being negatively nit-picky about your everyday, conscious awareness and conscious effort to change that will help reduce all of the negative effects that complaining daily has on you.
You’ve just read, What Complaining Every Day Does to Your Health. Why not read Manager Had To Hire A New Employee.