Negative Experiences are a Part of Life

A Japanese university experimented to see how people socially share their experiences when they see images that evoke unpleasant feelings. When participants were left alone in a waiting room with a friend after seeing the unpleasant images, 95.3% of them told their friends about the images. Even when they were told not to disclose, 53% of them ended up talking about their experience a week later. Our desire to share bad experiences with others is so strong, and we struggle to keep it to ourselves.

In clinical psychology, verbalization of emotions is believed to have a cathartic effect that removes anxiety and tensions. Verbalizing emotions is also linked to better mental health, as it has significant implications for depression recovery. People seem to derive these effects from “cognitive” and “interpersonal” aspects of this behavior, which we will discuss below.

Emotional Support Stabilizes Our Feelings

Tough times can make us feel frustrated and anxious. When these experiences occur, our trust, self-image, perception of others, and the world can be shaken. We all desire to sort out what happened, why it happened, and know what kind of social support we can get. When there’s something out of our control, we feel the need to discuss it with peers so that we can restore our faith again. Receiving the emotional support from our peers makes us feel better about the mistakes we made. These are the “cognitive” reasons we vent our feelings to others.

Staying Connected to Society

When we’re upset, we tend to focus on ourselves and our negative experiences. As a result, we tend to forget about the rest of the world. We try to recover from the loneliness we experience during these times by sharing our negative experiences with friends and family. Our desire to communicate stems from wanting society to know how we’re feeling and to feel accepted through emotional support. This is the “interpersonal” reason why we talk about painful things.

Do We Want to Share Our Embarrassment?

It’s not rare to share the little embarrassing things that we experience. Like when we mess up during a presentation or trip on a flat surface. A Japanese university set to find out if and when students would talk to others about their saddest, angriest, and most embarrassing experiences. Researchers expected results to show that participants seldom shared their embarrassing experiences. However, 71.4 % of participants claimed to share their most embarrassing experiences with others. Also, more than half shared their experience almost immediately after it happened.

Everybody Shares Their Feelings with Others

Sharing feelings is part of our universal behavior. A social study of shared emotional behavior across six countries, including Belgium and Suriname, found no differences by country, age, or gender, in the way that humans shared emotions. Talking about embarrassing or upsetting occurrences seems to be a common phenomenon for men and women of all ages and backgrounds worldwide.

Nevertheless, it can be somewhat stressful for a listener to hear someone’s negative experience, as well as to provide undivided emotional support. It’s wiser to spread your venting among several people rather than dumping everything onto just one person.

Sharing difficult or embarrassing experiences is natural. We should always support our circle of family and friends to help each other get through these experiences.

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Reference:
Kawase, T. (2000). Why We Talk About Our Emotions: Why Do People Talk About Negative Emotions to Others? Bulletin of Miyazaki Municipal University Faculty of Humanities 7(1), 135-149.

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The Merits of Opening Up

It isn’t easy to open up. You need the courage to expose your vulnerabilities and you also need someone you can trust.

However, there are merits to opening up. Our depressive symptoms and mental health improve when we share our struggles or adversities in life. When someone listens and accepts our problems it brings up our self-esteem and frees our sense of loneliness. Advice and sympathy can also ease anxiety so that we can take the next step in action.

When we experience unpleasant events there’s a strong urge to want to share the experience with others. This urge occurs because venting gives us emotional satisfaction.

The 3 Reasons Why You Can’t Open Up

Even when there are merits to opening up, the idea of showing vulnerabilities can be scary. That’s because we anticipate a negative outcome by sharing our struggles.

What makes us anticipate this negative outcome?

Concern 1: There’s a Hierarchy In Place

There’s a chance that the social dynamics and hierarchy would change when you expose your true thoughts. Some people fear being put in an inferior position once their weaknesses are known.

The idea of a possible downgrade in social positions can send a person into a loop of negative thinking. This won’t be easy to change unless perspectives shift.

Concern 2: You Care What Others Think

There are people who anticipate more anxiety and embarrassment from opening up. They care too much about their public image. The possibility of being looked down upon or making someone uncomfortable outweighs the idea of opening up.

Our own common sense does not equate to other people’s common sense. If their internal values are different from others, it may hold a person back from opening up.

Concern 3: You Don’t Want to Remember Anything Negative

When we open up, we have to recall our negative memories to talk about them. Some people want to avoid this.

If there’s a painful past or an unpleasant memory, it can be mentally draining to dip into the past. In other words, it can feel like wounds are being ripped open. In this case, courage and commitment are required for a person to open up.

People With a High Sense of Pride Care About Their “Image”

We all have pride in who we are. Part of it comes from positive self-esteem and what we feel good about ourselves. Generally speaking, our sense of pride is formed through two aspects. The confidence in our capabilities and the belief in self-value.

How prideful you affects whether or not you can be completely vulnerable to open up.

People who have a lower sense of pride tend to feel easily hurt by adversities. This is because they’ve never felt enough self-value or a sense of belonging. On the other hand, people with a huge sense of pride are more tolerant of adversities. This is because they can focus on the other fun things in life or the positive traits regardless of the situation. Their thinking focuses on the future rather than the past and this creates small room for negativity.

In other words, they don’t need to go and share their struggles that risk their public image. Most people don’t want to give off any negative impressions and to manage a front, they think it’s best to avoid showing any vulnerabilities.

It’s Important to Open Up

Not everyone can open up to show who they really are.

However, opening up about how you really feel can fix problems in a relationship. There’s also a risk that a situation worsens because things are kept a secret.

When we open up, it creates an opportunity to form closer relationships. The act of exposing weakness and shame takes away the divide between people. Human beings are capable of empathy. We can form strong bonds when we truly open up to another person.

If you still struggle to open up, we recommend that you try AI (Artificial Intelligence) counseling. There is an AI counseling app that can support your mental journey and make you feel calm. It also has functions that allow for record-keeping so that you can view your problems from a more objective perspective. An AI robot can listen to your problems without judgment anytime, anywhere.

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Reference：

Katayama, M. (1996). The relationship between self-esteem and self-disclosure of negative information. The Japanese Journal of Psychology, 67(5), 351–358. https://doi.org/10.4992/jjpsy.67.351

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