Larry comes off the tennis court saying, "I'm pooped." Tom looking dejected, head down, says, "She doesn't love me anymore." Harry complains, "Business is awfully slow. I haven't had a sale in months." Darryl says, "My car is a lemon. Everything made now-a-days is poorly done. Why can't they make a reliable car?"
This is wrong, that is wrong. Everything is wrong, wrong, wrong. We complain when something is doesn't go as we wish; we complain when we feel badly. Others complain. Complaining seems a national pastime.
Yet hearing someone complain, even listening to ourselves complain, is at least unpleasant. At most it is destructive to ourselves and our relationships. Then why do we do it, and what can we do to improve the situation?
Sometimes we hear, "If you think you know what is going on, you really don't understand the situation." At least complainers recognize there is a problem. Research into creativity shows that problem finders are often the most original thinkers because they see difficulties others do not; but unlike the stuck complainers, they take action on them. An inventor on public television once said, "When something doesn't work, I complain like everyone else, but then I seek a way to improve the situation." The problem becomes a stimulus to his creativity. Necessity becomes the key to invention.
Too often we believe that if it is not broke, don't fix it. We wait until there is a problem before considering a change. The crisis becomes a stimulus to action. But emotionally healthy individuals change before they have to.
Creative individuals recognize that it is always broke, or worth breaking--it just depends upon how you look at the situation. The creatively healthy individual is always looking for a better way. Curious individuals see things others fail to notice. They pay attention. They recognize that what worked once is often unlikely to work the same way the next time because the context always changes. Creative/innovative individuals make changes before they are forced to.
For those who have not learned to anticipate change, pain serves the purpose of forcing notice. Where creative individuals may look to seek how or where it is "broke," others wait until they feel some pain.
Pain serves a useful function. Although many people who suffer wish they never felt pain, individuals who actually have no sense of pain do very poorly. These rare individuals frequently injure themselves but do not recognize it. They get hurt like the rest of us, but because they do not feel pain, they do not seek help for themselves, ending up with loss of blood, infections and deformities. Sometimes the failure to recognize an injury results in death. Pain serves a useful purpose of telling us something is wrong.
Psychological pain, likewise, indicates that something is not working. On the other hand, we have mechanisms to help us avoid feeling the pain. These are useful when we are overwhelmed by stress. We may deny, displace or distort the experience temporarily allowing us to cope. This works well in the short run. We may go into a state of shock when we lose someone close to us. When someone close dies, it maybe too much to take in in a short time, so initially we say, "It couldn't have happened. He's really not dead." We deny the reality. We initially deny the experience during overwhelming stress to survive the intense pain. But eventually the loss must be faced to allow the grief process to go to completion.
Avoidance mechanisms sometimes work well temporarily, but over the long haul they can be destructive. Blocked grief leads to clinical depression. Unless faced, the problem remains and often worsens.
This happens in other aspects of life too. Too often we try to ignore the pain. A popular advertiser for pain medication sings, "I haven't got time for the pain." This leads to a fallacy of some stress management systems. Individuals who learn only techniques of relaxation to manage stress might actually be doing themselves a disservice if the resultant strain is telling them to make a change. Denying or ignoring the source of conflict can cause later disaster, just like the consequences of the use of drugs or alcohol.
It is important to identify problems early. It is best when we can find them before they start to cause pain, but recognizing the problem is not enough. Complaining about the disturbance too often prevents action.
The problem with complaining is that it goes nowhere. It is passive. Complaints are dependent pleas. Like the cries of an infant, they are pleadings of helplessness. The infant cannot help itself. Crying lets the parent know something is wrong. An empathic parent can then alter the situation, feeding the infant, changing it, or making it warmer. When the parent makes the correct response, the child stops crying.
Adult complainers unconsciously also want parent-like figures to free them from their troubles. Yet this desire rests on a delusion that someone is, in fact, willing to change them or their situation. But this often does not happen because adults are expected to take care of themselves.
Sometimes in job situations workers have justification for complaints. Supervisors are on the receiving end. Workers relate to their bosses as though they were parent figures who they expect will alter their situation. The recognition of a problem and attempt to change the conditions is often an appropriate response, but grumbling to fellow-workers usually goes nowhere.
Some complain to anyone who will listen, even God, hoping to be relieved of their symptoms. When they plead, they place themselves in the dependent position. Assertive responses to troubles, on the other hand, signifies the expectation of mutual respect. Mature individuals recognize they have something to offer in exchange which they can withdrawn if the difficulties between the parties are not resolved.
Complainers, on the other hand, demand, but not on an equal level of respect. Their cries often seem infantile. The paradoxical situation is one of someone helpless demanding a change. This behavior derives from early unresolved infantile conflicts. There is the plea as stated above, but also there is a command. The listener is put in the position of parent. Complainers seem to expect someone--maybe you--will take care of them. They unconsciously think the world is organized according to their wishes.
This grandiose delusion derives in part from a reaction to being totally helpless as infants. Because mother rushes to meet their needs, they think they control the action. They believe the world goes according to their whims. The world is their oyster. This delusion promotes the narcissistic idea that "because I want something, I will get it." The other part of the unconscious delusion happens when the infant is not supported in reality testing. Too often the grandiosity is fostered by parents who can't say "no." The child who whines in the store for a toy it wants is not helped by parents who give in to the emotional blackmail. Instead of promoting growth, they create complainers who think the world must go as they wish.
Although it is good to notice difficulties, to identify problems rather than deny them in a polyanna fashion, we must go beyond complaining. We need to develop an active, constructive approach, changing complaints into challenges. Emotionally healthy individuals recognize problems, and they take action trying to make positive changes. Creative individuals take responsibility for making changes. They don't passively hope someone else will do it for them. They relate at the level of mutual exchange, not begging for doles.
Those who take the challenge re-frame the difficulty. They alter their perspective. They go from complaint to challenge. Most people who complain want someone else to remove their difficulty. They want to get away from the problem, to avoid it some way. Rather than taking an active stance, they cry out, hoping others will change the situation for them because they delusionally think the world should do it for them.
Complainers and challengers both wish for a change, but the latter does it differently. For challengers, wishing orients desires and action. It serves a different role. Instead of hoping that someone else initiate the shift, challengers instead wonder how they might get from where they are to where they want to be.
Wishing is important in focusing what you want more of. Too often we limit our wishing to what we think possible. But those who do not limit themselves to what they currently know they can accomplish, find new ways of bringing the wish into being. The key difference in complainers and emotionally healthy people is that the latter do something active to improve the situation. Their wishes are helpful in goal setting. They help re-define the problem. They help programing the creative unconscious to be on the lookout for new approaches as possible solutions. Wishes help the creative individual to be ready to respond to the suggestion of a solution. Challengers try to find a better way.
Creative challengers put the problem in a different perspective. They try to look for more, rather than less. Rather than seeking to reduce the pain they complain about, they try to find ways to increase a contrary situation. They try to find a positive way to look at the problem, recognizing that positive orientations attract positive responses.
It is better to increase something you want than to decrease what you don't want. Psychologists have found that punishment or negative conditioning works less effectively than positive reinforcement. Those who are punished not only avoid the situation punished, but they also generalize to avoid the punisher. On the other hand, positive reinforcement results in a more focused response. Moreover, you can get others to support you in your trying to improve a situation when it is clearly identified as to what you want more of. You can clearly tell them how they might assist you in getting what you want.
Consequently healthy individuals ask questions, all kinds of questions. Rather than complaining about their boss or spouse or children. They get specific and ask, "How can I improve my relationship with my boss, my spouse, my children?" They challenge themselves to develop better ways of relating to them. Rather than saying, "I'm pooped," they ask how they might develop more energy, which could lead to questions about getting better sleep, improving their diet, or exercising regularly. Instead of bemoaning, "She doesn't love me anymore," they stop to look for ways of making themselves more loveable. Even if she does not come back, they'll handle the next relationship better. Instead of saying, "Business is awfully slow," they take the active stance asking "How might we get more customers? Do we need need to change our advertising? Maybe our product needs improvement."
Asking the "How might I?" question is important to shift from the passive stance to a more active one. Yet it is important to look for many alternatives in a creative problem solving approach. Thus rather than asking the convergent question, "How?", which implies there is one right answer, the question, "In what ways might I or we...?" asks for several possibilities. Divergent questions imply there might be several options to consider, if one might only look for them. For example, "In what ways might I improve my relationship with my boss, my spouse, my children?" The challenge then is to recognize problems before they get out of hand, and then rather than passively complaining, to ask the challenging questions looking for multiple solutions so the best ones can be found.
The question, "In what ways might we...?" suggests the sharing of resources. It suggests that many might find better solutions than one. Yet it does not demand the other do it for him or her.
The "...else" questions are also important. What else might we do to to improve the situation. Who else might be of assistance? Where else might we look? Not stopping for the first possibility challenges us to look further.
Creative individuals are sensitive to problems, but rather than complain about them, they challenge themselves to discover or develop new possibilities. They don't stop for the first correct answer, but go on to find the best solutions. They are not passive like the dependent complainers but are in charge of their lives. They turn complaints into creative challenges.