Every time you complain, you damage your brain. This type of negative talk activates the amygdala, which floods your body with hormones that shrink the hippocampus and strengthen neural pathways for fear and stress.
In fact, complaining rewires your brain in the same way as experiencing a traumatic event. Your focus on and talk about what you don’t like ends up creating a mild form of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
Complaining Causes Trauma-Level Brain Changes
You might have been told to vent rather than hold in your feelings of dissatisfaction. It turns out that’s bad advice.
A variety of neuroscience studies show that complaining causes trauma-level brain changes. Specifically, chronic complaining activates neural networks associated with stress and threat detection, making the brain more sensitive and reactive to certain situations. Each time you complain, you rewire your brain with new neural pathways for fear, negativity, and stress.
You’ve likely heard about neuroplasticity, or your brain’s ability to learn and adapt. It’s an internal rewiring process that allows your brain to adjust to new and increased demands.
You can rewire the brain with new neural pathways by consciously repeating specific thoughts, feelings, and actions, for instance. Or you can unconsciously rewire it through habitual ways of thinking, feeling, and acting—including complaining.
Here’s what that means for people who chronically and habitually complain. Each time they engage in such thinking and behavior, their neurons:
- branch out, making the flow of information easier along the pathways associated with dissatisfaction, negativity, and fear.
- grow closer together, creating more permanent connections that reinforce the complaining habit.
Ultimately, all of this creates a feedback loop that makes it easier to complain and harder to be positive or grateful. Plus, you will find more reasons to complain, because situations will trigger fear, negativity, and stress.
Consider people who have PTSD. They become triggered by things that their brain connects to their past traumatic experience. In a similar fashion, those who complain become triggered by experiences related to past complaints or reasons to complain.
Similarities between Trauma and Complaints
You may believe trauma and complaints are too dissimilar to cause the same type of brain “damage.” However, there is a clear connection between the impact on the brain from both.
- Just as past trauma can make someone more sensitive to future stress—especially stress similar to that experienced when initially traumatized, the repetitive nature of complaining can “prime” the brain for negativity. This creates a similar hypersensitivity to stress-related cues.
- Both complaining and trauma create self-perpetuating cycles where the brain becomes wired to expect and react more strongly to negative experiences.
- In both cases, the brain physically changes in response to repeated experiences. Trauma-related rewiring is a response to a life-altering event. Complaining, while less severe or impactful, reinforces negative neural pathways through repetition.
The Body’s Response to Complaining
Both trauma and habitual complaining trigger physical responses that can be detrimental over time. Let’s look at what happens to your body when you complain.
Each complaint activates your amygdala, the part of your brain that serves as an alarm system. Once it senses danger, the amygdala puts you into fight or flight mode—even when your life is not threatened.
When activated, the amygdala floods your body with cortisol, a stress hormone. One minute of complaining might cause hours of hormonal chaos.
Your hippocampus—the brain’s learning and memory center—shrinks when constantly impacted by cortisol. This decrease in size is the same type of brain damage seen in trauma and PTSD sufferers.
With all that cortisol in your body, your prefrontal cortex—the decision-making center of the brain—shuts down. Complaining literally makes you less clear, sharp, and able to make choices.
Complaining is like a Virus
Not only does complaining wire you to complain more, but it’s like a virus that spreads from one person to another. You’ve probably noticed this effect: one person complains, and others who hear the complaint begin sharing their own dissatisfaction.
There’s a reason why this happens. Hearing someone complain activates your mirror neurons. As a result, your brain copies their negativity, fear, and stress. This creates the desire within you to complain, speak negatively, and feel the same trauma experienced by the other person.
Your brain causes your body to mirror the complainer’s brain patterns. And this can result not only in you beginning to complain but also in feeling energetically and emotionally drained after spending time with them.
Your environment programs your mind. The people you follow, listen to, and spend time with shape how you think, feel, and act.
3 Ways to Stop Damaging Your Brain with Complaints
Like any habitual behavior, you can change the complaining habit. Here are a few ways to do that.
1. Spend time with positive, growth-minded people.
Stop spending time with those who complain or have a negative outlook. When people complain, it attracts negative energy and agreement from others. You will want to join in and complain with them.
When others join in your complaints, it validates your dissatisfaction with situations or people. It also causes you to believe your interpretations or problems are real. That makes you want to complain more and get more positive feedback for doing so.
Fill your life—including your social media feed, television time, and relationships—with people and things that inspire growth, peace, and purpose.
2. Feel and express gratitude.
Expressing appreciation and gratitude, especially during challenging times, helps expand your ability to see new opportunities, make different choices, and receive more of what you desire.
Plus, you can’t complain and express gratitude simultaneously. You are either feeling grateful or dissatisfied, seeing the positive or the negative.
3. Shift from problem to solution.
Replace complaints with affirmative statements and focus on solutions rather than problems. This means you must learn to maintain positivity and certainty even in challenging times. Develop a positive mindset, despite logical reasons to doubt or complain.
To do this, you also need to take back your power. Complaining is a way of saying, “I don’t like ‘X’ but can’t change it.” Instead, say, “I don’t like ‘X,” so I will find a way to change it.”
Don’t be a victim of your circumstances. Stand up, and freely choose to change them.
Personal Change Saves Your Brain
Ultimately, you will stop damaging your brain with constant complaining when you change yourself. Engage in personal growth or development; develop new habits and mindsets. Be someone who never complains, rather than someone like “Debbie Downer,” the Saturday Night Live character played by Rachel Dratch, who constantly complained.
Prevent your brain from starting the process that ultimately causes trauma-level brain changes. Do this by giving your brain the input that makes you feel happy, grateful, and peaceful.
Eventually, you will rewire your brain in a positive way, which will become your default wiring. Not only that, you’ll create a healthier brain and experience less fear, negativity, and stress. You’ll also lose the need or desire to complain.
Do you have a complaining habit? Tell me why in a comment below. And please share this post with those who may benefit from reading it.
Image courtesy ofismagilov.
