It's Monday. It's raining. You're sitting on the M62 going nowhere, wipers on full, brake lights stretching to the horizon. So you ring your friend for the usual weekly moan.
The boss. The workload. The meeting which should have been an email. Same script as last Monday, and the Monday before.
Then your friend stops you with one question. Are you going to keep ringing me about this, or are you going to take some control?
When Debra and I interviewed Advita Patel for Corey-osity Unleashed, she told us this story about her own life. I used it in The Confidence Book Is Not a Private Jet as a turning point in her confidence. I keep coming back to it for a different reason. I want to talk about the friend.
Most of us would call the friend blunt. I think the friend did the kindest thing on offer. She refused to co-sign the misery.
The Weekly Moan Feels Like Friendship
Here's the trap. A good moan with a good friend feels great. Somebody gets it. Somebody's on your side. You hang up feeling closer to them.
Psychologists have a name for this habit. Amanda Rose at the University of Missouri called it co-rumination. In her 2002 study in Child Development, she defined it as extensively discussing and revisiting problems, speculating about them, and focusing on negative feelings.
Rose surveyed 608 children in third, fifth, seventh and ninth grade. Co-rumination went hand in hand with close, high-quality friendships. It also went hand in hand with symptoms of depression and anxiety.
Both at once. The friendship gets warmer while the person gets worse.
Rose and her colleagues followed up with a six-month longitudinal study to see which came first. For girls, co-rumination predicted rising depression and anxiety over time, alongside better friendships. The two fed each other in a loop. For boys, co-rumination predicted better friendships without the rise in symptoms.
The line from their abstract which stopped me cold: some girls at risk of depression slip under the radar because their friendships look supportive from the outside.
Look supportive. Read those two words again.
Venting Doesn't Let Off Steam
Most of us carry an old belief about anger and frustration. Let it out, or it builds up and blows. Have a rant, hit a pillow, feel better.
Brad Bushman put the belief to the test in 2002. He brought in 602 college students and made them angry by having a fake partner savage an essay they'd written.
Then he split them up.
- One group hit a punching bag while looking at a photo of the person who'd criticized them. Venting, with rumination.
- A second group hit the same bag while thinking about getting fit.
- A third group sat quietly for two minutes and did nothing.
The venting group came out angriest. They also blasted their critic with the loudest noise when given the chance. In Bushman's own words, "doing nothing at all was more effective than venting anger."
Your Monday phone call isn't a punching bag. The mechanism looks familiar though. Every time you retell the story, you rehearse the anger. You don't drain it. You train it.
It Happens at Work Too
You might think this is kid stuff. Teenagers on the phone all night, rehashing the same drama.
Dana Haggard, Catherine Robert and Amanda Rose took the idea into the workplace. Their 2011 study in the Journal of Business and Psychology was the first to examine co-rumination in working adults.
The results were messy, and I won't pretend otherwise. According to I-O at Work's summary of the paper, women co-ruminated about work more than men did. Under an abusive supervisor, women who co-ruminated reported worse outcomes, including more conflict between work and family. Men showed a different and more confusing pattern.
I'm not sure about this part: I read the summary and the abstract, not the full paper, so I won't push the gender findings any further than the reviewers did.
Here's the part I'm sure of. Bad bosses give people plenty to moan about. Our own research at Step It Up HR found 99.5% of survey respondents had experienced one or more types of bad boss. So the moan by the kettle at work has a guaranteed supply of fuel. If the moan becomes the coping strategy, the bad boss wins twice. Once in the meeting, and again every time you replay it.
What the Mirror Friend Does Differently
I don't think the answer is to stop talking to your friends about hard things. Bottling it up isn't the lesson. Rose's research shows talking about problems builds closeness, and closeness matters.
The difference is direction. The co-ruminating friend asks, "And then what did he say?" The mirror friend asks, "So what are you going to do?"
One question keeps you in the past. The other pushes you into next week.
Here's what I see the mirror friend doing:
- They listen first. Advita's friend heard the moan many Mondays before she said a word. Listening earned the right to challenge.
- They name the pattern, not the problem. The friend didn't argue about the boss. She pointed out the weekly phone call.
- They hand the control back. "Take some control" is an invitation, not a lecture. You choose the step.
- They risk the friendship a little. Agreeing is safe. Holding up a mirror costs something, and the friend paid it anyway.
A Test for Your Next Moan
You don't need to give up venting cold turkey. You need a way to tell a vent from a rut. Before the next call, or the next huddle by the kettle, ask yourself three questions.
Is this the first time I've told this story? The first telling helps. Somebody hears you, and you hear yourself. By the fourth telling, you're not processing anymore. You're performing.
Does the story end with an action? A good conversation about a problem ends with somebody doing something. Send the email. Book the meeting with the boss. Update your resume. If the call ends with "Anyway, rant over," and nothing changes, you've rehearsed the anger for next Monday.
Would I say this to the person I'm moaning about? If the answer is no, ask what would make it a yes. Often the moan is the conversation you're avoiding, said to the wrong person.
None of these questions stop you talking to your friends. They stop the talking from becoming the whole plan.
Which Friend Are You?
This cuts both ways, and the second way stings more.
Most of us have been the person ringing with the moan. Most of us have also been the person on the other end of the line, nodding along, adding fuel. "He said what? Unbelievable." It feels like loyalty. Bushman's punching bag says it's rehearsal.
Being the mirror friend is harder. You have to care more about where your friend ends up than about how they feel about you at the end of the call. I talked about a similar idea in Bold Is Not Loud. Advita defines boldness as saying what you need to say without fear of retaliation. The friend on the M62 call was bold, in exactly Advita's sense of the word.
So here's my challenge for this week.
Think about the last three times somebody moaned to you. Did you help them dig the hole deeper, or did you hand them a ladder?
And the harder one. Who's the friend you ring every Monday? Next time you dial, ask yourself whether you want a witness or a way out.
If you've got a friend who'll ask you the M62 question, thank them. Then return the favor.