Germany, some jamming
Oh no, summer is almost over now. Soon the drizzle starts again, great. Wet leaves sticking to the soles of the shoes. Come home in the dark. Fog on the highway. And then this stupid time change, which confuses everything. Not to endure, all that! Remember what? Do you notice how it slows you down? How would you like to tune into howling? Quite normal, says the psychology: Who whines, puts on others. Even these few lines put you in a really bad mood, or not?
With the wailing it's like this: We all do it, but for others we usually find it stupid. Mock us about the German "whining on a high level". Read countless articles and books on "positive thinking". And yet it happens to us over and over again: Especially we women seem to enjoy to complain about others, to sigh the passing time, to moan about the bus delay. Where does that come from?
Because, of course, most of us are doing pretty well from an objective point of view. A 40-year-old in Germany has a life expectancy of about 83 years - ten years more than our mothers. We do not have to constantly wonder where the next meal should come from. And summer is just over. Why are we still so much on the negative? "It just stands out," says Robin Kowalski, a psychologist at Western Carolina University. "For us, the positive and the expectable is the norm, and if something deviates from that, then we notice it more and provoke stronger effects."
Whining is social glue.
Everybody, says Kowalski, constantly compares his ideas with reality. If concept and reality do not match, they are annoying and - complaining is the common consequence. Are the biggest moaners the ones with the most unrealistic ideas? Robin Kowalski: "That could be, but complaining is not just a result of these comparisons, people complain because they get attention or pity." The conclusion from this: Sometimes we as bystanders at a nagging act as well as the lamenting self. Finally, we offer them a stage, donate applause or nod at least sympathetic. No wonder that the brain realizes: A pronounced sigh and lamentation is followed by a positive reaction. We made the wailing socially acceptable, so to speak. Yes, sometimes there is no way other than the complaint, to get in touch with others! Imagine the waiting room of a doctor. Would not it be strange if one patient now addressed the other? Ask about the blood pressure or the new shoes? The only socially accepted in this situation: pointing to shared suffering.
"Oh, I'm waiting for 40 minutes!" Or: "It's much too hot here, eh?" Robin Kowalski says, "In such moments, complaining is like a screenplay for two people who do not know each other." Wailing always works. The anti-jammer, on the other hand, is suspiciously eyed. Let's say I'm sitting down at a table with colleagues and not saying, "Jesus, today I'm not going to bake anything because the phone is ringing all the time!" Let's say, I realized instead: "Today I only had nice and good-humored people on the phone!" The others probably would not think of it. When Jammer topic but surely everyone would have something to contribute. For whining is an icebreaker. Social glue that can create community and intimacy. It offers support on unknown terrain, and provides a scheme from which we master everyday situations.
Apparently, we put in our heads right trouble paths.
The whining also makes it easy for us. Constantly sparks it through our head, looks a nuisance here, a disappointment there. And seduces us at home to sentences that start with "Do I always ... or" Can you never .... " But how does one resist this siren? Quite simply, says Will Bowen, author of the book "Impeccable A Complaint Free World": Focus your attention on the whining, the "acoustic pollution," as he calls it. You'll be upset by how often you do it. And in your dismay you will want to change it. If you can do that, says Bowen, you'll feel better.
Training against the gripe
The American pastor's method can be reduced to a purple silicone wristband that accompanies each of his books. Bowen says you should put it on an arm. Every time you find yourself in a complaint, blasphemy, or loud annoyance, switch to the other arm. His prediction: From now on you will only be busy with the on-the-other arm strip. The goal is now to reduce this.And that is until you wear the bracelet on the same arm for 21 days. It will take months. But then, says Will Bowen, the brain is trained not to give so much room to the negative. You automatically become more positive.
The purple bracelet lies on my dresser in the hallway. From time to time I sneak past and look at it suspiciously. But I do not spread it over. Because I think Pastor Bowen has not considered one thing: that whining is good. I do not want to suppress that a comment has hurt me or annoys me the behavior of a salesman. When I release steam, I feel better afterwards. The only question is: why?
A call to Sylvia Richter, neurobiologist at the University of Magdeburg. "Mrs. Richter, I like to complain." "That's fine, that's a physical reaction." "You do not understand, I really enjoy it!" One of the areas that are also responsible for anger is in the middle of the reward system, and annoyance and a sense of positivity may well be related. "
Sylvia Richter also tells me that the hormones are to blame if I get angry. Then the production of the feel-good hormone serotonin will fall. The less serotonin, the more uncomfortable I feel. "Is it true that you can train your brain to perceive less negative?" I ask. - "With the word 'training' I would be careful," says the scientist. "But one thing is true: If you constantly put yourself in trouble situations, the responsible regions in the brain will be more stressed, they will react faster in the future, and the threshold for self-annoyance will decrease." Conversely, positive stimulation can be achieved responsible regions react faster. "
Which path leads to affinity?
Will Bowen is right: Apparently we put in our minds right trouble paths, which we gradually withdraw more and more. Which eventually become highways of the negative. Apparently, it is actually up to us to trample on positive paths. Just by talking more often about what we like, rather than complaining of any nothingness.
I immediately think of innumerable people whom I would like to tell about. This colleague, for example, a miserable queen. I have her guilty face of recent times still in mind. "Oh, hello," she said when she saw me standing in the doorway. "You know, I gave you this manuscript, but honestly, I just can not get a look on it, I just have so much to do, I can not do anything anymore."
Now it is so that the office of this colleague is usually empty by 18 clock. Other colleagues, however, come before nine o'clock and go to nine in the evening - where nothing really works. I do not want my miserable colleague also sacrificing her free time, for God's sake, no. But she should be honest: she simply values a punctual closing time.
Bleating is a good neighbor of the lie
Psychologist Robin Kowalski says: "Some want to prevent jamming so that they do not judge too hard about them." These people see a situation coming, know that they will not shine in it - and find out beforehand reasons for it. So they gain control over how the situation is interpreted. The jamming is in this moment in the best neighborhood to lie. And all this just because the colleague wants to behave socially compliant. Because getting-to-go is less socially accepted than sinking into work, she complains about the circumstances a little more terribly than they actually are.
The problem with playing up and over-emphasizing the negative: it can degenerate into a jamming loop. Psychologists have observed that we like to join in when others complain about a movie - even if we did not have a bad opinion of it before. Afterwards, attention !, we judge the film actually negative. And whoever listens to a bad-tempered or even depressive person for some time often feels worse himself, according to a study. This creates a veritable jammer Domino: one automatically moves the next down.
The elders are less likely to be annoyed.
If you ask Ramona Wonneberger, it helps only one thing: to let it be more often. The 46-year-old trains people in her anti-anger institute to be less upset. "Let's say someone spends three hours a day with negative thoughts," says Wonneberger. "That's about 75,000 hours calculated on the lifetime, that's crazy!" Then she talks about a very difficult, often miserable employee of a large company. If his anti-anger training failed, the man would be fired, Ramona Wonneberger learned. So she made it clear to the grinder, "If the cause of the trouble is to change, then you should try it. If not, you can rant briefly - but then you have to accept the situation.Wonneberger says, "There are enough opportunities for self-annoyance, but does it make sense to look after them all or to be annoyed for weeks at a time?"
The student went home and decided, from now on, not to speak negative about the work as before. After one year, Ramona Wonneberger received a letter from his wife. "Thanks," it said, "I have a brand new man now." - "And now he gets along with the colleagues better," says Wonneberger.
If you want it, you can actually control and restrict whining - and that can make us happier, more balanced people. And there is even more good news: As far as annoying yourself, - exciting and nagging, we can look forward to the age. British scientists found out that older people are less likely to voice anger and to be able to calm themselves down. "Older people make less common comments, beat less with doors or argue," summarizes one of the researchers.
The mild head in old age
"They are less susceptible to anger, less avenged by revenge, and spend less time thinking about the cause of their anger." Why is that? Scientists suspect it is related to changes in the brain. It is believed that with age, emotional situations become cognitively different. Certain neurotransmitters, neurotransmitters in the brain, decrease in number over the years. So the traffic in our head calms down slowly - a certain sense of old age occurs.
But sometimes it is our experiences that make us more gentle. So the evaluation basis can change at any time for what we find to be lamentable. Compared to real strokes of fate - and they increase with age - so many other events may seem profane. "A healthy person has many problems to solve, a patient only one," says Ramona Wonneberger from the Anti-Aggravation Institute.
Then there is another distinction on the Jammer scale: not only those in old and young - also in men and women. In any case, Ramona Wonneberger interviewed more than 1700 men and women in an online survey about their self-annoying behavior, and found out that women have a higher level of anger. And as men become more and more annoyed with traffic, colleagues, customers, or bosses, women are more excited about interpersonal relationships: about partner, family, mother-in-law, friends, neighbors.
According to psychologist Robin Kowalski, women are more expressive and less focused in their complaints. And they often see the whining as a "self-entrusting". This closes the circle: complaining is and remains a social act. It creates similarities. Provides conversation piece. Promises attention. And is often damn annoying. But above all: totally meaningless.
Dare to do the following experiment: Think about the next bus delay on what is behind your moaning about such a delay. According to Robin Kowalski, we express our regret that we are not in control of the situation. We express that we would like to recover them. In the case of the bus, however, it is impossible to gain control - so let's lament the impossible! How stupid are we?
It pays to think such thoughts to an end. They quickly conclude that whining is actually often no more than acoustic pollution. And now imagine, all Germans would just let this pollution, just for a day. What would it be quiet in the country.
Complain read on
Marco Rauland: Fireworks of hormones (160 p., 19.80 euros, Hirzel). The author explains in a question and answer game why we even feel emotions like anger
Stephan and Andreas Lebert: The seriousness of life and what you have to do about it (176 p., 17.95 euros, S. Fischer). A book about the art of not letting go of life
Will Bowen: Impeccable. A Complaint Free World (219 p., 16.95 euros, Goldmann). An instruction manual for a jammerfreies life
