Most people hold an oddly mechanistic view of our emotions and the biological chemicals at play when we experience them. A new mother is advised to go get her hormones checked and straightened out as though she is a car in need of new transmission fluid. Never mind the isolating strangeness of the new life she finds herself in, a new “career” for which she likely has had little to no preparation to perform.
It’s not just new mothers. Most of us tend to conceptualize our emotions as biological realities independent of the ideas we choose and the words we speak. Honest examination of these claims shows the truth. The ideas that circulate in our minds affect our biology in ways that we can know even as we do not yet fully understand how.
The mechanistic view of human emotion means that we tend to think of negative emotion as a force separate from us. The bad feelings act on us and we must, supposedly, do something to alleviate the discomfort or it will somehow injure us. Enter the post-modern phenomenon of “counseling.”
It should be obvious that there are good counselors in the world, and people in certain acute crises benefit greatly from professional assistance. However, as I wrote recently for Crisis, I am less convinced of the benefit of counseling for most people. For married people, especially, there is a tendency to use counseling as a means of externalizing personal problems. Instead of releasing negative emotions through the concentration and benefits of objective work, counseling invites us to indulge in everyone’s current favorite vice: venting.
But wait, isn’t venting good? There is an unfounded confidence that voicing every negative emotion we feel will release it into the universe and free us from its grip. Not so argues Dr. Kevin Majeres, the psychiatrist behind Optimal Work. In an episode of the Optimal Work podcast, Dr. Majeres addresses our societal faith in venting. Pointing to empirical data, Dr. Majeres notes that there is no evidence from studies to support the claims so often made in defense of venting.
It turns out that stewing on our negative emotions and fixating on what irritates us makes us, simply put, more negative and irritated. Perhaps nowhere is the disease of venting more apparent than in the help-rejecting complainer. This is the person who seeks advice. But when sincere people offer alternatives or new approaches, every one is shot down in quick succession and the firm conviction that it will not work. Why, then, seek advice?
For more of my thoughts on the perils of counseling for many marriages, you can read my full piece in Crisis. In summary: Enjoy life more and you will enjoy your marriage more.
