Oh, this was one of those conversations.

I was standing in line waiting to pay for my groceries listening to a stranger vent, completely incensed at something that had happened to her that day. She proceeded to tell me all about the dramas going on in people’s lives and how it’s the same as before, when so and so did this last time and… …

I was caught off guard about why she was telling me because the situation obviously had nothing to do with me. I was confused but I listened to her and waited to unload my groceries onto the conveyor belt. 

Have you ever been on the receiving end of a venting storm? Or perhaps you’ve been the one venting and you appreciated being heard, without the person trying to fix anything or solve their perception of your problem?

I’ve certainly done my share of venting and what helped me the most during those times was to be heard without anyone telling me how to see the world, change something, or give me other advice.

So I listened and held space for her.

As humans, we live dramatic lives. Something is always going on and it’s nice to know that we are supported and loved when we need to talk things through or vent. It’s natural to let off steam.

But there’s a danger in venting if we’re not careful. It can keep us hostage to our past and prevent old wounds from healing. It’s very easy to get caught in the trap of holding onto the drama and venting to everyone who will listen.

It’s also easy to get wrapped up in the gossip and react with our own drama.

How do we know when we’re simply processing the events of the day and need to be heard or if we’re stuck in the turmoil that keeps us chained to the past and our wounds wide open?

Awareness, truth, and focus are important shifts that help us heal faster. 

Shift 1: Being aware of our intentions behind why we want to share information with another person is key. Getting wrapped up in drama and focusing on what’s wrong with the world or with people is a bottomless pit. And it’s a great distraction from our own pain.

This doesn’t mean we don’t stay informed or that we don’t care about others, it means we pay attention to the influence that information is having on our lives. 

Is it making us feel empowered and capable of creating change or adding value to the world?

OR

Is it keeping us stuck in an ongoing cycle of negative emotions, ruminating on the past, and feeling bad about ourselves and what we can’t do? 

Shift 2: The only way we can know for sure is by telling ourselves the truth. The brutal, honest truth about ourselves, our emotions, and our intentions. 

Having a friend or partner to share our emotions with is healthy and allows us to process our stuff. However, focusing on only talking about the drama over and over and resurrecting old stories of past drama keeps us hostage. I used to get caught up in this hamster wheel all the time. It helped me feel heard but it also distracted me from making any real change in my life.

The truth is, we can’t be angry, sad, or sick enough to make anyone else happy.

And by staying stuck in drama and emotional turmoil by venting and ruminating can keep us sad, angry, and feeling helpless.

Helpless to do anything about the state of the world today and helpless about our own healing journey.

Caring about others, wanting to create positive change in the world, and healing our own past won’t happen when we feel helpless and overwhelmed. It absolutely can happen when we focus on what we can change and control, and that’s only ourselves and how we feel. 

How can you feel empowered and make progress through the inevitable drama and emotional turmoil of life and minimize venting?

Pay attention to your intention behind sharing the stories you share with others. 

Be honest with yourself when you answer these questions:

• What do you pay attention to around you?
• Where are you finding yourself wrapped up in the drama and turmoil that you then disseminate and ruminate on?
• Where do you allow others to bring drama into your life and influence how you feel not only about the world but also about yourself?
• Does sharing this information help you feel empowered? Or do you share it because it helps you feel right? Justified? Superior? Safer? Etc?

Shift 3: Creating a safe place to vent with boundaries. This means having a friend or loved one who will hear you out without co-ruminating because a big part of healing is letting ourselves off the hook for not being perfect. We all get wrapped up in drama and turmoil sometimes and it’s great to be able to share our emotions with someone. Life continues to move forward and bring more opportunities to notice how we truly feel and having a person who hears us out will allow us to process what’s inside us without getting stuck. 

My truth for a very long time was that I wanted to show how right I was all the time.

This helped me feel important and that I mattered in the world. Until I became aware of the impact of this on my mindset, my ability to feel happy and joyful in my life and my progress in healing my past. I decided to change and no longer participate in sharing drama in every conversation I had.

If there was something I needed to vent about or talk through, I would only do so with one or two people who I trusted would hear me without indulging the negativity, enabling my disempowerment or co-ruminating with me.

When we become mindful of our energy and of what we focus on, we make progress in our own healing journey. This is because when we focus on what truly empowers us, helps us feel happier and more in control of our own life, we stop opening our old wounds and adding fuel to our negative emotions and.

It doesn’t mean we don’t process those negative emotions that reside inside us, it means we do the necessary work to heal when we’re ready, and then we shift our focus to what brings us more joy, more happiness, and more peace. 

When you take care of your own energy, you become more discerning of what you focus on. When you first start doing this it can feel very hard because it’s a conscious choice to talk about other things than the go-to drama and turmoil. It can feel hard to find different common topics of conversation because gossip and drama are everywhere. It’s what our entertainment industry thrives on.

You might notice that people will not be comfortable with your shifts in conversation. You may even lose some people who aren’t ready for this shift in their own life. However, you will find and attract others who value their own energy and who want to have different conversations.

How to approach the change?

One way to approach the change is to tell your friends and loved ones that you’re focusing on minimizing the drama in your own life and you now choose not to gossip. At least not gossip about the same story more than once. Find someone you trust who you can vent to, and ask them to hold the space for you to get your emotions out, and then move to a different topic.

1. Be mindful of where your own attention goes.
2. Tell yourself the truth.
3. Have a safe space to vent without getting stuck in the negativity. 

This isn’t about changing anything cold turkey. Slow and consistent is best because then the change actually sticks.

What’s more important to you? Your own energy and emotional freedom or current events and popular conversation? You get to choose and often it’s a choice you get to make moment by moment. xo