Why constant complaining is bad for health and how to stop doing it with mindfulness
- Complaining might feel like a harmless way to relieve stress, but studies say if you do it often enough it may affect your physical health
- Mindfulness could help by training your brain to think more positively and guiding it towards solving problems rather than dwelling on them
Ho Joo Kah remembers a time when she rarely went a day without complaining.
“It was hard not to complain, especially when I ran into problems or when people got on my nerves,” says the 45-year-old, who lives in Singapore.
“Sometimes I found myself mindlessly complaining about the same things over and over again. After a while I realised that complaining wasn’t solving anything. In the short term it felt good to unload, but as the negativity and resentment built up, I felt more emotionally burdened.”
Complaining might feel like a harmless way to relieve stress, but if you do it often enough it can induce a negative outlook that, in the long run, may affect your physical health.
Optimists tend to be healthier than pessimists, according to research published in 2004 in the Archives of General Psychiatry. The study surveyed 999 elderly men and women for almost a decade, during which time 397 participants died. When the study was over, the researchers found that participants who considered themselves highly optimistic had a 55 per lower risk of death from all causes and a 23 per lower risk of death from heart failure compared with participants who were strongly pessimistic.