Rewire Your Brain
Climb Out of The Complain Drain
I’m taking this brief pause from poetry, essay and fiction to bring you a few of my researched articles that have appeared around the internet. This one feels like it could serve as a good reminder.
This article was first published as 4 Steps to Re-Wiring Your Complaining Brain in Tiny Buddha and Illumination on Medium.
The artwork is new (and available.)
“Spending today complaining about yesterday won’t make tomorrow any better.” ~Unknown
“And it really mucks up your present moment!” - Annie Wood
When I was about sixteen, one of my parent’s friends got into some trouble with the law. When we’d visit him, he’d often shake his head from side to side and mumble, my life is in the toilet.
He said this line many times, for many years, even when things seemed to have gotten better for him. And more importantly, he said it even before things got bad.
My life is in the toilet was his mantra.
I thought it was funny at the time, so I jokingly adopted it for myself until one day… I started to believe it. And soon enough, my life started to reflect it. So, I dumped that phrase and started giving my life the respect it deserved.
Did that fix all things 24/7? Getting my life out of the toilet is better, yes, but since I’m human…
there’s this pinched nerve in my neck, and that construction sound across the street is driving me mad, and just how many rejections can one person get and also global warming, endless wars and …
Type of Drains
At some point, everyone complains at least a little, says Robin Kowalski, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at Clemson University.
According to Kowalski, there are different types of complainers, such as…
The Venter
The Venter is dissatisfied and doesn’t want to hear solutions, however brilliant. Venting. We’re just letting off steam, right? Maybe not. I’ve found that going down the complain drain can be soul-draining, not just for the complainer but for all within earshot.
Other types you may have met along the way (or maybe recognize in yourself) are the…
Sympathy Seekers
Sympathy Seekers are the I got it worse than you do, and the chronic everything always, all the time…sucks, folks. (You’ve seen their posts.)
The Chronic Complainers
Chronic Complainers are those living in a state of complaint and doing something researchers call “ruminating.” This basically means thinking and complaining about a problem again and again.
Instead of feeling a release after complaining, this sort of complaining can make things worse. It can cause even more worry and anxiety.
No one is suggesting you be a peachy-keen-Josephine and pretend all is swell when it isn’t. What I’ve learned in my mindfulness practice is to aim to do the opposite.
In mindfulness meditation, we try to fully experience the truth of the situation in this exact moment and allow it to be.
Easier said than done (but what isn’t?) Still, with practice, the need to express dissatisfaction with things not being exactly how we’d like them to be can lessen.
Can’t We Just Call Roto-Rooter?
Running with this drain analogy…
Call Roto-Rooter, that’s the name and away go troubles down the drain!
Gen X and older will remember this jingle. When I was a kid, I loved singing along to those Roto-Rooter commercials. Wouldn’t it be cool if we could just… away go troubles down the drain?
Maybe we can.
Most of us may have been unintentionally reinforcing the nasty habit of complaining by virtue of… complaining.
Neuroscience teaches us that neurons that fire together wire together.
In 1949, Donald Hebb, a Canadian neuropsychologist, coined the phrase experience-dependent neuroplasticity. It’s the continuing creation and grouping of neuron connections in our brains because of our life experiences.
This means that thousands of neurons are triggered whenever we think a thought or have a feeling or physical sensation and all get together to form a neural network.
With repetitive thinking, the brain learns to trigger the same neurons each time.
So, if you keep your mind looping on self-criticism, worries, and how nothing works out for you, your mind will more easily find that part of your brain and will quickly assist you in thinking those same thoughts again.
This shapes your mind into greater reactivity, making you more vulnerable to anxiety.
Imagine a truck driving down a muddy road. The wheels create a groove in the mud, and each time that truck drives down that spot, the groove gets deeper and deeper.
The truck might even, eventually, get stuck in that mud rut.
But it doesn’t have to.
Instead of repeating the same negative complaints, we can drive our thoughts on a different road so we don’t get stuck in that negative mud rut.
We are wiring our brains throughout our lives based on our repetitive thinking. We get good at what we practice.
If we worry, creating more unease and anxiety, we become stellar worriers since our brain is responding, making it easier for us to worry each time we do it, thus creating our default mode living.
Default mode living is our habitual way of going about our lives. It’s our reacting minds as opposed to our responding minds.
Our reacting minds are often knee-jerk reactions to something. We often say or do things we’ve said and done in the past, as if we were in that default mode living, on automatic pilot. But our responding minds come into play when we pause before responding to a situation.
We ask ourselves what’s going on and what the next best step is. It’s a clearer response in the moment that’s not linked to past responses.
So, how do we respond instead of react?
You’re stuck in traffic, and not only are you complaining out loud to the cars in your way, but you’re also imagining getting home and complaining to tell your significant other all about it. You’re practicing this conversation in your head while in the car. Your heart races and your forehead tenses up. It’s all so very annoying! What to do?
1. Catch yourself.
During meditation, we soon find out that our minds will wander. The moment when we notice it wandering and we bring it back to our focus, our breath, that moment is what one of my teachers calls “that magic moment.”
Catching yourself is the practice. Also, not judging or berating yourself for having a mind that thinks thoughts. All minds think thoughts. That’s their job.
So to stop the drain:
2. Be grateful
I’ve tried it; I simply can’t seem to complain and be grateful simultaneously.
I’m stuck in traffic but grateful to have a car. I’m grateful for the song on the radio and the sunny day.
It doesn’t matter what you’re grateful for; it can be the most minor thing, just notice. Complaining could very well be the evil twin of gratitude. Favor gratitude.
3. Practice wise effort
In Buddhism, wise effort is letting go of what is not helpful and cultivating what is skillful.
In the book Awakening the Buddha Within, Lama Surya Das breaks down wise effort into four aspects, the first one being restraint: “the effort to prevent unskillful thoughts and actions.”
Pay attention and catch your complaining and negative thoughts before they become words, a story, your life.
Next time you find yourself caught in a complaining loop, pause and regroup. Choose to put your energy elsewhere. The more you do this, the easier it gets.
4. Make a new groove
Just like our thoughts created that groove to make negative thoughts easier to replicate, we can create a brand new groove for pleasant feelings.
The more often we allow our minds to remember the good stuff, the easier that kind of thinking becomes.
Do you want to be someone who’s never satisfied and can always find fault in others, yourself, and the world? Or would you rather be someone who sees things as they are and finds a way to make peace with them? Let’s pretend it’s up to you. Oh, wait, it is up to you.
So, what do you say? You don’t need Roto Rooter to flush your troubles down the drain.
Just make a new groove.
And shake that groove thing while you’re at it.
So helpful today. I knew there was a reason I backtracked and read your posts today. Once again, I felt late, but I'm right on time. 🙏🏼