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Venting at Work: What the Research Says About Getting It Off Your Chest, and When It Keeps You Stuck.
Updated: Oct 21
It starts with "have you got a minute?", which, as everyone in this job knows, is never a minute. A colleague perches on the corner of your desk, lowers their voice and tells you what happened in the leadership meeting. It is the same story you heard on Tuesday, with one new detail and a slightly worse villain. You nod, you make the sympathetic noise, and somewhere around the third retelling you hear yourself adding a grievance of your own. When they leave, visibly lighter, you sit there feeling oddly heavier than you did at ten to four.
Venting is one of the most ordinary things people do at work, and the Executive Assistant or Chief of Staff is very often the person it is done to. I wrote about the addictive trap of negativity in 2025, and the instinct in that post, that a good grumble can quietly harden into a habit, turns out to be well supported. What the research adds is more useful than a warning. It can tell you when talking something through helps, when it keeps a person stuck, what the listener says that makes the difference, and what all of this costs the person everybody brings it to.
What you will get out of this
The punching-bag experiment, and a review of 154 studies that settles what letting off steam actually does to anger
The difference between going round in circles and thinking something through, and the one change of viewpoint that separates them
Why two people who care about each other can make a problem worse by talking about it, and why it still feels like support
The listener's response that helped people recover, the one that only made them feel better for the afternoon, and why most of us default to the second
What writing it down does when it works, and the words that show it working
How a complaint moves round a meeting, measured sentence by sentence in 92 real team meetings
Why gossip is not the villain it is made out to be, and the test for the kind that is
What being the office listener costs you, and how to keep doing it without paying for it at home
The vent check: a tool that looks at a conversation you keep having and tells you whether it is moving or circling
The Venting Pages: three pages for turning a grumble into something that goes somewhere
Why letting off steam does not let it out
The idea behind venting is a kettle. Pressure builds up inside you, and if you do not let some of it out, something will blow. It is an old and very intuitive picture, and it is the reason people hit cushions, write furious emails they do not send, and tell the story one more time to one more person.
In 2002 a researcher put the kettle to the test. People were deliberately made angry by a stranger's harsh comments on an essay they had written. One group then hit a punching bag while thinking about the person who had angered them. A second group hit the same bag while thinking about getting fit. A third group sat quietly and did nothing. Afterwards everyone reported how angry they felt and was given the chance to blast the person who had angered them with unpleasant noise.
The venting group felt the angriest and were the most aggressive. The group that did nothing at all were the least aggressive. In the author's words, doing nothing at all was more effective than venting anger. An earlier set of studies had found something similar with a twist: reading a persuasive message saying that hitting a bag relieves anger made people keener to hit one, and more aggressive afterwards.
That could be one lab and one bag, so it matters that the question has since been asked at scale. A 2024 review pulled together 154 studies, 184 separate samples and 10,189 people, and sorted anger management activities into those that raise arousal, such as hitting things, running or cycling, and those that lower it, such as slow breathing, mindfulness and relaxation. The calming activities reduced anger and aggression, with an effect the authors described as robust, and it held across ages, cultures, settings and ways of delivering them. The arousing activities, taken together, did nothing. The authors' conclusion was that turning down the heat works better than blowing off steam.
The workplace evidence points the same way. A study of how people coped after a critical negative event at work found that negative emotion hurt performance, and that venting, defined as expressing negative feelings to others, made that effect worse rather than better. And a study of online rant sites found that people felt calmer immediately after posting, while the most frequent ranters reported more anger in daily life and more unhealthy ways of expressing it.
So why does it feel so good? The most convincing answer comes from the research on sharing emotions. In two experiments, people who talked about an upsetting experience recovered no faster than people who described it factually or talked about something trivial, and they still rated the talking as more helpful. A study of how people respond to venting reached a similar view: we may feel better afterwards because of the company and the response we get, rather than because anything has been released.
The relief is real. It comes from being heard, and being heard does not require the story to get bigger each time you tell it.
None of this means you should bottle things up, and we will come to the cost of that shortly. It means the kettle is the wrong picture. Anger and frustration settle when the body calms down and the mind makes sense of what happened, and venting, as usually practised, does neither.
Try this. When something at work has made you properly cross, give it ten minutes before you tell anyone. Walk to the far end of the building, make a drink slowly, breathe out for longer than you breathe in. You will still tell the story afterwards, and it will be a better one, because you will be telling it to make sense of what happened rather than to relive it.
The research behind this section
Bushman (2002) angered participants and then had them hit a punching bag while thinking about the person who had angered them (rumination group) or about becoming physically fit (distraction group), with a no punching bag control group; the rumination group felt angrier than the distraction or control groups and were the most aggressive, followed by the distraction and control groups, so that rumination increased rather than decreased anger and aggression and doing nothing at all was more effective than venting anger. Bushman, Baumeister and Stack (1999) found that exposure to a pro-catharsis message increased people's desire to hit a punching bag and that hitting it was followed by more, not less, aggression. Kjærvik and Bushman (2024) meta-analysed 154 studies including 184 independent samples and 10,189 participants and found that arousal-decreasing activities such as deep breathing, mindfulness and meditation decreased anger and aggression (g = -0.63), robustly across genders, ages, cultures, delivery methods and settings, while arousal-increasing activities such as hitting a bag, jogging or cycling were ineffective overall (g = -0.02). Brown, Westbrook and Challagalla (2005) examined coping after a critical negative work event and found that venting, expressing one's negative feelings to others, amplified the adverse effects of negative emotion on performance, while self-control had mixed effects and task focus had a positive direct effect. Martin and colleagues (2013) studied visitors to online rant sites and found that posting brought short-lived relief while frequent ranters reported more anger and more maladaptive expression of it. Zech and Rimé (2005) found in two experiments that participants assigned to talk about their emotions did not recover faster at three days, seven days or two months than those who gave a factual description, talked about another event, or completed a trivial task, yet reported more subjective benefits from the session. Parlamis (2012) found that the response a venter received, reinforcing or reinterpreting, and the identity of the person vented about shaped anger and emotional tone, and suggested venting may persist because people feel better after the interaction rather than because anger is released.
Going round in circles, and how to step off
Some thinking moves: you turn a problem over, see it from another side, and something shifts: a decision, a plan, or a quieter sense that it was not about you. Other thinking goes round and round, the same scene replays, the same unanswerable questions come back, and an hour later you are exactly where you started, only more tired.
Psychologists call the second kind rumination, and forty years of research say it is not harmless. A major review found that rumination makes low mood worse, feeds negative thinking, gets in the way of solving problems, stops people taking action and wears away the support around them. In an earlier experiment, people in a low mood who were asked to ruminate for a few minutes stayed low, while those given a distraction felt better. And a meta-analysis across many kinds of distress found rumination among the strategies most strongly linked to it, with reappraisal and problem-solving at the other end.
The anger research adds a measurable body cost. When people recalled an event that had made them angry and then ruminated on it, they stayed angrier, kept thinking about it for longer and showed more activation in the part of the nervous system that prepares the body for a fight, compared with people who reappraised the same event. When a group of students spent twenty minutes either ruminating, reappraising or distracting themselves from an angry memory, rumination kept the anger going while the other conditions let it fall. A review of sixty studies found that worry and rumination go with higher blood pressure, higher heart rate and more cortisol, which is one reason researchers think repetitive negative thinking is how stress follows us home and stays there. And three experiments found that people who had ruminated about a provocation, even eight hours earlier, were more likely to snap at a blameless person who then did something mildly annoying. If you have ever been on the receiving end of somebody's bad meeting, you have met this finding in person.
But thinking about something difficult is not the problem in itself, and this is the part of the research I find most hopeful. When researchers pulled apart the standard rumination questionnaire, they found two things tangled together. Brooding, meaning dwelling on why this always happens to you, predicted more depression over time. Reflection, meaning turning the problem over to understand it, did not, and over time went with less. A separate line of work found the same split between anxious rumination and curious, open reflection.
So what separates them? Two features come up again and again. The first is the level of the thinking. Abstract, evaluative questions such as "why am I like this?" tend to keep people stuck, while concrete questions such as "what happened, and what is the next step?" tend to help. The second is the viewpoint. In a pair of experiments, people recalled an argument that had made them angry and thought about it either through their own eyes or as a fly on the wall watching themselves from a distance. Asking why from the distanced position let people understand the experience without reliving the heat of it. A later study found the same self-distancing cut angry thoughts and aggressive behaviour after a real provocation.
The question that keeps you stuck is "why does this always happen to me?" The one that frees you is "what would I say to a friend who told me this?"
The researchers who study rumination now describe it partly as a mental habit: a response that, repeated often enough in the same situations, starts to run on its own. That is the grain of truth in the idea that negativity can become a groove. The encouraging corollary is that habits respond to changed cues and practised alternatives, and the reviews of emotion regulation are clear on what those alternatives are. Across 306 experimental comparisons, taking another person's perspective and rethinking what a situation means were among the most effective strategies measured, distraction helped, and concentrating on your feelings made things worse.
Try this. When you catch yourself replaying something, change the question and the camera angle together. Picture the scene from the corner of the room, as a neutral observer would see it, and ask two concrete questions: what exactly happened, and what is one thing I could do about it by Friday? If the honest answer to the second is nothing, that is useful too; it means the next move is to put it down.
The research behind this section
Nolen-Hoeksema, Wisco and Lyubomirsky (2008) reviewed evidence that rumination exacerbates depression, enhances negative thinking, impairs problem solving, interferes with instrumental behaviour and erodes social support, and noted that dozens of experimental studies show positive distractions relieve depressed mood. Nolen-Hoeksema and Morrow (1993) found that rumination prolonged naturally occurring depressed mood while distraction relieved it. Aldao, Nolen-Hoeksema and Schweizer (2010) meta-analysed emotion regulation strategies across forms of psychopathology and found rumination among the most strongly associated, with reappraisal and problem solving showing weaker or inverse associations. Ray, Wilhelm and Gross (2008) found in two studies that, relative to reappraisal, ruminating on a recent anger-provoking event led to greater anger, more cognitive perseveration and greater sympathetic nervous system activation. Denson, Moulds and Grisham (2012) had 121 undergraduates recall an anger-inducing memory and engage in analytical rumination, reappraisal or distraction for twenty minutes, and found that rumination maintained anger while anger decreased in the other conditions. Brosschot, Gerin and Thayer (2006) set out the perseverative cognition hypothesis, reviewing evidence that worry and rumination prolong stress-related cardiovascular, endocrine, immune and neurovisceral activation. Ottaviani and colleagues (2016) meta-analysed sixty studies and found perseverative cognition associated with higher systolic and diastolic blood pressure (g = .45 and .51 in experimental studies), higher heart rate and cortisol, and lower heart rate variability. Bushman and colleagues (2005) found across three studies that ruminating about a provocation, including over an eight-hour period, increased displaced aggression towards a person who later committed a minor annoyance. Treynor, Gonzalez and Nolen-Hoeksema (2003) separated brooding from reflection within the rumination measure and found that brooding predicted more depression over time while reflection was associated with less. Trapnell and Campbell (1999) distinguished neurotic rumination from intellectually curious reflection within private self-consciousness. Watkins (2008) reviewed constructive and unconstructive repetitive thought and found abstract, evaluative thinking about negative events unhelpful and concrete thinking more helpful. Watkins and Nolen-Hoeksema (2014) proposed that depressive rumination becomes a mental habit through repetition in the same contexts. Kross, Ayduk and Mischel (2005) found in two experiments that analysing why one felt angry from a self-distanced perspective allowed people to process the experience without reactivating negative affect, mediated by construing the experience in more abstract, less recounting terms. Kross and Ayduk (2017) reviewed the self-distancing research. Mischkowski, Kross and Bushman (2012) found that self-distancing in the heat of the moment reduced aggressive thoughts, angry feelings and aggressive behaviour following a provocation. Webb, Miles and Sheeran (2012) meta-analysed 306 experimental comparisons and found that perspective taking (d = 0.45) and reappraising the emotional stimulus (d = 0.36) were among the most effective strategies, distraction was effective (d = 0.27), and concentrating on one's feelings was not (d = -0.26).
When two people circle together
Rumination has a social version, and it is the one most of us recognise from work. Somebody brings a problem, you take it seriously, they add a detail, you ask a question that invites another, and forty minutes later the two of you have examined it from every angle except the one that leads out.
Researchers call this co-rumination: talking a problem over at length, again and again, speculating about it and dwelling on the feelings. It was first measured in 608 school pupils in 2002, and the finding set the pattern for everything that followed. Co-rumination went with closer, better friendships and with more anxiety and low mood, both at once. A six-month follow-up found it predicted both over time, at least for girls, and that each fed the next round.
Then came the evidence from the body. When pairs of young women were observed discussing their problems, the more they co-ruminated, the more their levels of the stress hormone cortisol rose over the conversation, even after taking account of their starting levels. A 2023 experiment that deliberately induced co-rumination in 172 pairs of friends found the same shape: the person sharing felt more stressed and upset and ruminated more, while both felt the other had been more responsive. For female sharers, the body's response looked more like threat than challenge.
A meta-analysis of 38 studies and 12,829 people put the link with anxiety and low mood at modest but real, with the closeness benefit alongside it. And a 2025 study that watched co-rumination unfold second by second in 85 pairs of friends added a nuance worth knowing. When both people got stuck in it together, both felt the other was responsive and saw the problem as more solved. When only the sharer was stuck, only the sharer felt that way.
Does it happen at work? It does, and the first study of co-rumination among working adults, 147 people from a range of jobs, found that it interacted with how badly people were treated by their managers, and ran differently for women and men. A survey of 447 working adults found that co-rumination ate into the benefits of social support, so that support which dwelt on problem talk did less to reduce stress and burnout than support which did not. And a large 2025 study of 358 working adults and more than 26,000 moments across the working day found that sharing in order to vent predicted lower wellbeing and more rumination over time, while sharing to connect or sharing good news did the reverse. Nearly half the time, what the sharer wanted from the conversation did not match how the listener responded.
Co-rumination feels like the best kind of support while it is happening. That is precisely why it is so easy to keep doing.
This is the heart of it. Co-rumination is kind, loyal and bonding. It is also, when it goes on and on, a way of keeping a problem warm. Nobody is doing anything wrong, and nobody is moving.
Try this. When a conversation comes round for the third time, name it gently and offer a turn: "We have been round this a few times, and I can hear how much it is getting to you. What would you like to happen next?" If the answer is "nothing, I needed to say it", that is fine, and you can say so. If there is an answer, you have found the first step together.
The research behind this section
Rose (2002) introduced co-rumination, extensively discussing and revisiting problems, speculating about them and focusing on negative feelings, in 608 third- to ninth-grade pupils, and found it related to high-quality, close friendships and to aspects of depression and anxiety, with girls co-ruminating more than boys. Rose, Carlson and Waller (2007) found over six months that, for girls, co-rumination predicted increases in depressive and anxiety symptoms and in positive friendship quality, which in turn contributed to further co-rumination, while for boys it predicted only increasing friendship quality. Byrd-Craven and colleagues (2008) found in an experimental manipulation with young women that observed co-rumination was associated with a significant increase in cortisol, after controlling for self-reported co-rumination and baseline levels. Tudder and colleagues (2023) developed an experimental manipulation of co-rumination with 172 friend dyads and found intrapersonal costs for disclosers (stressed and upset feelings and rumination) alongside interpersonal benefits (perceived partner responsiveness), with female disclosers showing physiological responses corresponding to greater threat. Spendelow, Simonds and Avery (2017) meta-analysed 38 studies and 12,829 participants and found small to moderate associations between co-rumination and internalising problems (mean corrected correlations 0.14 to 0.26), with higher co-rumination among female participants. DiGiovanni and colleagues (2025) tracked 85 close-friend dyads every thirty seconds across an eight-minute support discussion and found that the more both members were stuck in mutually high social rumination, the more they perceived each other as responsive and viewed the problem as more solved, whereas when only the discloser was stuck, only the discloser rated the problem as more solved. Haggard, Robert and Rose (2011) studied 147 working adults and found that women co-ruminated more than men, that abusive supervision worsened the negative effects of co-rumination for women, and that for men co-rumination was associated with reduced negative effects under high abusive supervision but negative outcomes under low. Boren (2014) surveyed 447 working adults and found that co-rumination partially suppressed the relationships between social support and both burnout and perceived stress. Trinh, Schertz and Kross (2025) ran two experience-sampling studies with 358 working adults and 26,234 observations and found that sharing positive information and sharing to connect predicted improved wellbeing, work energy and connection over time, while sharing negative information and sharing to vent predicted lower wellbeing and more rumination, with mismatches between sharing motives and perceived listener responses occurring 49.2% of the time and predicting adverse outcomes.
What makes talking it through work
If venting does not release anything and co-rumination keeps problems warm, you might conclude that the answer is to stop talking. That would be the wrong lesson, and the research on how people share emotions explains why.
People talk about almost every emotional experience they have, usually within hours, often to several people, and they believe it helps. A long programme of research found that this social sharing does a great deal: it brings people closer, draws support towards them and holds groups together. What it does not reliably do on its own is help people recover from the emotion itself. That depends on what the listener does.
The clearest demonstration is a 2012 experiment. People watched a distressing film and then talked about it with someone close to them, whose responses were secretly scripted. Some listeners offered warmth and empathy. Some helped the person make sense of what they had seen, reframing it and putting it in context. Some did both, some neither. Two days later everyone watched the film again. Emotional recovery happened only when the listener had prompted the sharer's own thinking. Warmth on its own made people feel closer to the listener, less lonely and better in the moment, which is valuable, but it did not change how the film affected them the second time.
A diary study of 113 employees across ten working days found the same thing outside the laboratory. When people had been treated rudely at work, conversations in which the other person offered comfort and consolation made no difference to how they felt that night and the next morning. Conversations in which the other person suggested another explanation for what had happened did buffer it.
So why do most conversations stay in comfort mode? Three studies give an honest answer. People in distress say they prefer any response that includes emotional support, and for anger and sadness in particular they dislike a purely cognitive one. Listeners consistently assume the person wants comfort, even when the sharer's words suggest they want help thinking. And sharers tend to elicit the support they want at that moment, which is why sharing so often feels helpful without leading to recovery.
The practical answer is order rather than choice. In two experiments, validation, affirming someone's feelings, was the most comforting response people received, and of the ways of helping someone see a situation differently, pointing out how things change over time was the one rated as helpful as validation itself. A study of 121 real conversations found that listeners who helped the other person reappraise the situation improved how they felt, and that everything a listener did worked better when the sharer felt understood. Comfort opens the door; a new way of seeing the situation is what walks through it.
Now the counterweight, because it matters. Keeping everything in has real costs too. People who habitually hide their emotions experience more negative emotion, not less, and have worse relationships. In conversations about an upsetting topic, a partner who suppressed her feelings disrupted the conversation, reduced rapport and raised blood pressure in both people. Hiding emotion took a measurable toll on memory for what was said at the time. Trying not to think about something famously makes it come back. And students who suppressed their emotions during the move to university ended up with less support and less closeness.
The meta-analysis of emotion regulation adds a nuance that fits working life well: holding back the outward expression of an emotion in the moment could be effective, while trying to suppress the feeling itself, or the thought of what caused it, was not. And the research on anger at work finds that anger voiced to the right person, in a way that stays within the norms of the place, can signal real problems and lead to change. The harm comes from anger that is swallowed or that spills over the line.
Try this. When someone brings you something difficult, give them two things in order. First, a sentence that shows you have understood: "That sounds exhausting, and I can see why it has stayed with you." Then, once they have settled, one question that helps them think: "How do you think it will look in a month?" or "What do you think was going on for them?" The first makes them feel heard. The second is what helps them recover.
The research behind this section
Rimé (2009) reviewed the theory and evidence that emotional experiences elicit the social sharing of emotion, and its interpersonal and collective effects. Rimé and colleagues (2020) reviewed evidence that social sharing is not a simple process of emotional release, and that its intrapersonal effects are varied and depend on specific conditions, alongside interpersonal and social outcomes. Nils and Rimé (2012) had participants view an aversive film and discuss it with an intimate who was instructed to adopt cognitive or socio-affective response modes in a two-by-two design, and found that emotional recovery two days later, after re-exposure, occurred exclusively when the listener stimulated the participant's cognitive work, while socio-affective responses produced greater closeness to the listener, less loneliness and an impression of feeling better. Lepore, Ragan and Jones (2000) found that talking about a stressor helped people adapt to it cognitively and emotionally. Tremmel and Sonnentag (2018) followed 113 employees over ten workdays and found that conversations in an affective sharing mode did not moderate the link between workplace incivility and negative affect at bedtime and the next morning, while conversations in a cognitive sharing mode, in which conversation partners suggested alternative explanations or reappraisal, buffered it. Pauw and colleagues (2018) found in vignette studies that people rated any response including socio-affective support as preferable and, for anger and sadness, strongly disliked purely cognitive support. Pauw and colleagues (2019) found across three experiments that listeners consistently perceived sharers to want socio-affective support, even when sharers' goals were cognitive. Pauw and colleagues (2025) studied 208 people in eight-minute interactions and found that sharers elicited the support they desired at the moment and that listeners' empathic accuracy promoted matching emotional but not cognitive support. Sahi and colleagues (2023) ran two experiments (N = 50 and 268) and found validation to be the most comforting and preferred feedback, with temporal distancing the most helpful social reappraisal and the only one perceived as no less helpful than validation. Jurkiewicz, McGarrigle and Oveis (2023) studied 121 conversations and found that regulators' use of reappraisal was associated with improved target emotions, and that all strategies improved targets' emotions when mediated by perceived responsiveness. Gross and John (2003) found across five studies that habitual suppressors experienced more negative and less positive emotion, worse interpersonal functioning and lower wellbeing, while reappraisers showed the opposite pattern. Butler and colleagues (2003) found that suppression disrupted communication, reduced rapport and increased blood pressure in both the suppressor and her partner during discussion of an upsetting topic. Richards and Gross (2000) found that expressive suppression impaired memory for information presented during emotional events, while reappraisal did not. Wegner and colleagues (1987) found that trying not to think about a thought led to its rebound. Srivastava and colleagues (2009) found that both stable and context-specific suppression during the transition to university predicted lower social support, less closeness and lower social satisfaction. Webb, Miles and Sheeran (2012) found that suppressing the expression of emotion was effective (d = 0.32) while suppressing the experience of emotion or thoughts of the eliciting event was not (d = -0.04 and -0.12). Geddes and Callister (2007) proposed a dual threshold model in which expressed anger that crosses into impropriety is harmful while suppressed anger also carries costs, and anger voiced within organisational norms can be constructive. Geddes, Callister and Gibson (2020) reviewed the functions of workplace anger, including signalling problems that lead to positive change.
Writing it out, and why it works when it does
There is another kind of listener, and it has the advantage of never getting tired of you: a blank page.
The research on writing about difficult experiences began in the 1980s and has grown into one of the most studied ideas in psychology. I looked at the size of the effect in the journaling post, so I will not repeat it here beyond saying it is real and modest. What is more useful for this post is why it helps, because the answer lines up almost exactly with everything above.
The founder of this research, looking back over a decade of studies, concluded that letting feelings out was not enough to explain the benefits. What predicted better health was a change in the way people thought and wrote as they went along. A study analysing the actual words people used in their writing found that those who increased their use of words about causes and insight across their sessions, words like because, realise and understand, showed the better outcomes. In other words, the people who benefited were the ones whose writing moved from recounting towards making sense.
The workplace studies bear this out. Professionals who had lost their jobs and wrote about their thoughts and feelings on the redundancy found new work sooner than those who wrote about something else. A 2009 experiment asked 100 people who had experienced injustice at work to write on four consecutive days, about their emotions, their thoughts, both, or a neutral topic. Those who wrote about their emotions and their thoughts together reported higher wellbeing, less wish to retaliate and more sense of having resolved it. Writing about emotions alone left people angrier than writing about both. An expressive writing intervention for employees also found benefits for their confidence in handling emotions at work.
Writing helps when the page moves from what happened to what it means. The feelings are the way in, and understanding is the way out.
It is not a cure-all. A meta-analysis of expressive writing for depressive symptoms found no meaningful effect overall, so if things feel heavier than a bad week, a page is not the place to stop. For the ordinary frustrations and injustices of working life, though, the evidence says a short, private, structured piece of writing does much of what a good listener does, and it does not need anyone else's afternoon.
Try this. When something is stuck, give it fifteen minutes on paper. Write what happened and how you felt about it, without tidying either. Then keep going, and write what you think it means, what you understand now that you did not, and what you might do. Stop when the fifteen minutes are up. You can throw the page away; the thinking will stay.
The research behind this section
Pennebaker (1997) summarised a decade of studies showing physical and mental health improvements when people wrote about emotional experiences, and concluded that while reduced inhibition may contribute, changes in cognitive and linguistic processes during writing predicted better health. Pennebaker, Mayne and Francis (1997) analysed the language of people writing and talking about a painful personal loss and found that increasing use of causal and insight words over time predicted better adjustment. Spera, Buhrfeind and Pennebaker (1994) found that professionals who had lost their jobs and wrote about their thoughts and feelings about the job loss were re-employed more quickly than those in control conditions. Barclay and Skarlicki (2009) randomly assigned 100 people who had experienced workplace injustice to write on four consecutive days about their emotions, their thoughts, both, or a trivial topic, and found that those writing about both emotions and thoughts reported higher psychological wellbeing, fewer intentions to retaliate and higher personal resolution than the other conditions, and less anger than those who wrote only about emotions. Kirk, Schutte and Hine (2011) tested an expressive writing intervention for employees and found benefits for emotional self-efficacy. Reinhold, Bürkner and Holling (2018) meta-analysed randomised trials of expressive writing on depressive symptoms and found no meaningful overall effect.
How a mood travels round a team
A complaint is never only yours once you have said it out loud. It lands in the room, and the room does something with it.
Part of the reason is that bad news weighs more than good. A landmark review found that across relationships, feedback, learning, impressions and daily events, bad is stronger than good, with hardly any exceptions. A companion review described the same pull in terms of negative events dominating how we judge a mixed whole. At work it shows up in the numbers from a study that tracked 41 employees' moods through their days: negative events at work were reported far less often than positive ones, three to five times less often, yet their link with mood was about five times stronger. Online, a 17-country study found that people everywhere reacted more strongly to negative news than to positive, and an analysis of more than 22,000 experiments with headlines found that each extra negative word raised the chance of someone clicking.
The second reason is that moods spread. People tend to mimic the expressions and postures of those around them and to catch the feelings that go with them. In a classic experiment, a single trained actor playing a cheerful or a gloomy group member shifted the mood of the rest of the group, and the groups whose mood had been lifted cooperated more and argued less. Nurses and accountants in the same teams had moods that moved together from day to day. When a leader was in a negative mood, their team took on more of it and coordinated less well. A study of 1,849 intensive care nurses in 80 units found that hearing about colleagues' burnout was the strongest single predictor of a nurse's own exhaustion, ahead of the usual workplace stressors. And an experiment with 689,003 people on a social network showed that emotions can pass from person to person through words alone, with no face in sight.
Then there is what happens in the meeting itself. Researchers who code team meetings sentence by sentence found that complaints tend to come in chains: one complaint makes another more likely, which makes another more likely, and the same is true of statements about solutions. In 52 team discussions from two industrial companies, complaining cycles went with a flat, passive group mood, and cycles of interest in change went with an active one. And in a study of 92 real team meetings, teams that spent more time on problem-solving and action planning were more satisfied with their meetings and more productive, and were still showing organisational success two and a half years later. Complaining and criticising were negatively related to all of it, and the negative effects were larger than the positive ones.
Nobody decides to have a complaining meeting. It happens one reasonable sentence at a time, and it can be undone the same way.
The counterweight is that good news spreads too, and does something for the sharer. A set of four studies found that telling someone about a good thing that happened lifted people's mood and wellbeing beyond the effect of the event itself, and more so when the listener responded with real interest.
Try this. In the next meeting you run or minute, listen for the second sentence after a complaint. That is where the chain starts or stops. When you can, be the person who says it: "So what would we want instead?" or "Is there a piece of this we can fix this month?" And when something goes well, say so out loud. The research says it does you good, and it gives the room something else to catch.
The research behind this section
Baumeister and colleagues (2001) reviewed evidence across everyday events, major life events, close relationships, social networks, interpersonal interactions and learning, and concluded that bad is stronger than good as a general principle, with hardly any exceptions. Rozin and Royzman (2001) proposed a general negativity bias expressed as negative potency, steeper negative gradients, negativity dominance and negative differentiation. Miner, Glomb and Hulin (2005) used experience sampling with 41 employees and found that the relationship between negative work events and mood was approximately five times stronger than that of positive events, even though positive events were reported three to five times more often. Soroka, Fournier and Nir (2019) found negativity biases in psychophysiological reactions to real news in a 17-country, six-continent study, with considerable individual variation. Robertson and colleagues (2023) analysed randomised headline experiments (N = 22,743) and found that each additional negative word in a headline of average length increased click-through rate by 2.3%. Hatfield, Cacioppo and Rapson (1993) described emotional contagion, the tendency to mimic and synchronise with others' expressions and to converge emotionally. Barsade (2002) found in a laboratory study with a trained confederate that emotional contagion occurred within groups and that positive contagion improved cooperation, decreased conflict and increased perceived task performance. Totterdell and colleagues (1998) found evidence of mood linkage in work teams, with individuals' moods associated with the collective mood of their teammates over time. Sy, Côté and Saavedra (2005) found that when leaders were in a negative rather than a positive mood, group members experienced more negative mood, groups had a more negative affective tone and showed less coordination. Barsade, Coutifaris and Pillemer (2018) reviewed emotional contagion in organisational life. Bakker, Le Blanc and Schaufeli (2005) surveyed 1,849 nurses in 80 intensive care units in 12 European countries and found that perceived burnout complaints among colleagues were the most important predictor of emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation at individual and unit levels, even after controlling for organisational stressors. Kramer, Guillory and Hancock (2014) showed in an experiment with 689,003 people on Facebook that emotional states can be transferred through text without direct interaction or nonverbal cues. Kauffeld and Meyers (2009) found complaint cycles and solution-oriented cycles in the interaction patterns of work group discussions. Lehmann-Willenbrock and colleagues (2011) coded 52 work group discussions from two German industrial companies and found that complaining cycles were linked to a passive group mood and interest-in-change cycles to an active one. Kauffeld and Lehmann-Willenbrock (2012) videotaped 92 regular team meetings and found that functional interaction such as problem solving and action planning went with meeting satisfaction and team productivity and with organisational success 2.5 years later, while dysfunctional communication such as criticising or complaining showed negative relationships with these outcomes that were more pronounced than the positive effects. Gable and colleagues (2004) found across four studies that communicating positive events was associated with increased daily positive affect and wellbeing beyond the event itself, further enhanced when others responded actively and constructively.
Gossip, the useful kind and the other kind
Gossip gets the worst press of all the ways people talk at work, and a good deal of it is undeserved.
Start with how common it is. Analyses of freely forming conversations suggest that around two thirds of our talking time goes on social topics, most of which counts as gossip in the broad sense. When researchers fitted 467 people with recorders that sampled snippets of their everyday talk, most of the gossip they caught was neither positive nor negative, and it was mostly about social information: who is doing what, who is going where. Frequent gossipers tended to be more extraverted. The stereotypes about who gossips did not survive the recordings. A review of more than 6,000 articles settled on a simple definition: a person telling another person about somebody who is absent or unaware. By that definition, a great deal of an EA's working day is gossip, and much of it is essential.
Gossip also does real work for groups. People gossip for several reasons, and the most common is to gather and check information. One of the others is to protect the group, and when people believed that was the reason, they did not disapprove of it. In a series of experiments, people who saw someone behave selfishly felt uncomfortable and wanted to warn the next person; doing so reduced their discomfort, and the threat of it made selfish people behave better. A follow-up found that gossip and exclusion together kept cooperation high in groups, and that people who had been left out came back cooperating. Hearing positive gossip about a colleague's competence was more useful for self-improvement than hearing negative gossip.
The costs are real too, and they fall in unexpected places. A study of friendship networks at work found that people who gossiped more were rated as more influential by their peers and less well by their supervisors. A meta-analysis of 52 studies and more than 14,000 people found that negative gossip did more harm than positive gossip did good, that its targets suffered most in their feelings and relationships, and that the people swapping it also showed worse wellbeing, engagement and relationships with their managers, although the direction of cause is not yet settled. Being the subject of negative gossip dented people's sense of their own worth to the organisation, and with it how much they helped. And a 2025 study found an ironic cost to even well-meant warnings: because gossip passes on the worst cases, it can leave people thinking bad behaviour is more common than it is.
Gossip is information with a direction of travel. The question is whether it is travelling to protect someone or to diminish them.
The research on complaining in general points to the same distinction. In one diary study, more than three quarters of everyday complaints were not aimed at changing anything; they were for venting or for sympathy, and the most common response was for the listener to agree. A major review of complaining describes complaints as serving different goals, some private and some social, and the useful ones are the ones aimed at something.
Try this. Before you pass something on, run three quick questions. Would it protect someone, or help them do their job? Is it true, as far as you know? Would you say it in the same words if the person were in the room? Two yeses and a maybe is usually fine. If the honest answers are no, it is venting in someone else's name, and it can stop with you.
The research behind this section
Dunbar (2004) reported that around two thirds of conversation time in freely forming conversations is devoted to social topics, and argued that gossip bonds groups and helps control free riders. Robbins and Karan (2020) used five naturalistic observation studies (N = 467) with the Electronically Activated Recorder and found that frequent gossipers tended to be more extraverted and that gossip tended to be neutral rather than positive or negative, and about social information. Dores Cruz and colleagues (2021) systematically reviewed 6,114 articles, identified 324 that defined gossip, and proposed an integrative definition: a sender communicating to a receiver about a target who is absent or unaware of the content. Brady, Brown and Liang (2017) argued that organisational research had treated gossip too narrowly as deviance, reconceptualised workplace gossip as positive or negative and potentially functional, and developed measures across eight samples. Beersma and Van Kleef (2012) distinguished negative influence, information gathering and validation, social enjoyment and group protection as motives to gossip, found the informational motive most prevalent, and found that gossip attributed to group protection was rated as social and not disapproved of. Feinberg and colleagues (2012) found across four studies that observing an antisocial act produced negative affect and a desire to warn others, that sharing the information reduced that affect, and that prosocial gossip deterred selfishness and promoted cooperation. Feinberg, Willer and Schultz (2014) found that reputational information shared through gossip let people select cooperative partners and ostracise selfish ones, and that ostracised individuals subsequently cooperated. Martinescu, Janssen and Nijstad (2014) found that positive gossip had higher self-improvement value for receivers, while negative gossip had higher self-promotion value and raised self-protection concerns. Grosser, Lopez-Kidwell and Labianca (2010) found that friendship ties were related to positive and negative gossip and workflow ties only to positive gossip, and that total gossip activity was negatively related to supervisors' performance evaluations and positively related to peers' evaluations of informal influence. Wax, Rodriguez and Asencio (2022) meta-analysed 52 independent studies (n = 14,143) and found negative gossip more deleterious than positive gossip, with targets suffering most on attitudinal and relational outcomes, and senders and recipients also showing negative associations with wellbeing, engagement, supervisor relationships and organisational outcomes, with causality not yet established. Sun, Schilpzand and Liu (2023) reviewed four decades of gossip research and identified four functions: information exchange, ego enhancement, social integration and social segregation. Wu and colleagues (2018) used time-lagged dyadic data (n = 403) and found that perceived negative workplace gossip lowered targets' organisation-based self-esteem, which in turn reduced their citizenship behaviour. Grayson and colleagues (2025) found that prosocial gossip can have ironic effects, leading to inaccurate social perceptions. Kowalski (1996) reviewed the functions, antecedents and consequences of complaining, defining complaints as expressions of dissatisfaction for venting emotions or achieving intrapsychic or interpersonal goals. Alicke and colleagues (1992) had students keep complaint diaries and found that over 75% of complaints were non-instrumental, expressed to vent frustration or solicit sympathy, and that the most frequent response was agreement.
When you are the person everyone vents to
Every organisation has a few people who absorb the feelings nobody else has time for. One writer on organisations called them toxic handlers: the people who quietly take in colleagues' frustration, fear and hurt, reframe it, pass on what needs passing on and keep the place working, often at a cost to themselves that nobody sees. If you are an EA or a Chief of Staff, there is a good chance you have been handed this role without anyone mentioning it.
The research has started to catch up with what it is like. A 2025 set of studies measured what happens to the people on the receiving end of venting at work, day by day. Receiving venting stirred up two different feelings. Empathy led people to help, which built better relationships. Personal distress, the feeling of being flooded by someone else's upset, led them to go and vent to somebody else. The same conversation can make you kinder or pass the weight along, depending on how much of it you take on.
A study of whole networks of colleagues over time found that venting ties and advice ties grow together: listeners tended to form and keep advice relationships with the people who vented to them, which is part of why the office listener becomes so trusted. It also found a cost. People who were a preferred listener for many colleagues gave less advice.
The wider helping research says the same in general terms. A daily study over three working weeks found that responding to requests for help drained people's self-control at an increasing rate, while seeing that the help had made a difference topped it back up. The most prosocial people were drained the most. Another daily study found helping lifted people's mood and cost them progress on their own work. Researchers who map the ways people manage each other's feelings have catalogued dozens of such strategies, and describe this as a real form of work, both for the person helped and for the helper.
There is a subtle point for listeners here too. In a series of experiments, support given so skilfully that the person did not experience it as support reduced their stress, while obvious support sometimes made it worse, because it signalled that they could not cope. And a study of 48 administrative workers found that help people had not asked for provoked negative reactions. Sometimes the best thing a listener can do is help without making a show of it.
Being the person people bring things to is a skill and a responsibility. It does not have to be a sponge.
Try this. Decide what kind of listener you want to be, and then make it easier to be that. Give recurring conversations a shape: "I have ten minutes now, and I would love to hear what you are thinking of doing about it." Route what you cannot hold: "That one needs to go to HR, and I can help you work out how to put it." And give yourself somewhere to put it at the end of the day, a walk, a page, or a friend outside work who hears the version with no names in it.
The research behind this section
Frost (2004) described toxic handlers, the people in organisations who voluntarily absorb and manage colleagues' distress and pain, and the personal costs of that role for them. Gabriel and colleagues (2025) developed a measure of venting receipt at work and found across two within-person field studies and a recall experiment that receiving venting evoked personal distress, which led to further venting by the recipient, and empathy, which led to helping and more positive social relations. Zhu and colleagues (2025) analysed three waves of whole-network data and found that listeners were more likely to form or maintain subsequent venting and advice-giving ties with their venters, and that being central in venting networks carried a potential cost of reduced advice provision. Lanaj, Johnson and Wang (2016) used daily diary data across three consecutive work weeks and found that responding to help requests depleted regulatory resources at an increasing rate, that perceived prosocial impact replenished them, and that prosocially motivated employees were depleted more and replenished less. Koopman, Lanaj and Scott (2016) found in a daily investigation that citizenship behaviour such as helping was associated with increases in positive affect and with reduced progress on one's own work goals. Niven, Totterdell and Holman (2009) developed a classification of the controlled strategies people use to improve or worsen others' feelings. Zaki and Williams (2013) proposed a framework for interpersonal emotion regulation, distinguishing regulating one's own emotions through others from regulating another person's emotions. Bolger and Amarel (2007) ran three experiments with 257 women facing a stressful speech task and found that invisible practical and emotional support reduced emotional reactivity while visible support was ineffective or worsened it, with support effective when it avoided communicating a sense of inefficacy. Deelstra and colleagues (2003) found in an experiment with 48 temporary administrative workers that imposed instrumental support elicited negative self-related, interaction-related and physiological reactions, except when the problem was unsolvable, when the effect was neutral.
The vent check
Everything above comes down to one question you can ask about any conversation you keep having, whether you are the one talking or the one listening: is this moving, or is it circling? So here is a tool for that question.
Put in what the conversation is about, who is doing the talking, how often it has come round, and what tends to happen afterwards. It will tell you whether the talk looks like processing, circling or spreading, give you the steps the research points to, and write you a short note for the next time it comes up.
Where to start
If you take one thing from all of this, make it the turn. Talking about a hard day is human and good for you, and it helps most when, at some point, the conversation turns from what happened towards what it means or what to do. That turn is the difference between reflection and rumination, between comfort that lasts an afternoon and recovery that lasts, and between a meeting that complains and a meeting that fixes something.
After that, there are three moves worth making.
When you are angry, calm the body before you tell the story. When you are listening, give comfort first and then one question that helps the other person think. And when something is circling, yours or someone else's, change the camera angle: step back, look at it from the corner of the room, and ask what you would say to a friend.
I have put three pages into a download that make this easier to do on a busy day: a fifteen-minute page for writing something out so it moves, a listener's card for the conversation that comes round again, and a meeting page for catching the complaint chain and turning it.
None of this asks you to be relentlessly positive, and I would be suspicious of any advice that did. Frustration at work is usually information, and the people who bring it to you are paying you a compliment. The research simply gives you a way to honour that without getting stuck in it, which is very often what the best people in this role already do by instinct.
The part of this that shows up in how you work sits inside what the Connected Leader Assessment calls Sustainable Performance: how you recover from difficult days, how you manage the emotional load that comes with being the person people turn to, and whether you can keep doing that well for years rather than months. It is the dimension that decides whether being everyone's listener makes you stronger or wears you down.
The assessment is free, takes about twelve minutes and gives you a read across all five dimensions. If you want to go further on this one, the Skill Sprints are short, focused programmes on a single dimension, and the Irreplaceable Audit is the place to look at the quieter parts of your work, such as being the person colleagues bring things to, which rarely appear in a job description and are often the reason a team holds together.
Stay savvy.
Meg ✌️
Free tools
The vent check, the interactive tool in this post, free
The Venting Pages, the download in this post, free
The Connected Leader Assessment, twelve minutes, free, with a read on Sustainable Performance, the dimension this post sits in
P.S. Want to Go Deeper on Venting at Work?
If this resonated and you want to go further, here is the evidence the piece is built on. These are the papers that shaped my thinking on when talking it through helps, when it keeps you stuck, and what a good listener does, and they are well worth your time.
Every DOI below has been checked. Where I could not confirm a figure from the paper itself, I have left the figure out rather than guess.
📃 Bushman (2002) Hitting a punching bag while thinking of the provoker raised anger and aggression. Doing nothing worked better. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167202289002
📃 Bushman, Baumeister and Stack (1999) A message praising catharsis made people keener to hit a bag, and more aggressive after hitting it. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.76.3.367
📃 Kjærvik and Bushman (2024) 154 studies, 10,189 people. Calming activities cut anger and aggression; arousing ones did nothing overall. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2024.102414
📃 Parlamis (2012) What the listener says back to a venter, reinforcing or reinterpreting, shaped the anger that followed. https://doi.org/10.1108/10444061211199322
📃 Brown, Westbrook and Challagalla (2005) After a critical negative event at work, venting made the effect of negative emotion on performance worse. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.90.4.792
📃 Martin and colleagues (2013) Online ranting brought brief relief; frequent ranters reported more anger overall. https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2012.0130
📃 Rose (2002) 608 pupils. Co-rumination went with closer friendships and with more anxiety and low mood. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8624.00509
📃 Haggard, Robert and Rose (2011) 147 working adults. The first study of co-rumination at work, with different trade-offs for women and men. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869-010-9169-2
📃 Boren (2014) 447 working adults. Co-rumination ate into the stress and burnout benefits of social support. https://doi.org/10.1177/0893318913509283
📃 Byrd-Craven and colleagues (2008) Observed co-rumination raised cortisol over the course of the conversation. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yhbeh.2007.12.002
📃 Spendelow, Simonds and Avery (2017) Meta-analysis of 38 studies, 12,829 people. A modest, real link between co-rumination and anxiety and low mood. https://doi.org/10.1002/cpp.2023
📃 Rose, Carlson and Waller (2007) Six months. For girls, co-rumination predicted both closer friendships and more anxiety and low mood. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.43.4.1019
📃 Tudder and colleagues (2023) 172 pairs of friends. Induced co-rumination raised the sharer's stress while both felt more understood. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0001151
📃 DiGiovanni and colleagues (2025) 85 pairs tracked every 30 seconds. Getting stuck together felt supportive to both; alone, only to the sharer. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0001542
📃 Nolen-Hoeksema, Wisco and Lyubomirsky (2008) Review: rumination worsens mood, impairs problem solving, stalls action and erodes support. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-6924.2008.00088.x
📃 Treynor, Gonzalez and Nolen-Hoeksema (2003) Brooding and reflection pulled apart: brooding predicted more depression over time, reflection did not. https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1023910315561
📃 Trapnell and Campbell (1999) Anxious rumination and curious reflection are different habits of self-focus. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.76.2.284
📃 Watkins (2008) Repetitive thought helps when it is concrete and hurts when it is abstract and evaluative. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.134.2.163
📃 Kross, Ayduk and Mischel (2005) Asking why from a distance let people process anger without reliving it. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2005.01600.x
📃 Kross and Ayduk (2017) Review of self-distancing: stepping back from your own experience to reflect on it. https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.aesp.2016.10.002
📃 Brosschot, Gerin and Thayer (2006) Worry and rumination prolong the body's stress response before and after the event. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychores.2005.06.074
📃 Ottaviani and colleagues (2016) Sixty studies. Rumination and worry went with higher blood pressure, heart rate and cortisol. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000036
📃 Aldao, Nolen-Hoeksema and Schweizer (2010) Meta-analysis across forms of distress. Rumination among the most strongly linked strategies. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2009.11.004
📃 Watkins and Nolen-Hoeksema (2014) Rumination as a mental habit, triggered by the same cues until it runs on its own. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0035540
📃 Denson, Moulds and Grisham (2012) 121 students, twenty minutes. Rumination kept anger going; reappraisal and distraction let it fall. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beth.2011.08.001
📃 Mischkowski, Kross and Bushman (2012) Self-distancing in the heat of the moment reduced anger and aggression after a provocation. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2012.03.012
📃 Ray, Wilhelm and Gross (2008) Ruminating on an angry memory, compared with reappraising it, meant more anger and more arousal. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.94.1.133
📃 Bushman and colleagues (2005) Ruminating on a provocation, even hours earlier, made people snap at a blameless person. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.88.6.969
📃 Nolen-Hoeksema and Morrow (1993) Rumination prolonged low mood; distraction lifted it. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699939308409206
📃 Pennebaker (1997) Writing about emotions helps, and changes in thinking and language during writing predict who benefits. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.1997.tb00403.x
📃 Pennebaker, Mayne and Francis (1997) Rising use of cause and insight words predicted better adjustment after a painful loss. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.72.4.863
📃 Spera, Buhrfeind and Pennebaker (1994) Professionals who wrote about losing their jobs found new work sooner. https://doi.org/10.2307/256708
📃 Barclay and Skarlicki (2009) 100 people wronged at work. Writing about feelings and thoughts together brought wellbeing and resolution. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0013451
📃 Kirk, Schutte and Hine (2011) An expressive writing intervention for employees, with benefits for emotional self-efficacy. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.2010.00708.x
📃 Reinhold, Bürkner and Holling (2018) Meta-analysis. Expressive writing had no meaningful overall effect on depressive symptoms. https://doi.org/10.1111/cpsp.12224
📃 Rimé (2009) People share almost every emotion they have, and the review of why and with what effects. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073908097189
📃 Zech and Rimé (2005) Talking about an emotion did not speed recovery, and people still rated it as helpful. https://doi.org/10.1002/cpp.460
📃 Nils and Rimé (2012) Recovery came only when the listener prompted the sharer to think; warmth alone brought closeness. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.1880
📃 Rimé and colleagues (2020) Sharing emotion is not simple release; its benefits depend on conditions and reach relationships and groups. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2019.08.024
📃 Lepore, Ragan and Jones (2000) Talking about a stressor helped people adapt to it. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.78.3.499
📃 Pauw and colleagues (2019) Listeners kept assuming sharers wanted comfort, whatever the sharer signalled. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2018.1536036
📃 Pauw and colleagues (2018) People preferred any response with comfort in it, and disliked purely practical ones for anger and sadness. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2017.1400949
📃 Pauw and colleagues (2025) 208 people. Sharers draw out the support they want in the moment, which is not always what helps. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0001382
📃 Trinh, Schertz and Kross (2025) 358 working adults, 26,234 moments. Venting predicted lower wellbeing; sharing to connect helped. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0001539
📃 Sahi and colleagues (2023) Validation comforted most; pointing out how things change over time helped as much. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0001194
📃 Tremmel and Sonnentag (2018) 113 employees, ten days. After rudeness, reframing conversations helped; comfort alone did not. https://doi.org/10.1037/ocp0000100
📃 Jurkiewicz, McGarrigle and Oveis (2023) 121 conversations. Helping someone reappraise improved how they felt, especially when they felt understood. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-023-00183-4
📃 Gross and John (2003) Habitual suppressors felt more negative emotion and had worse relationships than reappraisers. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.85.2.348
📃 Webb, Miles and Sheeran (2012) 306 comparisons. Perspective taking and rethinking worked; dwelling on feelings made things worse. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0027600
📃 Butler and colleagues (2003) Suppressing emotion in conversation reduced rapport and raised blood pressure in both people. https://doi.org/10.1037/1528-3542.3.1.48
📃 Wegner and colleagues (1987) Trying not to think about something made it come back. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.53.1.5
📃 Richards and Gross (2000) Hiding emotion impaired memory for what was said at the time. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.79.3.410
📃 Srivastava and colleagues (2009) Students who suppressed emotion during the move to university ended up with less support and closeness. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0014755
📃 Zaki and Williams (2013) A framework for how people regulate emotion through and for each other. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0033839
📃 Niven, Totterdell and Holman (2009) A classification of the ways people try to improve or worsen other people's feelings. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0015962
📃 Frost (2004) The toxic handler: the colleague who absorbs everyone else's distress, and what it costs them. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.orgdyn.2004.01.001
📃 Bolger and Amarel (2007) Support that did not feel like support reduced stress; obvious support could make it worse. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.92.3.458
📃 Deelstra and colleagues (2003) 48 administrative workers. Help nobody asked for provoked negative reactions. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.88.2.324
📃 Koopman, Lanaj and Scott (2016) Daily study. Helping lifted mood and cost progress on your own work. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2014.0262
📃 Lanaj, Johnson and Wang (2016) Three working weeks. Answering help requests drained self-control; seeing the difference it made restored it. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000118
📃 Gabriel and colleagues (2025) Receiving venting at work stirred empathy, which led to helping, and distress, which led to venting on. https://doi.org/10.1111/peps.12667
📃 Zhu and colleagues (2025) Venting ties and advice ties grew together; the most-vented-to gave less advice. https://doi.org/10.1111/peps.12689
📃 Hatfield, Cacioppo and Rapson (1993) Emotional contagion: people mimic each other's expressions and catch each other's feelings. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8721.ep10770953
📃 Totterdell and colleagues (1998) Moods of nurses and accountants in the same teams moved together from day to day. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.74.6.1504
📃 Barsade (2002) One actor's mood spread through a group; a lifted mood meant more cooperation and less conflict. https://doi.org/10.2307/3094912
📃 Barsade, Coutifaris and Pillemer (2018) Review of emotional contagion in organisational life. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.riob.2018.11.005
📃 Bakker, Le Blanc and Schaufeli (2005) 1,849 intensive care nurses. Colleagues' burnout complaints were the strongest predictor of one's own. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2648.2005.03494.x
📃 Sy, Côté and Saavedra (2005) A leader's negative mood spread to the team and worsened its coordination. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.90.2.295
📃 Kramer, Guillory and Hancock (2014) 689,003 people. Emotions spread through written posts alone. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1320040111
📃 Baumeister and colleagues (2001) Bad is stronger than good, across almost every area of psychology reviewed. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.5.4.323
📃 Rozin and Royzman (2001) Negative things weigh more and dominate mixed judgements. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327957pspr0504_2
📃 Soroka, Fournier and Nir (2019) Seventeen countries. People reacted more strongly to negative than positive news, with real individual variation. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1908369116
📃 Robertson and colleagues (2023) Headline experiments. Each extra negative word raised click-through by 2.3%. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01538-4
📃 Miner, Glomb and Hulin (2005) 41 employees. Negative events were rarer than positive ones and about five times as strongly linked to mood. https://doi.org/10.1348/096317905x40105
📃 Beersma and Van Kleef (2012) Why people gossip: information was the commonest motive, and gossip to protect the group was not frowned on. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.2012.00956.x
📃 Feinberg and colleagues (2012) Warning others about a selfish act relieved the teller's discomfort and deterred selfishness. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0026650
📃 Feinberg, Willer and Schultz (2014) Gossip and exclusion kept cooperation high, and the excluded came back cooperating. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797613510184
📃 Dores Cruz and colleagues (2021) From 324 definitions: gossip is telling someone about a person who is absent or unaware. https://doi.org/10.1177/1059601121992887
📃 Martinescu, Janssen and Nijstad (2014) Positive gossip about competence helped receivers improve; negative gossip raised self-protection. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167214554916
📃 Robbins and Karan (2020) 467 people wearing recorders. Most gossip was neutral and about social information. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550619837000
📃 Brady, Brown and Liang (2017) Workplace gossip reconceptualised as positive or negative and often functional, with new measures. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000164
📃 Grosser, Lopez-Kidwell and Labianca (2010) Frequent gossipers were rated more influential by peers and lower by supervisors. https://doi.org/10.1177/1059601109360391
📃 Dunbar (2004) About two thirds of conversation is about social topics; gossip bonds groups. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.8.2.100
📃 Wax, Rodriguez and Asencio (2022) Meta-analysis of 52 studies, 14,143 people. Negative gossip harmed targets and went with worse outcomes for those swapping it. https://doi.org/10.1177/20413866221112383
📃 Sun, Schilpzand and Liu (2023) Four decades of gossip research: information, ego, inclusion and exclusion. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.2653
📃 Grayson and colleagues (2025) Well-meant gossip can leave people thinking bad behaviour is commoner than it is. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2024.104682
📃 Wu and colleagues (2018) 403 dyads. Being the target of negative gossip dented self-worth at work, and helping with it. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206316632057
📃 Kauffeld and Meyers (2009) In team discussions, complaints came in chains, and so did solutions. https://doi.org/10.1080/13594320701693209
📃 Lehmann-Willenbrock and colleagues (2011) 52 team discussions. Complaining cycles went with a flat, passive group mood. https://doi.org/10.1177/1046496411398397
📃 Kowalski (1996) A review of why people complain and what complaining does. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.119.2.179
📃 Alicke and colleagues (1992) Complaint diaries. Over 75% of complaints aimed at nothing, and the usual reply was agreement. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167292183004
📃 Geddes and Callister (2007) Anger voiced within the norms of the workplace can be constructive; swallowed or spilled anger harms. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2007.25275495
📃 Geddes, Callister and Gibson (2020) Workplace anger can signal real problems and lead to change. https://doi.org/10.5465/amp.2016.0158
📃 Gable and colleagues (2004) Sharing good news lifted mood beyond the event itself, more so with an interested listener. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.87.2.228
📃 Kauffeld and Lehmann-Willenbrock (2012) 92 team meetings. Complaining hurt satisfaction, productivity and later success more than problem solving helped. https://doi.org/10.1177/1046496411429599
P.P.S. Why Do I Even Have the Nerve to Write This?
Fair question.
I am someone who has spent years working alongside remarkable executives, navigating chaos, translating vision into structure and figuring things out, sometimes beautifully and sometimes the very hard way. I have had the privilege of being the steady right hand to leaders who move fast, take risks and expect a lot. That environment has shaped me more than any classroom ever could.
I also happen to have an MBA, and I am studying psychology because people fascinate me. How we work. Why we disconnect. What actually holds us together when the pressure rises.
But really, none of that is the point.
I am here because I have lived the erosion and rebuilt from it. I have seen the cost of carrying too much and the relief that arrives when you finally stop disappearing inside your own competence.
So I share what I have learned in case it helps someone else. Take what is useful. Leave the rest. And remember this one truth that professionals like you often forget:
You are probably doing far better than you give yourself credit for.
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