Minda Zetlin recently asked in an Inc. article, Listening to Complainers Is Bad for Your Brain, Do you hate it when people complain? It turns out there’s a good reason. Trevor Blake, a serial entrepreneur and author of Three Simple Steps: A Map to Success in Business and Life says that listening to too much complaining is bad for your brain.
In the book, Mr. Blake describes how neuroscientists have learned to measure brain activity when faced with various stimuli, including a long gripe session. Mr. Blake writes’
The brain works more like a muscle than we thought … So if you’re pinned in a corner for too long listening to someone being negative, you’re more likely to behave that way as well.
Even worse, being exposed to too much complaining can actually make you dumb. Research shows that exposure to 30 minutes or more of negativity–including viewing such material on TV, actually peels away neurons in the brain’s hippocampus. “That’s the part of your brain you need for problem-solving,” he says. “Basically, it turns your brain to mush.”
Mr. Blake explains if you’re running a company, don’t you need to hear about anything that may have gone wrong? ”
There’s a big difference between bringing your attention to something that’s awry and a complaint. “Typically, people who are complaining don’t want a solution; they just want you to join in the indignity of the whole thing. You can almost hear brains clink when six people get together and start saying, ‘Isn’t it terrible?’ This will damage your brain even if you’re just passively listening. And if you try to change their behavior, you’ll become the target of the complaint.
So, how do you defend yourself and your brain from all the negativity? Blake recommends the following tactics:
Brain defense tactics
1. Get some distance You should look at complaining like smoking. a complainer is a smoker spewing out toxic fumes and you are the victim of their smoking. “The approach I’ve always taken with complaining is to think of it as the same as passive smoking.” Your brain will thank you if you get yourself away from the complainer if you can.
2. Ask the complainer to fix the problem If you can’t easily walk away, a second strategy the article recommends is to ask the complainer to fix the problem.
“Try to get the person who’s complaining to take responsibility for a solution,” Blake says. “I typically respond to a complaint with, ‘What are you going to do about it?'” Many complainers walk away huffily at that point because he hasn’t given them what they wanted, Blake reports. But some may actually try to solve the problem.
3. Shields up! When you’re trapped listening to 
a complaint, you can use mental techniques to block out the griping and save your neurons. Blake favors one used by the late Spanish golfer Seve Ballesteros during a match against Jack Nicklaus–a match the crowd wanted Ballesteros to lose. “He was having difficulty handling the hostility of the crowd,” Blake says. “So he imagined a bell jar that no one could see descending from the sky to protect him.”
A related strategy is to mentally retreat to your imagined favorite spot, someplace you’d go if you could wave a magic wand. “For me, it was a ribbon of beautiful white sugary sand that extended out in a horseshoe shape from a private island,” Blake says. “I would take myself to my private retreat while people were ranting and raving. I could smile at them and nod in all the right places and meanwhile take myself for a walk on my private beach.”
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Having worked in retail a long time ago, you learn some of these behaviors when you have to deal with the public. I practiced a combination of shields up, and let the public blather on, and then moved on as quickly as possible. It is important to develop a coping mechanism because listening to complainers is bad for your brain.
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
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