By Donna Shea & Nadine Briggs
I (Donna) mentioned the title of this blog to a kid who came to his social group in a grouchy mood. He was miserable. Crabby and out of sorts. He was complaining about everything and everyone. He didn’t feel like playing anything and he was really being a downer. It was taking down the mood of the rest of us, and he was not interested or invested in working with me towards participating.
Do you have people in your life that complain a lot? Are you a person who others think complains a lot? Complaining can very easily become habitual. The more you complain and focus on the negative, the more you will find you have things to complain about. This is why we work with kids using positive psychology. You can train your brain to move from focusing on the negative to looking for the positive.
We all know that saying that misery loves company. The company generally does not want misery, complaints, gossip, and all those things that draw a social situation down to a complaint session, however easy it seems to go there.
We all have those days when we’re irritable or feeling low. And, as an important point, I would never say this to a person who is depressed or sad for very good reasons. More generally, if we’re having a bad or an off day, it’s more beneficial to our social relationships if we change our plan to what we need to do for ourselves in terms of self-care then to spread our grouchy mood.
