I’ve been thinking about the fine line between venting and creating an echo chamber. If I’m really upset at A, and I complain to B a lot about it, am I venting in a healthy way to prevent repression and resentment, or am I creating an echo chamber that stirs up yet more anger?

My recent analysis of this is as below.

Venting focuses on talking about my feelings, recognizing the legitimacy of my feeling upset, affirming that my feelings deserve being treated with compassion. It can be done without saying anything negative about A, the person I’m upset at. I can say, when A did this, I felt xxx and yyy. And I can be told, yes it’s natural to feel xxx and yyy, you had a rough time, don’t forget you actually are a good person. This is probably healthy, probably also can make me feel better, and can prevent resentments from building up and exploding. If A does the same thing again, I am more likely to think “of course I would have this feeling now, it’s natural”.

An echo chamber that whips up anger and hatred focuses on criticizing A, the person who upset me. Saying things like how awful A is, or how unreasonable A is, or how mean A is. This can make me feel relief in the moment, to have my anger or hatred feel supported, but it ultimately does not make me feel better. Indeed, it will raise the level of anger and hatred in my heart, so that each time I even think about A, I get angry again and need a fix by finding my echo chamber again. Then the next time A does the same thing, I will more likely think “see what an asshole A is? ARGH I can’t stand A!”

I have born the brunt of echo chambers a lot, having been a leader often and long enough. When some things I do upset others, and they eventually explode, it is obvious that their anger is whipped up far beyond proportion with my actual actions. And it is not fair to me. I have also been in echo chambers myself, and indeed the anger I recently have felt (mixed up with the sadness, depression, and trauma) was contributed to at least a bit by the echo chamber effect I’ve allowed to happen myself, when I complain to real world friends about things and people that upset me in WoW. And it has not been fair to those people in WoW, either.

Maybe there are other ways of thinking about this, but at least from now on when I feel upset at someone, I’ll be careful to explain to the people I’m venting to that we must focus on my feelings and not the people I’m venting about, because I don’t want to build up the anger in my heart, I want to to ease it.