Constantly Talking About Your Problems with Friends May Make Things Worse
I found an interesting report in a current issue of Developmental Psychology that suggests a limitation of constantly talking about your problems with friends - at least if you are a teenager girl. Dr. Amanda Rose studied 813 children and teens for 6 months and saw that girls who spent a lot of time co-ruminating with peers (constantly talk about their problems with friends) are more likely to develop depression and anxiety than those who did not. While it makes sense to talk about problems, there are limitations especially when problems are continually talked about. Dr. Rose suggested that these results may also apply to adults.
It made a lot of sense to me, because constantly talking about your problems becomes a negative reinforcing behavior. If you believe that “what you focus on expands”, as I do, then continually focusing on problems - instead of looking to solutions and ways to move through the problems - trains us to look for more problems to focus on. Over time, it’s no wonder that one begins to develop a pessimistic view and even becomes depressed and anxious. Our brain wirings are “plastic”, which means we can train our brains and even shape how our brains work by what we feed our brains physically and psychologically. Dr. Rose’s study is definitely worth contemplating.
Developmental Psychology (limited time: full PDF of the study)
Copyright 2007 by the American Psychological Association
2007, Vol. 43, No. 4, 1019–1031Prospective Associations of Co-Rumination With Friendship and Emotional Adjustment: Considering the Socioemotional Trade-Offs of Co-Rumination
Amanda J. Rose, Wendy Carlson, and Erika M. Waller
University of Missouri—ColumbiaCo-ruminating, or excessively discussing problems, with friends is proposed to have adjustment tradeoffs. Co-rumination is hypothesized to contribute both to positive friendship adjustment and to problematic emotional adjustment. Previous single-assessment research was consistent with this hypothesis, but whether co-rumination is an antecedent of adjustment changes was unknown. A 6-month longitudinal study with middle childhood to midadolescent youths examined whether co-rumination is simultaneously a risk factor (for depression and anxiety) and a protective factor (for friendship problems). For girls, a reciprocal relationship was found in which co-rumination predicted increased depressive and anxiety symptoms and increased positive friendship quality over time, which, in turn, contributed to greater co-rumination. For boys, having depressive and anxiety symptoms and high-quality friendships also predicted increased co-rumination. However, for boys, co-rumination predicted only increasing positive friendship quality and not increasing depression and anxiety. An implication of this research is that some girls at risk for developing internalizing problems may go undetected because they have seemingly supportive friendships.
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