You've just finished another week at the office. You're stressed out from the politics and conflict that happened there all week. You reach out to your friends. Online, by phone, or in person. You immediately start complaining about your work: stupid boss, incompetent co-workers, idiot clients, et cetera. But that may not always be the best strategy.

Expecting your friends to understand and take an interest in your feelings, you monopolize the conversation with your work rants and complaints about petty office conflicts that you haven't been able to forget. And soon you realize that your friends are making excuses to end the conversation. You might even earn the nickname 'Debbie Downer' among your circle of friends.

Good friends will always take an interest in your feelings, but they don't want to be your therapist. A post at The Grindstone with some interesting perspectives on how we talk about our work suggests that you should keep your work grievances to yourself to avoid alienating yourself from your friends.

Your friends and family want to see you healthy and happy. But all too often they are trying to forget their own difficulties at work. They don't want to be dragged down with you into a nest of negativity. You need to find a way to complain briefly and constructively, or else find some other means to relieve workplace stress.

Why do we complain?

A complaint is a statement of grievance, discomfort, discontent, or dissatisfaction. People complain because they want to change something but don't have the power to make the change themselves. But a complaint isn't always made with change or resolution as its goal.

When we believe complaining might resolve our grievances, we attempt to:

• influence others who have power to make a change or resolve the grievance, or
• persuade others to join a group which collectively has the power to make a change or resolve the dissatisfaction.

When we don't feel complaining about something will resolve the situation we attempt to:

• get validation from others that our dissatisfaction is warranted, or
• get feedback from others on how best to mitigate the dissatisfaction if it cannot be resolved, or
• state our dissatisfaction as a means of defining our beliefs and values in our interactions with other people (especially when making new friends or professional connections).

When we complain to actively resolve a situation, we are engaging in constructive complaining behavior. When we complain to feel better about ourselves or otherwise deal with a situation we can't control, we are using expressive complaining.

Both types of complaints have their place in managing stress in the workplace. People complain to their boss or co-workers at first, when it appears change is possible. When this fails, co-workers often start using expressive complaining behaviours among themselves, or they start complaining on their own time to friends and family in an attempt to get something off their chest so they can feel better.

Excessive complaining can lead to poor relationships, depression

With healthy expressive complaints we can vent our frustration and get some validation or feedback that allows us to feel better. In moderation, we can expect friends and family to accept our need to vent. But they are relieved when we clean up quickly and move on to more positive conversation. If you aren't getting the validation or feedback you need, you may have a tendency to press issues that your confidants aren't willing to dwell on.

Expressive complaining in the absence of an actual resolution to a problem can be taken too far and make things worse. Excessive complaining can:

• Alienate co-workers, friends and family
• Become a habit and make it difficult to enjoy positive experiences
• Promote relationships and cliques based on purely negative emotions
• Lead to living a less fulfilling and less healthy life

In addition to all of the above, habitual excessive complaining can make it more difficult to accept actual change that resolves the original complaint. If you see everything in a negative light, you may develop a tendency to interpret new information and new experiences to confirm your potentially incorrect preconceptions. This is called confirmation bias and it can lead to depression if not corrected.

Complaining about work in an expressive and constructive manner

Your friends and family are an important part of managing stress. You need to keep those channels open and available for when you really need them. Avoid abusing the privileges you have with them. Don't turn your experiences together into a source of stress for them. Practice making time for fun and positive activities with your friends and family.

Do you think your friends are annoyed by your constant complaining about negative work experiences? If they haven't said anything, then ask them. If they confirm that your negativity is bringing them down, you should find some other channel for venting your grievances.

Choose something that has the potential to mitigate or make change within yourself even if the original grievance cannot be resolved. This is especially important if you're confused about the reasons why you are stressed. You need to understand the causes of stress before you can effectively deal with it.

Speak to a licensed family counsellor or psychologist

If you're under considerable stress at work, contact a family counsellor or psychologist. Look into whether your employer has an Employee Assistance Program (EAP) and call the number to set up an appointment. A therapist will give you a chance to vent your frustration. They will educate you about how you are reacting to the stress. They can probe your situation to help you understand what is causing the stress. And they can suggest strategies to manage the stress.

Join a support group

Look for a local support group for stress sufferers. Or look for a support group online. Joining a local support group can feel awkward at first, but knowing the others are suffering the same issues as you are will help you open up. You can learn new coping strategies for dealing with stress. Anything you share in a support group is supposed to be confidential, so you should feel free to share your feelings openly.

One potential problems with local support groups for stress sufferers (as opposed to other issues like cancer, smoking cessation, etc) is that actions of other people (eg. co-workers, boss, etc) are often the external causes of stress. Despite confidentiality within a support group setting there is a risk that something said at a meeting could reach the people who are part of your problem. Worse still, these people could show up at one of your meetings to deal with their own stress. Although rare, in such a situation the support group setting would be rendered temporarily or permanently dysfunctional for you.

Online support groups, social networks

As I've warned in the past, you should never complain about work on your public online social networking accounts. But you can find help online that is similar to what you would get in a local support group.

An online support group can go one step further than confidentiality. On a social network such as Rate My Workday, you can be completely anonymous. The only thing you share with other users in the group is the problem that is causing you stress. You can share your feelings and get help from a much larger set of like-minded people than you would in a local support group.

There are some trade-offs between local and online support groups. Some of these trade-offs are illustrated below.

Local support groups:

• Confidentiality
• Have a trained leader
• Small base of knowledge and support
• Verbal, face-to-face communication - rich medium, but can be awkward for some

Online support groups:

• Anonymity
• Self-led, group-led, may or may not have a trained leader
• Larger base of knowledge and support
• Written communication - less rich medium, but stimulates inward analysis of thoughts and feelings, similar to journaling.

You can use an online support group like Rate My Workday to complain about stress at work. But as with any form of expressive complaining, you shouldn't dwell too long on the negatives. Write your grievances, make some sense of them, and then move on. If you help others with their problems it can help you manage your own, just like in a local support group.

Conclusions

Stress at work is best left at work, if possible. Most of us will at some point in our careers need to deal with workplace stress on our own time. Exercise, diet, and other healthy lifestyle choices play a big part. When managing the stress at work gets difficult, it's okay to lean a little on your friends and family. But in order to avoid straining those relationships, you need to take responsibility for your own feelings.

Try finding help online, do some journaling, or join a support group. Visit Rate My Workday and submit a complaint. Try talking to a counsellor. Accept that you need help instead of burdening your friends with your problems all of the time. Above all, if you are going to complain to anyone, do it in such a way that help you feel better: make it your goal to improve your situation in some way.

How about you? Do you rely on your friends and family to deal with stress at work? Have you pushed them to the point they have asked you to find help elsewhere? How did that work out for you?