Whining is good for health

ELLEN FRANK

Whining is good for our health. Especially when a problem in one’s life is a recurring one – work, money, children, marriage, chronic illness, aging, etc. – we need to complain about it out loud. The question is how to do this and keep our friends.

A few years ago, I had planned to give a course on the Sunshine Coast called Creative Whining 101. Everyone loved the name. They all said, “That is great! I know someone who should take it” – not wanting to identify as a person who might whine. I think we need to teach that whining is good. OK, not all whining is good, but the stiff upper lip alternative is worse.

The concept that whining is good seems to fly in the face of all the positive thinking ideology. This is not true. One can have a positive outlook on life and still whine. We just cannot “look at the bright side” of disaster all the time. We need to be able to complain – to get it out of our system so we can go back to living. Denial is quite detrimental to our health.

We also need to be able to see and to appreciate the humor of everyday disaster(s). I learned this from a master, my dad. While a hurricane was washing away our patio furniture sometime in the 1950s, he put on hip waders and went out with his movie camera to take pictures. He was standing in the middle of the yard near the front patio as the furniture from the back patio whirled by on waters that had turned the yard into a river. He was holding up his camera, laughing and waving at us. There are great shots of me as a little girl in the window with my mother, who is looking really mad. She never did share his sense of humor in the face of hurricanes.

I knew by my dad’s ironic smile when he arrived home in the evening whether a disaster had befallen him. One time, his car broke down on the highway; when he got out to go get help, a truck totaled his car. He came home laughing. He was plain happy because he wasn’t in the car when it was struck. He wasn’t Pollyanna about it, he just had a perspective on disaster that I sincerely try to maintain.

My own current whining experience centres on a chronic illness that doesn’t want to disappear, as well as the ongoing aches of aging. However, I must confess to sometimes still whining about the children, even though they are approaching middle age.

Here are my five basic rules on the topic:

1. Pick wisely to whom you whine and about what – some people can endlessly listen to your aches and pains, while others are good at family dynamics. Others just can’t listen at all.

2. Figure out how much time you can get away with before you open your mouth – this is very important, so that you can whine with this person again. If you go on forever, you won’t get to do it again next week.

3. Appear to change the topic of the whine – at least give it a new twist.

4. When whining to same person, always make it seem like things have improved from the last whine.

5. Most important: be open to humor. If the person to whom you are whining knows that they can laugh, you’ll get more time and will be able to whine to them again.

Knowing how to whine and to whom you can whine safely is a very important thing, as being able to express our feelings and complaints openly is good for our health. Our problems aren’t funny, but we do need humor – and other people – to survive them.

Ellen Frank is a writer, activist, mother, grandmother and retired travel agent. She has lived with multiple sclerosis since 1988. She is the author of Sticks and Wheels: A Guide to Accessible Travel on the Lower Sunshine Coast (Ouzel Publishing, 2006) and features information on accessibility services on her website, sticksandwheels.net.

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