Complaining doesn’t get you anywhere. Reaching out to friends can seem like it can help you keep your sanity when something isn’t going well. And sometimes it does. For a short while. But complaining in and of itself doesn’t change anything. And usually makes things worse, since you are building up the problem in your mind and through your words.

Of course, you need not keep it all bottled up. And you do not have to figure it all out on your own. But, HOW you talk about the issue makes all the difference.

Since you can only change yourself, your questions should be about what you might do differently to get different results. “So this is what happened. … I obviously didn’t handle it well. What could I have done or said differently? What could I have done to preempt this altercation? Please help me think this through.”