Almost all of us girls do it when we get together with our girlfriends: use each other as sounding boards to iron out the annoyances of life — how annoying our husbands/boyfriends can be, how annoying our children/other friends can be, how annoying Sarah Palin can be. Mostly certainly, cavewomen commiserated around the fire while cleaning the woolly mammoth hides, pioneer women kvetched around the quilt at the bee, and our grandmothers did it over the clothesline while hanging out the wash. Since time immemorial, for those of the female feather, girlfriends have been the best free therapy around.##M:[more]##
Now psychologists actually have coined a name for this. They call it “co-rumination,” and while a certain amount of it is normal and healthy, there does come a point when obsessively describing the same problem can contribute to emotional difficulties like anxiety and depression.
This is interesting, especially in light of the fact that just this week, a new study found that the suicide rate among middle-aged white women is rising. The increase is attributed mostly to divorce and financial stress, but dwelling on problems and frustrations, and finding immediate validation, can also help lead to a downward spiral.
Co-rumination has been amplified and simplified by technology. It’s one thing to go out seeking friends with whom to have a moan session, but now you don’t even have to leave the comfort of your home, which means that you can co-ruminate to your heart’s content while remaining isolated.
Psychologists point to today’s tools of communication to explain why co-rumination is soaring, again, particularly among females, with social networking sites like Facebook, text messaging, instant messaging, E-mail, and even the good old-fashioned telephone.
While these tools can and should be used to promote healthy behavior, they can sometimes do the opposite. Case in point: Just last week I received one of the most alarming kinds of calls the mother of a teenager can receive –- my daughter on the other end, crying. My heart rate jacked upward as I heard the sobbing, and I demanded, sweetie, are you okay?
Yes, I’m fine, she wailed. (My first reaction is one of relief. My next most immediate reaction is drama queen! Don’t do that to your dear mom!)
Then what’s wrong?
It’s okay. I was just talking to Emily (her best friend from high school) on video chat (real-time, face-to-face conversations via the computer screen) and she started crying and then I started crying and can I please come home this weekend to see her?
She did end up coming home for a weekend visit and it was fine. I mean, how could I say no, when Emily chose to go to school on the other side of the continent and it would be a whole unbearable month before they would have a chance to see each other again? What kind of an ogre of a mother am I?
When I graduated from high school, I hardly looked back. Granted, this was in the dark ages before instant technology. I said good-bye to my friends and to my family and moved on. It was six weeks before I saw my parents and almost three months before I reconnected with my buddies at Thanksgiving. The separation was, frankly, healthy. I was able to open the new chapter of my life with a clean page.
Clinging to the past was difficult. We had one telephone in the room shared by five girls, and it was uncool to be seen hanging onto it, a symbolic umbilical cord to the ancient history that high school represented.
Now there is little reason to move on if you don’t want to. You can talk to your friends every day, every minute, as if they were right down the hallway. You can see each other via computer and ooh and aah over the new hairdo, or have a sobfest over the jerk who didn’t return your phone call.
Not all co-rumination is negative. As the researchers point out, friends who co-ruminate tend to be close, and it is those intimate relationships that fortify the soul and can help build self-esteem. It is when there is too much of a good thing that these intense emotional conversations can contribute to heightened anxiety and depression. Think about it: how good does it feel to have your feelings validated, to get that level of support and to know that you are not alone or crazy, particularly when you are angry or sad? The search for empathy can have the characteristics of a disease, a level of contagiousness where one friend’s negative thoughts can trigger the same kinds of thoughts in you.
So what is a parent to do? Psychologists advise focusing on helping your children help each other solve the problem, once it is established that there is one, instead of dwelling on it. Encourage your children to understand that they should use their friends for support, but try to focus on the positive and push each other to spiral in an upward direction.
I counsel both my daughters who are away at school to use technology to stay in touch with their old friends, but not to let it hinder their ability to move on and make new ones. I’m not saying you should ditch your old friends. Just keep them in their proper place.
I remind them of that old song, “Make new friends but keep the old. One is silver and the other’s gold.” This is even more important to remember today when technology can make the whole thing so much more confusing than it ever has been.
