Working Through Resentment

by Aaron Weiss

​When describing an ailing relationship, one of the words that gets tossed around a lot is resentment. Resentment can be described as a negative emotional response towards an event or situation when you felt mistreated or slighted by someone else. Resentment also arises somewhere down the road of envy when someone discovers that the key to their limited sense of happiness is awkwardly tethered to the misery of someone else. Resentment promises relief but delivers more pain. Resentment hollows a person out over time. To quote a great psychologist and mentor of mine, Dr. Randy Johnson; resentment needs to be addressed because “you cannot resolve what you resent.” 
 
In an effort to serve you and briefly address what is one of the most troublesome realities when working towards repair in ailing relationships, I want to offer a helpful image for resentment so that you might reconsider your connection to resentment. 

Simply put, resentment is a cage of our own creation... We fashion iron bars and thick walls made of thoughts overtime. These bars are built up by our negative feelings, hostility, bitterness, and negative self-talk. We ruminate in thoughts, like, “if only he changed, then I wouldn’t feel this way.” 

Resentment embodies blame, builds in patterns of avoidance, and grows stronger through passive-aggressive behaviours. However, because resentment causes us to feel as though we are trapped unless that other person changes, gets punished, or comes to their senses, we essentially lock ourselves into our cell and throw away the keys. In fact, while locked in resentment, we throw the keys at the feet of our perpetrator, thinking, “if she really cared, she would set me free.” Or, “I will feel free when he knows what he has done.” 

The painful irony of prolonged resentment is that it ultimately locks you in a dungeon of your own design from all the joys of life while setting your perpetrator free. Through resentment, we convince ourselves that we are building a prison for someone else, all the while inhabiting its walls as its prisoner.

While the initial reflex of anger towards an injustice is the appropriate emotional response, it also needs to be addressed and managed accordingly. Feelings of resentment, therefore, may be telling you that you are attempting to hold someone else accountable for their words or actions through unhealthy means. In other words, feelings of resentment may alert you to an oppressive situation that you need to remove yourself from or find appropriate means to address. To circumvent the early warning system of our anger which prompts us to pursue more constructive thoughts and actions, increases feelings of resentment. Instead of slowing down enough to see the bars and walls being built around us, we hide within them as self-destructive means to address our pain. To stretch the analogy, one might find some utility in their self-imposed cage as, albeit a miserable place, it has become both a familiar place where the perpetrator cannot reach them and is fantisfully held accountable for their crimes in the lived pains of the one imprisoned by resentment. 

How are we released from resentment? At times, resentment is the result of many offenses heaped up over time. When it comes to our closest relationships, resentment may be a byproduct of “negative sentiment override.” (Gottman, 2011). Imagine wearing a pair of glasses that causes us to evaluate someone in a negative light because, after many offenses, we can no-longer see them in a positive light. Like operating in relational overdraft, we treat that person like they owe us something they refuse to pay back. In this state, resentment reigns and we begin to see our closest relationships in an adversarial way. We are up when they’re down, and down when they’re up. It’s backwards and counterproductive to resolving conflict and repairing relationships. 
 
So, how are we released from resentment? 
 
Here are three keys to pick up and unlock the cage of resentment: stop comparing, try gratitude, and embrace forgiveness.

How Are We Released From Resentment?

1) Stop Comparing. Theodore Rosevelt said, “comparison is the thief of joy.” Resentment diminishes the sources of joy in our lives because we simply do not pay much attention to them. Comparison allows all the goodness in our lives to fade into the periphery while something else beyond our grasp occupies the whole of our attention. In a sense, this is an invitation to shift your focus onto what is life-giving. Again, if resentment is akin to locking oneself away and throwing the keys at our perpetrator’s feet, the unhealthy focus becomes one of aggravation - “don’t you see how you’re hurting me?! Why do you get to go free while I am left here to rot in my resentment?!” By stopping comparison, we begin to give our attention to that which will begin to set us free from our self made prisons instead of that which will only cause them to grow.

How Are We Released From Resentment?

2) Try Gratitude. If resentment invites us to play a zero-sum game of evaluating our successes through the knowledge of another’s loss, even the greatest gifts of our lives become unreliable sources of joy because we cannot simply enjoy them for what they are - gifts.. Gratitude is the antithesis of resentment. Gratitude serves as a 180 degree course correction to begin practicing the posture which will begin rewiring one’s focus towards appreciation that has been negatively shaped through resentment. This takes practice to see, savor, and share all that we are grateful for; but it is the sort of activity which knocks down walls one at a time.

How Are We Released From Resentment?

3) Embrace Forgiveness. Forgiveness is the act of removing or canceling a debt. Resentment can be the result of experiencing real offences and an awareness of injustices that have incurred an unpaid debt. It may sound counterintuitive to suggest releasing the other person of that debt, whether that is a relational wound or emotional cost; but, by embracing forgiveness, one begins to understand that the experience of resentment is one of paying down the debt of an injustice over time through the experience of being locked up in the cage of resentment. Forgiveness frees the forgiver from having to set the record straight. Forgiveness does not ignore injustice, but forgiveness does relinquish one’s right to be the judge. Unlike a hung-jury, the act embracing forgiveness allows those trapped by feelings of resentment to go free. 

This post can also be found on, 
​https://www.masterscounselling.com/s/stories/working-through-resentment