How to Stop Holding onto Resentment

If you try to reconstruct the flames of the fire that broke out inside you with the fuse of resentment, you will soon make a precious discovery: There is nothing useful in this feelingIt's a pure waste. Of energy, feelings, time. There are always good reasons to unleash this. mixed of anger and indignation, and push it to the very thin line of the swamp of hatred, and therefore it's not very important to delve into the causes of resentment. It could be a wrong we've suffered. A wound we didn't expectA latent sense of envy for those who have achieved unexpected results, which we have not even managed to touch. An inferiority complex Compared to those who manage to inspire empathy and admiration, without even trying too hard, almost naturally, instinctively. The expansion of a regret, far more painful than the sweetness of nostalgia, for what we could have done and didn't.

Index of topics

The causes

The resentment it's a form of resentment and anger Long-lasting effect. There's something unresolved inside us that we don't want to close. We can't turn the page, and we don't even consider who pays the price for this inertia: ourselves. Perhaps the person we've turned into the target of our resentment doesn't even realize the feeling that distances us from them. In its destructive power, the first thing that resentment kills is the fragility of our feelingsMore necessary than ever in times of rampant narcissism and selfishness. We must be vulnerable, ready to fall to get up again, we cannot be afraid of our mistakes and the pain that comes with them. Resentment is an insecticide for everything that circulates around love., even in its primordial state. The moment we spray it, life becomes impoverished, our hearts harden, and we risk remaining trapped in the darkness of our selfishness. Far from the pleasure of a life filled with healthy, meaningful, and lighthearted yet profound relationships. Indifferent and robbed of the attention that is truly synonymous with love. For everyone, at any age.

What does it mean to hold a grudge?

Another victim of resentment is physical energy.You won't believe it, but resentment is an effort that even challenges your muscles and physique. If you do an Internet search, you'll find that there are several studies according to which resentful people have specific aesthetic characteristics. Scowling looks, but above all... hardened facial musclesAnd the effort of resentment, all wasted, cannot be recovered, not even in time. It disperses like dust in the wind, where a moment of peace would be enough. irony, of Calvinist lightness, to prevent the mixture of anger and disdain from taking hold and spreading its musty odor throughout our person. Yes, you read that right: musty. Resentment spreads bad odors, the stench of something stale. And this is already clear from the etymology of the word, which derives from the Latin rancere, or rancid. An adjective that perfectly describes the resentful man. This is also why resentment, destined by its nature to expand without limits, produces very direct damage to our health. For example: lowers immune defenses and increases the risk of heart disease.

The damage of resentment

Sticking with the spray metaphor, resentment eliminates with poisonous jets our ability to express doubts, to question our ideas and our points of view. In one fell swoop we barricade ourselves inside certain certainties, including the most miserable. We no longer accept questions, doubts. And we risk, in our shipwreck toward intolerance, losing our grasp on the meaning of life, the cardinal points of being in the world, the vital fabric of relationships. The reality of things escapes usWe become unreasonable, and only what we see through our own eyes counts. This attitude can spill over into collective behavior, as we've seen in many societies, starting with Italy, hit by the severity and length of the economic crisis. These societies are resentful, and therefore changeable and unstable in their moods.

How to distinguish resentment from hatred

Shrinkers usually make a fundamental distinction between resentment and hatred. Resentment, according to this distinction, is passive, doesn't imply a reaction, and can simmer endlessly in the dark recesses of our intimacy. It never comes out, never explodes. Hatred, on the other hand, is active: it triggers an action-reaction, even a violent one, in the form of revenge. In fact, if we look more closely at both these states of mind, we realize that resentment and hatred, unfortunately, if not stopped in time, end up fueling each other. Even for a very long time.

Who is the spiteful one?

The resentful person is a universal characterLike the miser, to remain within the category of people who close their hearts. To get a complete picture, just read some of the many protagonists, prisoners of resentment, who populate the novels of the great nineteenth-century literature, the one that has sculpted universal men and women. The resentful destroy, patrimonies and loves, pleasures and feelings, emotions and life. Balzac writes in Father Goriot: «If the human heart can make some pause when it ascends towards the altitudes of affection, rarely stops on the steep slope of resentment." And this is because resentment, as ancient Persian literature reminds us, is a tree that throws out deep roots, difficult to eradicate. The resentful person, reverting to the futility of this feeling, wastes precious time and burns to the ground the wisdom we carry first in our hearts and then in our minds. The wisdom of not being overwhelmed by things, even the worst, of not giving up the value of fundamentals, such as kindness and tolerance, of always trying to combine freedom with responsibility in our attitudes. And when resentment rises, moving from the mind to the eyes until they cloud, let us simply remember: of Dante and of a verse to which we should be very fond as devotees of the light life. It goes like this: «Don't worry about them, but look and pass by…».

How to Stop Resentment with Five Verbs

Getting rid of resentment and its negative energy It's not easy. There is no pill that can save us, and we can't get by with some superficial good intentions. But we do have at our disposal 5 verbs that can help us.

ReviewLet's try to rewind the film of our prolonged resentment, without focusing too much on the details. Perhaps by going back we'll discover that something in our narrative, in what we're convinced of, doesn't add up. It's an interesting starting point for closing the issue.
DeflateAt the root of resentment, much more frequently than we imagine, there is a method errorSomething exaggerated. A word we've overestimated, perhaps just an unfortunate joke, an attitude we've judged too harshly, or with the infamous pointing finger of someone who always wants to judge. Which is why deflating the source of resentment is already a way to defuse it until it disappears.
LearnEvery misjudgment of a person is a defeat, and something burns inside us. But let's try to reverse our perspective. Experience, even negative ones, allows us to learn and avoid future mistakes. Ultimately, human relationships are nothing more than continuous training. With our peers, men and women who, like us, mix good and bad.
ProcrastinateThat is, taking your time, which doesn't mean becoming a procrastinator. Time is a crucial variable in quelling resentment: if it's not ripe, there's no point in trying, better to wait. But if the time has come, there's no point in delaying. And we must feel this choice within, without rejecting it once it tries to surface.
ReconcileIt's different from forgiveness, and, if you like, it's even a more lenient approach. It's about weighing the various factors at play. On one side, we have the loss of a relationship and an internal malaise, both under the common banner of resentment. On the other, there's the offense and/or wrongdoing suffered. If we reflect, we might discover a clear disproportion between these two factors, and then it means the time has come to take the right step toward reconciliation.

Resentment in a book

The damages of resentment, which can accompany you throughout your life, are told very well in a Black which can be read in one breath: The good years (La Vita Felice editions), written by Stefano Brusadelli. Five former schoolmates (a policeman, an accountant, a body shop mechanic, a shoe store clerk, and a lawyer) reunite many years later, solving the mystery of a crime. They bear the scars of old resentments they've never been able to erase, to the point where they poison their lives. In a settling of scores that not even death, in its most violent form, can settle.

The harms and dangers of resentment