How To Overcome Resentment

Resentment is a persistent feeling of anger and/or indignation towards someone for an offense he uttered towards us. This offense could be direct: insult, infidelity, lack of respect…; or indirect: not counting on us for an event, not speaking to us…

We can even be resentful of the world and of life if we do not know how to correctly process the problems that happen to us. The thing is that the grievance causes emotional pain to the resentful person every time he remembers it. It usually generates hostility and awakens feelings of revenge in the injured person.

We tend to think that whoever harms us deserves punishment, one of Albert Ellis’s irrational beliefs. However, thinking like this ultimately means that we are the ones punished, since the discomfort does not disappear. Next, we will tell you how to overcome resentment towards a person.

We can all feel resentful at times and that does not mean that we are resentful people. There are more extreme cases and others with specific resentment. Some of the characteristic behaviors of resentful people are:

• The resentful person feels deeply hurt by the person who has offended them.
• They tend to be intolerant people and have a hard time forgiving: They cannot understand how someone could have done something like that to them without deserving it.
• They tend to extremes: either you love me or you hate me, or you give me everything or I want nothing, etc.
• They get angry often: especially when things don’t go the way they expected.
• It is difficult for them to forget the past and it conditions their present: You will be able to hear them make references to negative events constantly.
• They find it difficult to admit their mistakes: They tend to be very aware of the mistakes of others.
• They are quite proud: They hardly give in to opinions contrary to their own.
• They don’t forget: You may be able to get their forgiveness, but it is common for them not to forget what happened and to reproach it at the slightest opportunity. In this article, you will see how to forget the past and start over.
• They are right: They rarely come to the conclusion that they may be wrong.
• Lack of empathy: They are more focused on what they feel than on what others feel, although that may explain their attitude.
• They judge: It is common for them to judge other people’s behavior.

How to overcome resentment? It is not an easy task. It’s not about wanting not to be bothered by what happened, but about closing that chapter and continuing with your life without it affecting the present.

Here are some tips on how to eliminate resentment:

1. Don’t get carried away by emotions: It is important that you analyze the situation from reason, because if you do it from the emotion that it has caused you, you will not be objective.
2. Use empathy: Put yourself in the other person’s shoes before judging the facts. Maybe he was having a bad day, maybe he made a mistake, or maybe he didn’t mean to cause harm. If you put yourself in their shoes, it will be beneficial for both of you. In this article, we tell you how to practice empathy.
3. Understand that there are things that do not depend on us: We cannot control everything and sometimes things do not go as we would like. What we can control and to what extent it affects us.
4. empty chair technique: If the person who caused the harm is no longer there, use the empty chair technique to practice forgiveness. This technique consists of telling the absent person, to an empty chair or with a written letter, what you feel, and forgiving them. This way you can turn the page.
5. Don’t focus on the negative: Think about everything positive that the person who has harmed you has or has done for you at a specific moment and think, does he/she deserve to be judged for a specific fact?
6. Think about how you would feel if you had done something similar: Maybe that way you can forgive and forget what happened.
7. Realize that you can’t always be right: Think that, even if you had it, sometimes it’s not worth fighting for it. Giving in sometimes doesn’t make you weak, but smart for not letting it affect you too much.
8. We can’t change the past: how to forget past grudges? If the damage is slight, recognize it as a specific error that all human beings can make. If the damage is serious, really serious, remove that person from your life and forgive them for not behaving as you would have liked, but do not give them the power to continue harming you through resentment.

In this article, you will find more information about how to learn to forgive.

This article is merely informative, at PsychologyFor we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

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