Family Resentment: Possible Causes, Psychological Effects, And What To Do
There is no doubt that the family is one of the main points of support in people’s lives, normally playing an essential role in the correct development of its different members. Furthermore, the family gives us security and allows us to learn to face various situations. However, the family is not free of problems and disputes between its members, and resentment can develop.
Family resentment is a pattern of attitudes of resentment and hatred on the part of one or more members of a family towards another family member or several who have committed some negative and/or harmful act towards them, resulting in pain on a moral and sentimental that has remained over time and, therefore, they have not been able to forgive the family member who harmed them.
In this article we will explain in more detail What is the concept known as family resentment? and how it affects the relationships between family members, as well as giving some examples that could trigger it.
As we well know, The family is a fundamental nucleus and of great importance for the correct development of each of the members and groups that make up a society The family is the sustenance and support of each and every one of its members, especially the youngest ones, so that family ties are important in the correct development of personality and the way of behaving in society, also being a point of support. essential in people’s lives.
However, disputes and various problems can also arise in the family that could cause resentment or resentment among its different members, so it is an aspect to take into account from a psychological point of view.
Family resentment could be defined as a pattern of attitudes of resentment, hatred and pain at a moral level that are usually maintained over a long time by one or more members of a family towards another or more members of the same so that the relationships between them remain cracked, so if the people who are resentful cannot forgive what happened and close the wounds, it is likely that they will never again have a healthy relationship with their relatives towards whom they hold that grudge.
From research in psychology and systemic family therapy in which family problems are worked on, it has been observed that when there is family resentment, normally there is not only one resentful family member, with a resentment that is not able to eliminate towards another and other members, but it usually causes alliances, so that ties develop between two or more family members around that resentment.
Thus, among all the members who feel that family resentment reinforce those negative attitudes towards other family members for something harmful that they may have done to them in the past. Thus, they reinforce the negative experience suffered and the hatred or resentment feeds back even more, making it more difficult to forgive and forget what happened.
When there is family resentment, it is common for the resentful members to feel that they have been betrayed by the action of a family member or family members who made them suffer at a given time for various reasons, such as having felt neglected at some point by other family members, because of some financial dispute, because a family member did not help them when they needed it most, etc. In such cases, an emotion of resentment is fueled that lasts over time and is difficult to eradicate.
Examples of acts that could cause family resentment
As strange as it may seem at first glance, family resentment is quite common and as the following expression says “beans are cooked in every house”, which is the same, problems exist everywhere or in every family and no one is exempt from them, the most important thing being the way in which that is faced, since even if we do not like it, there are times when it is inevitable that they happen.
It is possible that we ourselves have been victims or executioners of family resentment, having occurred for justified, or even unjustified, causes, so that someone in the family becomes the focus of disappointment for their relatives, and thus, who becomes the A victim of family resentment, he ends up being reviled and singled out by other members of his family. In the most serious cases, that person may become the black sheep of the family and become a source of hatred and resentment whose name stops being pronounced by his family.
Family resentment can be triggered by various causes, so we are going to see some examples in which it could be the case that we are the ones who feel that resentment:
There are also examples of situations in which we could have caused that family resentment in our relatives such as the following:
As we have seen, family resentment can be triggered by various day-to-day reasons, some of them being much more common than others and sometimes triggered without it being on purpose, so It is important to be aware of our actions towards our family members so that we do not give rise to this happening in our family trying to give the attention and recognition that our closest ones deserve, trying to ensure fluid communication that allows correct understanding by everyone.
Consequences of family resentment
Family resentment is that hate-oriented attitudinal pattern that causes negative feelings that persist with the memory of the event that initially caused the resentment we felt. When this occurs in a family in which there are young members, what this resentment can cause is that the youngest ones learn an attitudinal pattern of hatred early on, which could be inappropriate for someone who has not yet reached sufficient maturity.
Therefore, in the event that family resentment is causing suffering to us, to that member or members of our family against whom we hold a grudge, or due to the harm that this situation could cause to our children, it is advisable to take into account a series of guidelines that could serve as a reference to begin to suture the wound that caused the resentment we feel so that we can forgive what happened and, if possible, restore the relationship with our relatives that we had given up as lost
You may be interested: “Forgiveness: should I or should I not forgive the person who hurt me?”
Family resentment often creates an environment of negativity, hostility, and even suffering within the family home, so Only forgiveness would be the tool that could alleviate that long-lasting suffering that has become stuck With forgiveness, those ties that had been broken could be recovered and thus the family members could feel freed from such a heavy burden that they had carried on their backs for so long, such as resentment or resentment.
However, forgiving is not a simple task and much less is it forgetting something that has caused us a lot of suffering, although it is not impossible if we put effort into achieving it to repair those relationships with those relatives with whom we had had some quarrels in the past. .
On the other hand, if it is impossible for us to recover the relationship that existed before what caused us that feeling happened, an alternative could be to forgive that family member in order to end that family resentment and thus turn the page. , each one being able to move forward on their own path, since resentment will not allow us to get rid of hatred or suffering.
