Resentment: what is, types and ways of forgiveness

Resentment is a difficult feeling that every person experiences. Grievances significantly complicate life and negatively affect the state of health, since at the psychosomatic level, strong grievances often cause the development of serious illnesses. In this article, we will tell you how and why people get offended, what they are, and how to deal with them.

Resentment is an ancient and very strong feeling that is inherent in us almost from birth to old age. In psychology, it is customary to call an offense an inadequate (negative) reaction of a person to events, relationships that he considers unfair, offensive. Emotions that a disappointed, offended person experiences, whom he believes have been unjustly offended, are always negative emotional in nature. If sadness is light (creative) or dark (melancholy), then the resentment always has only a negative, painful emotional background, which harms primarily the one who experiences this destructive feeling.

If you examine the offense carefully, decompose it into its components, it will become obvious that it consists of indignation at the actions of someone, anger for the offender and pity for his own person. Usually, people feel the strongest offense when, under the circumstances, nothing can be changed. This is the main difference between bitter resentment and the usual complaint or reproach that a person uses to induce another to change something in a situation.

Resentment is very closely related to such a concept as justice. It's easy to hurt someone who has a heightened sense of justice. Negative feelings develop when a person believes that they are being treated unfairly, their rights are being infringed, and they are being deprived of something. If everything happened fairly, from the point of view of a person, then there is nothing to be offended at - you can only be upset.

Is resentment normal, can it be considered natural for a person? It is unambiguously difficult to answer this question, because it inflicts a serious blow on the psyche and state of health. From this point of view, it cannot be considered natural. This version is confirmed by the fact that no one is born with resentment. A newborn cannot be offended - neither intentionally nor involuntarily. You can inflict physical pain on him, frighten him, but a newborn simply does not know how to be offended. Babies have the beginnings of innate anger, resentment for them is too difficult.

Children usually make the first "successes" in comprehending the science of being offended by the age of 1-1.5, at first simply copying it from adults or peers. Then the child only improves this destructive skill, some manage to manipulate well with his parents and other adults. Children become masters of grudges by adolescence.

At any age, the mechanism for the development of resentment is very simple and, if you understand it, you can easily learn to cope with this negative feeling without much harm to yourself. The start of resentment is given by the discrepancy between our expectations and reality: we expected one thing from a person, but received the opposite. All resentment can easily be summed up in four mental internal operations:

• first, we build our expectation (imagine how everything should be, how and what we will receive, how we will be treated);
• then we observe reality for a while (how everything actually happens, what is offered to us, how they treat us);
• we mentally compare our expectations with reality, compare, find differences;
• we make a conscious decision about the reaction (we are offended, believing that the discrepancy is unfair).

Resentments are different. They are united by one thing - this feeling comes from childhood. That is why an extremely touchy adult is often said to behave like a child. Nevertheless, psychologists distinguish several types of grievances. First of all - demonstrative and hidden grievances. This is a way to notify the world about their decision: some take offense so that it is obvious to everyone (demonstratively), others do not show it, but they accumulate resentment in their souls, hide it, cherish and cherish. The second type is the most dangerous, which most often leads to diseases such as oncology, severe systemic autoimmune diseases. Internal resentments interfere with living a normal life, building healthy relationships.

The well-known psychologist, master of system-vector psychology, Yuri Burlan, proposed a very simple and at the same time detailed classification of the types of grievances:

• per person;
• to a group of people;
• to the world (life);
• to higher powers (God, fate, providence) and yourself.

In the first and second types of resentment, all the senses are involved. Another person can offend a person with a word, a look, an action. The discrepancy between expectations and reality is very clear. Resentment against a group of people is more widespread. Some people may be offended by some religious, national group, professional or gender (a man who is offended by all women, a woman who is bitterly offended by all members of the stronger sex).

Usually, such resentment is based on personal experience of resentment against a specific person from such a group, as a result of which the offended person begins to generalize, transfer his feelings to other representatives of the group, who, in fact, did not provoke such an attitude.Such grievances make it difficult for a person to interact with society, with specific people.

Resentment towards life, the world is a very difficult kind of resentment. Such a person is offended at everyone. He refuses to adequately accept the world. As a result, his anger often turns for no apparent reason to everything that his hands can reach: a cat or a new children's swing installed in the yard, an impudent person who tried to get to the doctor without queuing. All that is needed is a pretext to take revenge on the world, to hit, break, destroy. In the body of such people, destructive processes also occur.

But the last type is considered the most difficult type - an offense against higher forces. It is conventionally divided into two subspecies: resentment against God directly for what “is given to others, but it is not given to me undeservedly” and resentment against oneself. Such people are almost always in a bad mood, they often say that higher powers are unfair to them, usually they have difficulty in professing at least some kind of religion. Those who take offense at themselves are real "Samoyeds"; they actually start internal subconscious processes of self-destruction. Hence - difficult diagnoses with an unclear cause by doctors, constant troubles, which can be both everyday and life-changing.

It is believed that resentment occurs for several common reasons.

• Desire to manipulate (a conscious decision of a person to be offended, and demonstratively, obviously, in order to achieve what he wants from another). This is often done by children whose mother refuses to buy a toy or let them go for a walk in the yard; this is often done by girls or women who want to force a partner or spouse to change their decision or behavior, to do as they need. Men sometimes act this way, but representatives of the stronger sex are less likely to have such reasons for resentment than others. The exception is pensioners. In old age, the desire to attract attention to oneself, to force others to do as an elderly person needs, is often expressed through demonstrative resentment.
• Inability to forgive (the most common reason). This is also a manipulation, only unconscious, involuntary. If you honestly ask the offended person why he was offended and why he needs this offense, he is unlikely to be able to answer these questions to himself, since he does not realize what is happening. He himself would be glad to get rid of an unpleasant sediment in his soul, but he does not know how, mentally constantly returning to negative experiences.
• Unwillingness to put up with reality (disappointed expectations)... Of course, everyone heard that no one owes anything to anyone, no one is obliged to correspond to someone's ideas, but very often we sincerely hope that friends will offer help themselves, they will not have to ask them that the spouse will guess what exactly he has to do in a given situation.

The symptoms of resentment depend on whether it is overt or covert. The offended person demonstratively changes the facial expression, can pout his lips, turn away, refuse to continue the conversation. With all his appearance, he shows that he is overwhelmed with indignation, indignation, anger, that his best feelings were "trampled", "mocked". At the same time, the offended person does not go away, he tries to make his offense noticeable, otherwise the “performance” loses its meaning.

People who diligently hide their resentment in the farthest corners of their soul behave quite differently. They want solitude, they prefer isolation, especially from the object of offense.Until the "volcano" matures inside, they can behave quietly, but then they necessarily become irritable, angry, unrestrained.

The ability to be offended is activated at certain periods of life.

It is difficult to find a person on the planet who would never be offended by anyone. But we are not faced with the task of eradicating and destroying resentment as a phenomenon. You just need to learn how to control it, understand, feel and release it in time - let it fly. A person who wants to be healthy and successful does not need such a burden of negativity.

Separately, I would like to talk about such a pathological offense, which becomes a character trait - about a mental offense. There are people who feel resentment almost all the time. They themselves do not really know what and why, but they are always offended. Such resentment is formed in childhood. A child who is not paid enough attention quickly realizes that it is possible to attract the gazes of adults and get what you want, often using manipulative offense. He gets so used to behaving this way that soon this destructive feeling becomes part of his personality.

Fortunately, this kind of resentment is not so common. But in each specific case, it requires professional psychocorrection, which should be dealt with by an experienced psychiatrist, psychotherapist.

Since the feeling of resentment is destructive, destructive, it is imperative to get rid of it. This will not only help to improve relations, but also significantly facilitate all spheres of human existence (it will become easier on the soul, work will be easier, it will be easier to make decisions, if there is a disease, then the state of health will become noticeably better).

Immediately you need to understand that to deal with resentment, to resist it, as many little-known psychologists on the Internet advise, is Don Quixote's campaign against windmills. Plus, trying to deny something that's already part of you (resentment) is a sure way to get to the hospital bed. It is these attempts to suppress, hide their anger that usually lead to a serious, intractable disease. Resentment is needed:

• recognize and accept;
• to take responsibility for it only on ourselves (we ourselves decided that we would be offended!);
• to disassemble it into "components", to comprehend each of the four thought processes of the classical development of offense;
• replace negative emotions at each stage with positive ones.

In order to learn how to cope with such destructive feelings as resentment, in 1993 psychologist and professor Yuri Orlov created a method of sanogenic (healthy) thinking. To outline the essence in short, then the professor suggested opposing everything pathogenic (anger, aggression and resentment) positive and constructive (joy, love, forgiveness). Orlov's technique is now actively used in recommendations for teachers, doctors, specialists working with convicts, disabled people, as well as for the prevention of cardiovascular pathologies.

Let's consider how to forgive an insult using the method of sanogenic thinking, using a specific example. For example, a mother is offended by her son or daughter, who have grown up and devote almost no time to her. This resentment has been gnawing for a long time, it is becoming more and more difficult to endure it. At the first stage, the mother needs to start a small notebook in which she could enter her self-observations, write down what minutes of her life, under what circumstances, how many times a day she mentally returned to feeling resentment towards her adult child.

Next, the woman needs to be told about four mental operations, which constitute the essence of resentment (we wrote about them above). In the same notebook, she needs to draw a page into four parts and write in each:

• expectations (how she saw the relationship with her son, how he should act in her understanding, what he should say, do, give, etc.);
• reality (what he does, what he says and gives in reality);
• the difference between the first and the second (here you need to write out all the differences between expectations and reality);
• the nature of the offense (here you need to indicate exactly how the offense started: demonstratively or hidden, does the child know that his mother is offended, is the offense in the nature of manipulation).

The ultimate goal is to clearly see that expectations are just a figment of your fantasy, and reality is exactly what you need to accept adequately. This is how an understanding comes about why a son or daughter does exactly what he does. Along with this comes an inner acceptance of their actions. This already means justification and forgiveness.

Nobody should be “convenient” and comfortable just for you. Therefore, the main part of the work is working with your own expectations from a particular person or from a group of people, from the world. It is useful to ask yourself, where, in fact, did such expectations come from, did the person give grounds for such expectations to be built, are your expectations realistic or do you want the impossible from loved ones. This usually gives a fairly quick result, and the person begins to assess reality more objectively.

A method of putting yourself in the shoes of your abuser can also be effective. Try to imagine if he knows how he should have behaved so that you are not offended. You can understand why he did not act the way we wanted, if you understand the motives that guided him. This method will make it possible to realize that the son (daughter) pays less attention to the elderly mother on an unspecialized basis than before. He just has a lot of work, he has his own family, children, he has problems that need to be solved.

To forgive is to understand. You can understand everyone, the main thing is that there is a desire to get rid of painful feelings, from anger and self-pity that destroy you. And there is no big difference, whether it is a light offense or a serious one, whether the offender made an apology or not - all kinds of this destructive feeling in one way or another destroy our health, our personality.

Coping with one resentment is a big deal, but it is much more important to learn by yourself and teach your children not to be offended, not to conceal resentment. It will take time and desire to work on yourself. The advice of practicing psychologists can help with this.

Everyone has the right to their own opinion, to their own conclusions. If asked about them, feel free to say what you think is right. If not, then you should not try to impose on another something that is peculiar only to you. Otherwise, you will not be able to avoid offensive situations.

There is good in everyone. If you try to see these grains of good, then they can easily push back even tons of bad. If someone offends you, try to break the chain of four “offensive” mental processes and just remember at least one situation in which this person did something good and pleasant for you. Resentment can be avoided.

If a person is unfamiliar to you and you have no positive experience with him in your memory, then just mentally note something good in his appearance (beautiful eyes or an interesting hairstyle).While you mentally do this, the mechanism for the development of resentment will be disrupted, and a negative feeling will not form.

Even if it is difficult to understand and at first glance it is almost impossible. Just mentally put yourself in the other's place. This will help you see the main thing and not pay attention to offensive little things, not build unnecessary illusions and then not be disappointed over trifles.

Every time resentment begins to boil in your soul, remember this hackneyed truth. Life is really one - it will not be possible to rewrite it later. Therefore, is it worth spending every hour and day of her to destroy herself with anger and hatred, self-pity? Try to imagine yourself in old age - will you have anything good to remember if in the course of your life you most often experienced destructive feelings.

On the other hand, your abuser also has one life.

There are always and will be people who will have as their task to provoke you to insult, that is, they will deliberately offend. The goal of such people is to hit harder, pinch where it hurts, in order to cause a reaction. Do you need to endanger yourself and your health because of someone's conflict? I think not. Therefore, the appropriate action would be to ignore attempts to hurt you.

Mentally have pity on the person (who is conflicted, believe me, life is very difficult!), Note a couple of his positive qualities to yourself, keep calm. Against such a "wall" the offender will have nothing to oppose.

In love, in everyday life, in friendship, minor grievances often arise. That's what we call them - trifling. To overcome them, it is only important to try to see the situation as a whole, completely, not to focus on the little things that are about to force you to make that very harmful decision - to start the process of resentment. The husband fries potatoes not in straws, but in cubes, although you asked to do this with straws? Before you open your mouth to an angry speech, think about what he is doing at all - he is fried potatoes for you. He wants to do something nice. Should I be angry? Moreover, diced potatoes, if you do not focus on the little things, are also very tasty.

You don’t have to tell others that you have forgiven them, you don’t have to try to hold on to the relationship, but you must forgive. With forgiveness, the heaviness in the soul passes. Therefore, in any situation, goodbye. Changed - sorry, let go. Betrayed - forgive and do not return to this in your own memory. Forgive the boor and the impudent person, the criminal, the thief, they live as they can, and do not have to be the way you want.

For information on how to get rid of resentment and learn to forgive, see the next video.