How to deal with resentment
ALL WE HAVE GROWN THE MASS OF QUESTIONS TO THEMSELVES AND THE WORLDwith which there seems to be no time or need to go to a psychologist. But convincing answers are not born when you talk to yourself, or to your friends, or to your parents. Therefore, we asked a professional psychotherapist Olga Miloradova to answer pressing questions once a week. By the way, if you have them, send to [email protected].
How to cope with resentment?
Insult is essentially unrealized aggression, or rather the consequences of its non-expression. For example, you were angry with someone, but for various reasons you could not express this emotion and blocked it in yourself. Maybe you were still a child, dad said disgusting, and dad can not argue with. Or the boyfriend declared that you were fat, you were angry with him, but you thought that he was right and they began to punish themselves. Anyway, some offenses can settle in us for a long time and badly ruin our lives. How to learn not to be offended over trifles and let go of serious offenses?
Olga Miloradova psychotherapist
In order to deal with this, you need to know at least two things. First, the insult is an absolutely unproductive emotion. If you are offended - you are stuck in an unfinished situation. Step from the dead center could be the very expression of anger, that is, the original emotion. But the longer you stay in your grievance, the more it acquires new nuances, and it is not always possible to remember what offended us initially. As a result, we are inclined to direct just such old offenses not at all to the initial offenders, but to those unfortunates who turn up to us and whom we will raise to the rank of offenders as such. As with a boyfriend who called you fat, or with a dad who showed no understanding: the classics of the genre is to say that all men are goats, and to start them either to avenge, or to use, or where there is in you will ricochet offense.
Sometimes it seems that the offense carries some productivity, it is she who, like nothing, helps in the art of manipulation. A classic example: "Remember, you did not notice that I have a new haircut? (I forgot that I have a birthday; I could not walk with the dog etc). I was offended, and now be kind, make amends (buy a new gadget, bring a restaurant, walk with both dogs until the end of ages) ", - and, most likely, wine will arise and everything will work (not so straightforward, of course). Naturally, this is not a hurt "because of a haircut" - it is a hurt because of "you are fat", raised to a cube and entrenched in the idea that the endless hour of reckoning has come. Nevertheless, manipulation is as unproductive an example of interaction as insult is unproductive as an emotion, so I would still like to reinforce the idea that insult is an absolutely pointless waste of time.
Perhaps the question is, how can I spend time on something that does not depend on me at all? That hurt me. And here follows a very important "second": in fact, no one offends us, we cultivate an insult in ourselves. That is why it is so difficult to say, especially knowing a person badly, that he can be offended, because how do you know where in whom and what kind of bomb is laid? Yes, this is exactly how it works, it is not without reason that trigger-questions have become so popular now, because anything can jerk at any moment. And even such characteristics as a “touchy person” or not are rather conditional, rather, triggers for those whom we call touchy are closer to the surface than for others.
Only by acknowledging the existence of an insult, talking about it, you can understand the situation.
And in spite of the fact that even if we understand that insult is unproductive, it’s stupid and we thought up everything ourselves, it’s impossible to just take offense and stop being offended. What to do with our resentment? The very first and most important thing in working with a grudge is her awareness. Only by acknowledging its existence, talking about it, you can understand the situation. Always try to put yourself in the wrongdoer's place. Are you offended that you forgot to shake hands? Greetings are not as warm as the rest? Annoyingly answered? We tend to think out and take to heart extremely many things that are completely irrelevant to our person. Think, you yourself often do not get enough sleep / get tired / greet someone on the machine / forget about the promise - but you never know what else. A lot of things happening as if with you have nothing to do with you personally.
If we are talking about a more intimate dialogue and you just can not understand why something was said or done, if this is not the case of days gone by, and in the case of offenses it is very important to destroy them as they arise, then you can always ask the person what he actually had in mind. And yes, it may turn out that this particular person was really a villain and you may well get angry with him, and even tell him about it instead of cultivating a self-destructive feeling in yourself.
If we are talking about older offenses, when there is simply no opportunity to discuss anything, and perhaps no one else, and perhaps this is the very insult that someone has left you forever and is no longer there, if you cannot forgive him for this, then in such cases nothing helps in the same way as giving yourself permission to grieve. Stay alone, close the doors, shout into the pillow, kick the sofa, cry - anything to get out of everything that is stuck in your chest and aching, causing a feeling of resentment.
What is the point of clinging to insult and cultivating your pain?
It would not be superfluous to try to forgive and let go. Well, yes, someone did something that could be a different degree of lousy, but it passed. To another, it does not interfere in any way (if there is, of course, no fault in this matter), but it sharpens you for sure. What is the point of clinging to it, cultivating your pain? Perhaps at the moment it no longer matters? Will it matter in five years? And in ten? And what does this all mean for your life? Always try to present something meaningful now in the global picture. After all, sometime the shameful answer at the blackboard at school seemed to be the end of the world.
Sometimes an insult arises because of unwarranted expectations. Do you think life is unfair to you? What do you deserve the best? We also come up with expectations for ourselves, probably, sometimes they need to be changed or try to change something in ourselves if it is not possible to meet them. The founder of gestalt therapy, Frederick Perls, suggested replacing the word offense with the word “appreciate”. "You see," Perls wrote, if you didn’t appreciate this person, you wouldn’t get stuck because of him, you could just forget about him. " Therefore, not without reason, many deep-seated insults are inflicted upon us by someone close and loved. But with respect to all the others, it is worth seriously considering whether you are ready to endow such an insignificant character with value.