Send resentment packing

Resentment is a complex emotion. There are few clients who come to therapy sessions with the awareness that they are consumed by resentment. Resentment, just like grief, includes many feelings experienced all together. Generally, the person who’s experiencing this, feels a sense of perceived injustice, followed by sadness, anger, rage, disappointment

A 33-year-old female client tells me, “I feel resentful towards my older sister. She’s older than me and I am the one who’s always there when she needs me, and yet, she never really messages or checks on me unless she has some work. I was there for her when she was delivering a baby, and in the first few months but she never acknowledged or even said a thank you. I feel it’s unfair the way she treats me. I wish I could either learn to say no, or not feel so stuck with this feeling. I keep replaying the various interactions between her and me over and over.”

Send resentment packing

Resentment is a complex emotion. There are few clients who come to therapy sessions with the awareness that they are consumed by resentment. Resentment, just like grief, includes many feelings experienced all together. Generally, the person who’s experiencing this, feels a sense of perceived injustice, followed by sadness, anger, rage, disappointment, and a feeling that they are, or not have been, treated well. Brene Brown in her book, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection, and the Language of Human Experience defines resentment as, “the feeling of frustration, judgment, anger, “better than,” and/ or hidden envy related to perceived unfairness or injustice. It’s an emotion that we often experience when we fail to set boundaries or ask for what we need, or when expectations let us down because they were based on things we can’t control, like what other people think, what they feel, or how they’re going to react.”

All our emotions serve as a compass indicating there is something that needs attention. If you find yourself engulfed in resentment, then it’s a good reason to pause. Often an understanding and clarity around what resentment feels and looks like is a good beginning point for clients to make sense of what they are experiencing.

While social media often comes up with quick fix solutions like setting boundaries, communicating often, the reality is that it often misses nuances, historical context, unmet needs that have been carried since childhood. It’s also problematic if we begin the process of dealing with resentment by blaming others and externalizing the reasons. While that may be true, when there is resentment being activated, we also need to do the work of paying attention to our own past hurts, patterns and unstated expectations. This takes deep work. As a client once told me, “It sounds like I have created this trap of resentment, where even if my parent addresses my unmet needs, I will start resenting them for something else.”

Like closure, there are times when the process of resolving it is an internal, personal one and at other times a collaborative effort, involving people against whom the resentment is held.

Personally speaking, each time I find myself caught up in resentment, I think of Nelson Mandela’s words: “Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.”