2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
No one can offend me if I do not allow it myself.
Mahatma Gandhi
At some point, it doesn't matter at all who is right and who is wrong. Anger and resentment turn into a bad habit, like smoking. You poison yourself without even thinking about what you are doing.
Jonathan Tropper
Accumulated resentment is a fairly frequent complaint of clients in my practice. This is a deeply personal, subjective feeling. However, if we consider offense not just as a feeling, but as a process, then the offense, in addition to experiences, also contains a goal ("secret meaning"), behavioral reactions and a result. This process takes place in two forms:
- Primary sharp increase in mental discomfort;
- Long-term storage of negative and toxic experiences.
The ability to be offended is rendered by such a characterological trait as resentment, which is viewed as a quality of an infantile, immature personality and manifests itself in an overestimated level of expectations and claims, in an unwillingness to take responsibility. In suffering from a feeling of resentment, some find even a kind of ecstasy from feeling like a victim, and some find the meaning of life in punishing the offender and revenge. Thus, resentment becomes a long (and sometimes eternal) war for unfulfilled expectations. And this war can be hidden, and it can have an open character.
A touchy person is often called vulnerable and fragile. Vulnerability is a high sensitivity to pain, which indicates the presence of unhealed wounds. However, when dealing with resentful clients, I often find that they need to tear apart those wounds. And some of them sprinkle them with salt, getting masochistic pleasure from this. Fragility is manifested in the ability to collapse with a slight external impact, this is the lack of plasticity, flexibility and stability. After all, if I am so poor, unhappy and sensitive, then I am small, it is good for me to be small, I do not want to grow up and take responsibility, I choose to be a victim, I am powerless to influence my life, I want others to take care of me and my feelings, others should to me. Such people are prone to self-indulgence, increased self-pity, cultivating their weakness, becoming eternal hostages of their infantilism. I ask such clients questions that help bring them back to reality: how old are you now? What does a person of your age do? How can you ensure that your needs are met by yourself? How do people close to you feel?
A touchy person is also called spiteful, vindictive. This is the second facet of resentment - this is the desire to punish, take revenge on the offender, hurt him, make him suffer, that is, sadistic pleasure. Screams wounded pride, a sense of unfair treatment, injured pride and condemnation of the offender. Because there is a certain picture of how Others should treat me, how to act in relation to me. It can manifest itself in both conscious and unconscious behavioral reactions. In this capacity, the immaturity of the individual is also manifested, because it is difficult for her to accept the imperfection of the world and Others, to accept their right to make mistakes. To this category of clients, I ask the question: how will your life change after you punish your abuser? What will the act of accomplished revenge give you? What feelings will you have in your soul?
Thus, resentment, as a character trait, can be interpreted as "fixed infantilism and anger."
I would like to end this post with a quote from Karen Horney: “Consciously experiencing conflict, while it may make us feel unhappy, can be invaluable. The more consciously and directly we look into the essence of our conflicts and seek our own solutions, the more inner freedom we achieve”[1].
When you are offended by others, do you often ask yourself the question: Who and how did I offend? Are you yourself ideal and perfect, as you demand from others?
Do you notice the needs of others, their expectations from you? Are you attentive to them? Are they respectful? Have you always acted in relation to close and significant people the way you would like them to behave with you? How many times have you devalued the feelings of others? Shielded from them? Denied help and support? Did you ignore or just didn't notice? Criticized? Have you spoken words of insult? Have you atoned for your guilt? Did you ask for forgiveness? How many times have you been forgiven just like that, without your asking for forgiveness, accepting your imperfection and justifying you?
You can offend voluntarily and involuntarily. You can simply not know about the painful and vulnerable places of other people, you can offend in a state of irritation, anger and anger. To offend and not notice. Pass by. Or notice, but justify yourself without trying to establish broken contact.
Perhaps such a view of yourself will help reduce your demands, claims and expectations in relation to other people.
Parting with resentment is possible only by increasing your awareness, developing a mature and responsible attitude towards your life.
When writing the article, the following materials were used:
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