Her Majesty Resentment

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Her Majesty Resentment

Resentment allows you to maintain

the offender has an image of a "good" person

It seems that I still "offended" the insult with my attention. This story is from my therapy archives, but its "motive" is often heard in the current problems of my clients. All confidentiality rules are respected.

Another article of mine to all my grateful readers.

Oleg, a 35-year-old man, turned to psychotherapy due to regular obsessive thoughts. His obsessions arose mainly in the themes of his work. Working in a large company as a programmer, he did not feel comfortable in the team. Colleagues, in his opinion, ignored him and avoided contact with him.

The main source of his troubles was his relationship with his immediate superior. According to Oleg, he underestimated him, considered him a "weak" specialist, gave him the most unnecessary and unpromising tasks, in which he could not show himself as a professional. In real contact with the boss, Oleg was shy and did not express any complaints or wishes to him. In his own subjective reality, dialogues with him continued endlessly, various situations of clarification of relations with him were played out. Real contact with the boss turned into perfect contact.

The facts that Oleg referred to did not convince me that everything was exactly the way he presented everything. For example, he said that at work they gave a prize. When I asked if he had been given a prize, he answered: “Yes, they did. But only so that he does not have suspicions that he is not appreciated. All the facts that he cited to prove his concept were unequivocally interpreted by him as his ignorance and even a conspiracy against him. Sometimes it started to sound like nonsense.

All my attempts to "restore reality" were unsuccessful. And this is not surprising. The world and the picture of the world are not the same thing. A person in such a situation is captured by his projections and is not able to notice real facts. He is trapped in his fantasies about reality, distorting, adjusting reality to fit his images of it.

It is futile to work here while remaining at the level of cognition. The sophisticated brain of a highly intelligent person is able to "beat" anyone who tries to offer alternative ways of seeing what is happening, like a magician, cleverly manipulating seemingly indisputable facts under the subjective concept of the world. In order to solve this problem, it is necessary to go to another level of psychic reality - the level of emotions.

Obsessive thoughts are a symptom. It arises from the energy of unmanifest, non-experienced emotions, which accumulates and transforms into obsessions. Therefore, it is useless to "fight" with obsessions through logic.

And from the feelings that were available to Oleg, only offense was obvious.

What do we know about offense?

Resentment is an indirect way of contact. In this case, contact is most often carried out in the virtual reality of a person. The offender has many opportunities here - one can endlessly "drive" various situations of interaction with the offender in his fantasy. However, resentment does not solve the psychological problems of contact. This method of contact is only effective if the people around you are very sensitive.

From my experience, I know that mature problem relationships tend to be established patterns of earlier, most often, child-parent relationships. Now is the time to investigate the “roots” of resentment and the history of the emergence of the current problematic way of contact of my client in therapy.

Oleg's life story is no exception. In his family - the family of intellectuals - there were many social rules that severely restrict aggression. But the family atmosphere was steeped in shame and fear. As a rule, these feelings (and even guilt) maintain the framework of socially acceptable, acceptable, “correct”, “good” behavior and “kill” aggression. In every family, the set and combination of these feelings may differ.

So in Oleg's family, the manifestation of anger was forbidden. Anger, as you know, performs a number of important functions in building contact. Among them are the designation and protection of personal boundaries, the statement and defense of their needs, the protection of their interests and values.

When aggression is “outlawed,” then it transforms into resentment. Resentment is a milder, more intelligent form of anger. In it, most of the energy that could be directed to the organization of contact is stopped and redirected into the sphere of imaginary contact. Resentment allows the offender to maintain the image of a "good" person.

But the efficiency of resentment is much less than anger. Especially in cases where the addressee of the offense does not have special abilities to decode it. As a result, an offense that does not find its resolution and does not lead to the desired result (to get something from another without asking him) is like stones accumulating in a person. Unresolved contact tasks - unfinished gestalts require completion. The result of this kind of situation can be psychosomatics, or symptoms of a neurotic level. The "choice" of the area of manifestation of problems depends on the structure of the person's personality.

How does the psychological mechanism of resentment work?

The offense, as a rule, contains three messages to the offender.

First - I am offended!

Second - I want something!

Third - Guess what I want and give it to me!

These messages are non-verbal. For this, body language, facial expressions, gaze, intonation are used.

In order to decipher this kind of message, the person who is shown offense must be unusually sensitive and empathic. Some parents are capable and ready for this kind of communication.

But already in adulthood, a person encounters the problems of using this method of satisfying needs. Another person, not being a parent, as a rule, is not able to correctly read the messages that are contained in the offense.

Failure of understanding can be at each of the three highlighted levels.

The first level - I am offended, the other does not notice it. Or pretends not to notice, ignore. Adhering to the well-known attitude: "They carry water to the offended!"

The second level - I want something, I demonstrate it to another, the other notices an offense, but does not realize that there is some need behind it.

The third level - the other one notices my resentment, realizes that I want something, but cannot understand, guess what exactly I want.

The boss in this story, being the authority for the client, falls under the parental projection. The client habitually begins to build with him the interaction patterns worked out in contact with the parents. However, everything that worked well with parental figures does not work in new industrial relationships for one simple reason - the boss is not a parent, the client is not a child, and the relationship is not parent-child.

How to overcome the trap of resentment?

The client is trapped in the old parent-child contact patterns. Resentment, not read or deciphered by others, continues to accumulate. Along with this, tension also grows, which over time begins to channel into a neurotic symptom - obsessive thoughts.

To get out of this trap, it is necessary to change the ineffective, symptomatic contact patterns. Sometimes it turns out pretty quickly. The client begins to become aware of his problematic contact mechanisms and, supported and guided by the therapist, begins to experiment with new forms of behavior, thereby gaining new experiences, and breaks out of an ineffective communication trap.

But more often it is a longer process. And our story is from this series. Then, in therapy, we are faced with a stable image of the Self, which is the result of the history of the client's entire previous life. In this case, it can be difficult for the client to go beyond the boundaries of the established self-image and face his aggression.

In order for this meeting to take place, in therapy, he will have to get to know his other strong feelings, "guarding" anger. It is shame, guilt and fear. Fear most often of abandonment, rejection, loneliness … The shame of evaluation, comparison, devaluation … Guilt for making your parents unhappy … We are talking here about the chronic stay of the child in the range of such feelings.

There are many other feelings hidden under the thickness of fear. As, however, and under shame and guilt. The psychotherapist is like an archaeologist who removes one layer after another in order to get to an ancient historical relic.

In therapy, we need to get to aggression in order to use its energy for the needs of the Self and learn to build asymptomatic ways of contact that lead to the satisfaction of our desires and needs.

The path is not easy, but worth it!

Love yourself! And the rest will catch up!