Everyone knows what it is like to feel resentment. Sometimes this feeling arises gradually, as if gathering drop by drop, and sometimes it appears sharply, like a summer thunderstorm. This is a destructive feeling that confuses the rhythm of life and often disrupts the emotional balance for a long time.
We offer 5 psychological tools to get rid of resentment.
1. Feel, understand and protect your inner child.
Often, resentment is a childish condition through which the “inner child” asks for help and support. It is important to feel such a child in yourself, to understand his trauma and help him survive it.
2. Get out of the victim’s condition.
In the state of the victim, we cannot do anything with the feeling, since the responsibility for it is completely transferred to the offender. To start working with emotion, you should go from the plane “someone offended me” to “I feel resentment.” In this way you endow yourself with “subjectivity” and can act to improve your condition.
3. Change your point of view.
Look at the situation through the eyes of the offender in order to get out of the position of “I am always right” and try to understand why the person did this and what prompted him to do so. This does not mean that the reason for the act is his justification, but you do not need to justify the offender – it is important for you to establish your inner state. Along with understanding the motives of the act, it often becomes clear that you should not be offended in this situation.
4. Ask yourself how you really feel.
Anger, anger, feelings of injustice, dissatisfaction with the situation, the desire to defend themselves and other feelings are often disguised as resentment. Especially those whose expression is considered unacceptable, such as anger. Shouting and stomping your feet is not accepted, but it is possible to be insultingly silent, so often we can hide real emotions or feelings insultingly. It is important to recognize and understand them.
5. Give yourself what you’re missing.
In addition to the fact that resentment can replace other feelings, it often also masks the lack of other feelings – it is very convenient to manipulate resentment so that someone does something for us. Such a mechanism is often unconsciously used by children, but an adult may well directly talk about his needs and not form a model of behavior based on “I will be offended – I will get what I want.”
