Part 2: Resentment, A Slow Poison To The Heart
The Multifaceted Layers & Complexities of Resentment
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In my previous writing, Part 1: Resentment, A Slow Poison To The Heart, I addressed the differences between emotions and feelings, and the patterns that occur when we do not have the skillset to understand and know how to be with particular emotions in a whole-hearted and loving way. If you did not read it, you may want to do so before diving into Part 2 where I elaborate and define the complexities and multifaceted layers of resentment.
Part 2: Resentment, A Slow Poison To The Heart
The Multifaceted Layers & Complexities of Resentment
I came across a quote on social media by a therapist in training named Yvonne, whose handle is @restore.woman. I am not familiar with her work, though find this quote supportive in the undertaking of unraveling resentment.
She says,
“You can't build healthy relationships with people who dismiss your feelings or refuse to communicate. Love isn't enough when respect, consideration, and emotional safety are missing.”
Resentment is a complex emotion with many layers. It creates a wedge to cultivating healthy, clear, loving and emotionally safe relationships. Resentment slowly poisons our heart. To better understand this I invite you to think of resentment as a dynamic or configuration that cycles in both our individual and collective energy systems.
Resentment involves feeling wronged or mistreated by another person, situation, or series of circumstances. It can be described as a combination of anger, bitterness, disgust, disappointment, and disapproval. It is often a reaction to a perceived unfairness, and can be a defense against painful situations. Some of the triggering factors of resentment are, but not limited too, being ignored, put down, having unrealistic expectations of others, experiencing power imbalances, or feeling like our needs are not being met.
Resentment goes hand in hand with blame. Blame helps strengthen resentment’s narrative. It is not uncommon to learn just how loud the narrative actually is in gaining a wider scope of awareness on the complexities of resentment. Blame, either towards ourselves or towards others, keeps resentment cycling by perpetuating a focus on the perceived wrongdoing, preventing a person from moving past the hurt and instead narrowing their attention to fixate on the negative aspects of the situation. This becomes a loop, which can fuel anger and bitterness, thus maintaining the resentment.
It is important to understand that blaming is a way to cope with the pain, and that blame is very different than personal responsibility. To expand on this more, you might enjoy reading, Personal Responsibility As The Path To Peace. Whereas personal responsibility unchains us from our suffering, blame binds us. When we cling to blame it creates a barrier to connection, either with one another and even within ourselves. This block makes it difficult to repair and move towards forgiveness. In addition, when we solely blame someone else or we continue to blame ourselves, we avoid examining the deeper roots of the whole situation, which can hinder personal growth and prevent overall healing.
Understanding Suffering
In Buddhist philosophy, the Four Noble Truths explain in the first truth that suffering is part of life, and the second is that desire is the cause of suffering. From this perspective, suffering is caused by craving and aversion, and it can be ended by transforming or repatterining our relationship to our attachments and aversions, along with any misconceptions that we have had or have about ourselves, other people, systems and situations.
In his book, “Ho’oponopono, The Hawaiian Ritual of Forgiveness”, Ulrich E. Duprée shares so poignantly,
“We are more than our physical body and far more than our thoughts. We have a body, but we are not this body. We are also not our thoughts; we have thoughts, and they are often not even our own but instead, for example, a reaction to the headlines in a newspaper or mental programming handed down from our ancestors or absorbed from our culture. Even thinking is not as simple as all that; recent research at Stanford University has shown that while around three decades ago we used an average of around six to ten percent of our brain capacity in active thinking, today it is only three percent. This means that instead of primarily thinking, we are reacting. What can we expect from ourselves and the world if we ignore the still, small voice of our hearts?”
While harming others is never ok, causing harm to others and ourselves, knowingly or unknowingly, is a part of the fabric of the human experience. We will make mistakes, triggers will happen, and even those we love the most will cause hurt to us and us to them. The acceptance of this can actually liberate us to step onto a path of personal responsibility and invite us to learn mending and resolution skills — to bring a broader awareness to our attachments, aversion and misconceptions both within ourselves and in our environments, and allow the still, small voice of our hearts to be heard and acted upon.
The Dalai Lama highlights this truth when he said,
"If you can, help others; if you cannot do that, at least do not harm them."
Many spiritual and religious lineages share similar values on aiming to not cause harm. Romans 12:17-18 in the Bible says,
"Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all."
Again, I want to drive home that while these are beautiful values and morals to live by, just HOW to do so is the bulk of my work with clients and in our human consciousness, if we are willing to take that leap.
When we cause harm or harm has happened to us, we may not know what to do with the behavior or the situation. In fact, I have found that the majority of people do not have the skillset of repair and resolution when a wrong doing has occurred, either on their part or on the part of another. Indeed, it was one I had to learn myself as an adult. What I learned, like so many have and still do, was to say “I am sorry” by being told or forced to do so. Saying sorry is one thing. Knowing how to change our behavior, feel remorse, work toward better solutions is the real apology. When we are forced to say we are sorry, the nuance of feeling into the pain of our actions is quickly overlooked and bypassed, but the body stores that pain. To elaborate on this, you may enjoy reading, Forced Apologies Fragment the Soul, and 5 Ways To Reconnect & Repair.
Without healthy tools to repair, we often default to the intelligence of our primal nervous system combined with an ego protecting psyche that provides coping mechanisms to navigate, and often, escape the pain. These strategies, either modeled to us from our caregivers, our environment, over-culture, passed down energetically through generational trauma or interjected, while supportive in the moment of the discord or painful experience, overtime cause more suffering through suppressing, repressing and dissociating our pain into other mutations. What lends to an even larger challenge is that our society has a cunning way of hypnotizing our subconscious and conscious with messages of escapism, numbing, and even a self righteous nature as a self preservation tactic.
Martin Luther King Jr. words ring loud when he said,
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
Like the irritating, constant drip of a leak, over time, resentment is the slow poison of the heart, pulling us away from our true Self, our highest timeline, lost to our own suffering. I have witnessed people completely lost in the shadows of resentment, bitterness and anger. It was running their lives. The power it had over their own life force was impacting every area of their life, hindering their ability to lead their own life from their inner guidance end wisdom. I was once one of these lost souls — caught in the painful cycle of unprocessed anger and rage, grasping to find a way out of the pain only to find myself in more suffering. As the alarming morning light wakes us up to the harsh reality of our situations, a vulnerability and rawness erodes from within shining light where we need it most, to heal.
“This is not me” I often hear from my clients. “I don’t want to be like this…how did this happen?” They are bewildered, while also grateful to step out of their shadow and into the warming light. In Depth Hypnosis, we understand that when we begin to unravel resentment and anger, we not only see the pain it has been causing us, and the painful impact it has had on all of those around us, but we also begin to understand and tenderly hold the pain that is underneath. We learn to not only see, but how to be with the parts of us beneath the blame, anger and resentment.
Carl Jung, Swiss psychologist who is best known for the two compartments of the unconscious said,
"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate"
It is possible to learn how to compassionately transform our bitterness, resentment and anger and enter the light of our heart, again, reclaiming our own life force into our whole-hearted Self!
This has been Part 2 of a series on resentment. You may enjoy Part 3: Resentment, A Slow Poison To The Heart, where I address the importance of mapping patterns and potential origin points for the understanding and healing of resentment.
Thank you for reading Kristina Renée x Medicine for the Soul, and allowing me the opportunity to serve you. If you know others who would benefit from reading this series on resentment, please don't keep it to yourself - spread the word! You may click the “heart” button, leave a comment or restack so more people can discover whole-hearted, loving, learning and living in action.
Let's inspire more people to embrace whole-hearted living, learning and loving in action. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to serve you.
Take care of you.
Take care of one another.
Much Love,
Kristina Renée
These words are felt deeply-so relevant at this time✨