Resentment and Curiosity

How would a person who has the skills to deal with strong emotions (a resiliency builder) approach resentment?  Here is one suggested way to approach it:

1.  Notice it.  Pay attention to your bitter indignation!
2. Get curious about it.  Although we may often FEEL as if we have been treated unfairly, it does not make it necessarily true.  People who learn how to wrestle with their feelings in a healthy manner do not assume that a feeling is a fact.  Curiosity teaches us to acknowledge that “feelings” are the body giving us a summarized experience of how we are reacting to an event.  Our “emotions” are the brain’s attempt to predict how we feel based on past experience.  If we have a history of unfair treatment, our brain is more likely to “feel” bitter indignation.  Sometimes that is experience talking and it is telling us the truth - so pay attention.   But it can also be true that we are merely projecting past experiences inaccurately into a current situation.  Are you REALLY being treated unfairly?  Is there more information that would lead to a different conclusion?
3. If our curiosity guides us away from this belief that our experience is unfair, then we can thank resentment for showing up but we do not need to keep ruminating on the feeling.  We can trash talk it; give it more information; find other emotions that are more appropriate to the current situation and give them the attention they deserve.
4. What if the situation is unfair?  We do not need to brood!  We can whip out our conflict resolution skills; we can speak into the situation and seek change; we can choose to stop participating in the unfair practice; we have options people!!

Although this is just the shortest of suggestions, the bottom line is this:  resentment can be a great wake up call but it is not a super reliable decision-maker.  Today, notice if your mind and body might be pre-wired to jump to resentment.  Or, perhaps you have been ignoring your feeling of resentment in order to avoid conflict.  Tomorrow I will give you a personal example of how I almost got carried away by a resentment that ended up being totally unnecessary.

Resentment

Resentment.  The dictionary definition basically sums up the experience of resentment as  a perceived mistreatment or unfair situation that results in bitter indignation.  I think of it more as a slow burn of ill-will towards another - often without much conscious thought about why I have this feeling.

The capacity to resent people and circumstances does NOT show up on any resiliency skill list.  Mutual Aid societies like AA have been clear about the toxicity of resentment for decades.  According to their literature, someone who has a substance use disorder cannot bear up under the weight of resentment without falling prey to relapse.

Other recovery writings have talked at length about resentment and its ties to expectations.  Expectations, particularly ones we have for others, provide fertile soil for growing resentments.  It’s an over-statement to say that we should have NO expectations for others but it is important to pay attention to times when we have unrealistic expectations of others that cause us and them harm.  

Think about this:  our resentment can be more harmful than the unfairness of the situation we obsess over.  How has your resentment hurt you? Others?

Overall, resentment is not particularly healthy if we do not treat it appropriately and swiftly.  What exactly does that mean?  Tomorrow we will talk about that!  In the meantime, consider your own experience with resentment.

Are you struggling with feeling like you have been treated unfairly?
Can you identify your bitter indignation over this belief?
Does it feel an awful lot like resentment?

Tomorrow we will chat about it

Nonjudgmental self-observation

When we take a position of never admitting to wrongdoing, we look a little silly to others, don’t we?  We all make mistakes, why run from them?  One of my favorite family stories involves a fruit tossing incident that will forever bring me great joy in the remembering.

I was hosting a dinner party and my best friend’s granddaughter (she was two?  three?) wanted to help me prepare the table for serving the feast.  I had laid out a buffet on the dining room table and was in the kitchen frantically preparing the final touches of the meal.  She went into the dining room to “check on” my work.  I didn’t think too much about it when I heard a dining room chair pulled out.  I thought she was getting a good look at the food.

Then I heard her precious little voice saying over and over, “It’s ok, accidents happen!”  When I joined her in the dining room she was “tossing the fruit salad”....all over the dining room table.  It was just so precious!

But she was also quite profound.  Her little arms couldn’t bear the weight of the heavy serving utensils as she dug them into the fruit, and little fruit parts fell here and there all around the large crystal serving bowl.  And what this child knew, taught by wise parents, was that everyone makes mistakes.  Sometimes even with our best efforts at tossing a fruit salad a grape is going to go rogue and make its escape!

Since that day I have often prayed that this child will retain her memory of this truth and that she will lean into her life and live it boldly, fearlessly, and with joy because she knows that accidents happen to all of us.  How about you?  Can you give yourself a break?  Can you let yourself off the hook?  Can you start by admitting that you are human and make mistakes just like the rest of us?  Nonjudgmental observation - try it!

Lifelong Amends

One of the things that I was taught as a child was that the best defense was a good offense.  Rephrased - never let them see you sweat.  Another refrain:  never, ever admit to anything (always ask for a lawyer even if court-appointed).  Yes, this is what I learned.

Not to deny the value of legal counsel - because I would NEVER do that...but this idea of never admitting to wrongdoing can be a real intimacy buster.  The value, of course, is that if you are really good at bullshitting, maybe you are able to wear people down when they initiate a conversation over some perceived wrongdoing on your part.  Over the course of a lifetime, it builds up a wall of distrust that sometimes even our super powers cannot climb.

I never give up on hoping that we can change and learn and grow.  This is one area where we can make changes, if this is the protocol we’ve been taught to follow when we do something wrong.  We can learn how to be more honest; admit wrongdoing; make amends.  However, it is extremely difficult to overcome this without a lot of trial and error.  

Struggling with this concept myself, I understood when a gentleman came to me wanting to rebuild trust with his wife.  He deeply regretted his financial irresponsibility and the ways he hid their true financial situation from his wife.  Once the cat was out of the bag and she did find out he had been lying about their financial situation, she was reluctant to trust him with anything.  He, in turn, felt like she was treating him like a kid and he was frustrated. Like a kid kept on too tight a leash, he kept sneaking around making other financial missteps.  None were egregious but all reinforced her distrust.

He wanted to stay married but was tired of living in the dog house.  This is where the concept of a lifelong living amends came into play.  After decades of living by the “if you ask I will not tell you the truth” marriage manual, I suggested that it would take decades to restore trust.  And he should stop whining and start rebuilding trust.  If he didn’t want to be treated like a kid, he needed to start acting like a man who valued his marriage enough to grovel.  Yes, grovel.  He needed to OVER share, OVER report, OVER account for his money, his time, his thoughts and even his misdeeds.  How long he asked?  I replied - for the rest of your marriage or for as long as it takes for your wife to see that you are a grown up man who takes responsibility for his actions.

This example illustrates the downside of getting away with stuff through the skilled use of BS.  We may wear people down and get them to stop asking us difficult questions that we do not want to answer, but in so doing, we are making steady and significant withdrawals from the bank of relational trust.  Some mistakes take a lifetime to live down.  

How can you avoid ending up in this position in your own relationships?

Learning to be "wrong"

I was fourteen and attending my first (and only) summer camp ever when I realized that fine people might disagree on the positions held by my family of origin.  The camp was held up in the mountains of VA and the crowd of kids attending were warm and welcoming.  I cannot remember how the leader of the organization I attended convinced my parents to let me attend but I vaguely recall it involved her paying my way and providing transportation.

Because my family moved around a lot, I was pretty untethered from the world.  New to Richmond, the only adult “voices” in my life on a daily basis were my parents and the occasional influential teacher.  Except for this club I was in.  Others took for granted that an adult would show up for us on a weekly basis, sponsor our participation in the organization and actually listen to us!  I did not.

I vividly recall the speaker presentations during that week - not for the content but for the challenge.  These were adults talking about matters that I did not know adults thought about, sharing opinions that were diametrically opposed to my dad’s perspective.  I felt like I had found a new home.  I thought maybe the world was not as scary as I believed.  And maybe, just maybe, there were people in the world who cared about others.  This was all news to me.

During this week I had an insight, soon lost only to be rediscovered many years later, that I might be missing key information about a subject; my family could be wrong or if not wrong, at least have an opinion that not everyone shared.  This was a developmental milestone of sorts; my first foray into making up my own mind about an issue.  It was liberating in the moment and dangerous once I returned home.  I learned how to shut up.

But I also learned that I could be wrong about something.  One of my favorite slogans in the whole wide world reflects the values I began to grasp during this amazing week of discovery:  when we know better, we do better.

Being wrong is not a capital offense; there is not extra credit for being right.  In fact, growing up necessarily involves unlearning, relearning, and realizing that we are always in need of more education.

Today, consider how you might accidentally be closing yourself off to new and life-altering information simply because you are so confident in your “rightness”.  What if...you are missing key information that would change your perspective?