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Free Yourself From Resentment

Resentment is a perception of unfairness – you’re not getting the help, appreciation, consideration, affection, reward, or praise you deserve. This sense of unfairness, together with an innate anger, combine to give the root of resentment.

It is also an amplification process of three steps:
– there is the trigger for anger.
– there is an amplification of that anger because of the unfairness of the situation.
– the universalising of that situation – feeling or thinking that it will always be like that.

Resentment is never specific and rarely goes away. Where anger is a tool to put out fires, resentment is more like a smoke alarm that’s always on, just in case a spark should ignite.

Other people might think your resentment is about the past and urge you to ‘let it go’. But resentment is really about the future. After an intimate betrayal, it seems to protect you from the danger of trusting again.

Resentment has a strong component of self-punishment and can breed distrust. Though usually obscured by the inclination to devalue those we resent, the self-punitive nature of resentment revels in sentiments like: “Why did I ever trust her!”; “I knew he’d let me down!”; “How could I have been so stupid to believe him again!” The false appeal of self-punishment is that it seems to keep us safe from future hurt and disappointment. If you get mad enough at yourself – and punish yourself sufficiently – you might not be “so stupid” as to trust or rely on that person – or someone like him – again. This illusion of protection from hurt is the “great lie” of resentment. In fact, you get hurt a lot more often when resentful, for the simple reason that people react to what they see.

What resentment does for your resilience

Resenting a situation or a person drains your energy massively and therefore drains your resilience.  It occupies your mind and heart; it reduces your focus and distorts your perspective.  It makes you reactive and can add to, or cause conflict, stopping you communicating with others that really matter to you.  It is harder to be calm and be present, to step back and see things differently.  It distracts you from using your energy for the positive things that you want to do and achieve.

When your mood is positive you are caring, playful, romantic, supportive, cooperative, analytical, or creative. A few negative feelings are not likely to change your mood. But, when your underlying mood is resentful, you can experience emotions like waves of anger, anxiety, jealousy, or envy, which motivate behaviour that is controlling, dominating, impulsive, possessive, confrontational, vindictive, dismissive, withdrawing, or rejecting. A few positive feelings here and there will do little to alter your mood.

In short resentment is a bit like a dementor from Harry Potter (Ref: Harry Potter & The Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling)  – it sucks the life out of you, drains your resilience and makes everything grey and heavy.

What You Can Do To Shift Resentment

  1. Notice it and honour the intention behind it – to protect you
  2. Decide you want to change being hijacked by resentment
  3. Use the HALT tool to figure out what the source of the resentment really is, and how you might go about changing it.

Bottom Line

Being free of resentment is resilience building. It takes guts to notice and accept you are feeling resentment. This is half the ticket to changing how you feel.

Don’t let your mood be so affected by covering up what you really need via resentment. Honour your needs, and let yourself be free.

Author

Jenny Campbell, CEO, Resilience Engine

Resentment Halt

Here are some typical symptoms of resentment. Which ones are yours?

Confusion – Why don’t others get it? Why don’t they understand and appreciate what you have achieved?

Inner self-talk battle – half of you is angry that you didn’t say what you felt, the other half is feeling selfish or ashamed.

Short-temperedness – You pick a fight because you are not getting what you need. Switching attention to others’ failures to feel better about yourself.

Passive aggressive behaviour – bad mouthing the subject of your resentment to others or to yourself under your breath or in your head!

Increased anxiety – when you aren’t listening to or speaking up for yourself anxiety can go through the roof.

When you spot your symptoms of resentment check for HALT signals;
Do you feel: Hungry; Angry; Lonely; or Tired


When any of these discomfort or deprivation signals are in play, you are more vulnerable to obsessive ruminations about the resentments that you carry around. If you find yourself unable to let go of obsessive thoughts of resentment, you need to evaluate if you are in a psychologically vulnerable state due to the above factors. Meet your needs for food, rest, companionship, etc. before even attempting to get some perspective about the activity in your brain.

Feeling Stale

Photo by Chelsea Kyle

The word that is with me right now is stale.

I can feel it, my clients feel it, you may feel it. It seems that whilst the world is very unstable and uncertain, many feel stale in what they are doing day to day.

Here’s what the standard advice can include:

  • If you’re in a stale relationship, either spice it up (find common interests or get stuck into proper conversation that might be a bit more edgy) – or – get out
  • If you’re feeling stale in your job, change it
  • If you’re feeling stale in the same location, set up somewhere else or travel
  • Make a major life change

It would be all too easy to assume that one of these is what you need. It could be. Yet it could be dangerous thinking – when you are feeling low it’s very easy to ask ‘what is wrong with me?’ and this in turn can spiral into polarised thinking, a kind of ‘all or nothing’ approach. This can lead to feeling somewhat dramatic about what needs to change.  But what if major change is just not the thing that you actually need?

Maybe it’s more about allowing yourself to accept the demand that is upon everyone right now is enormous, you included. And if you’re feeling stale, bored, lost your va va oomph, you can allow yourself off the hook, no wonder! Accepting that life is very demanding allows you to consider instead how to invest in the day to day things that can make a difference. There’s a lot practically you might do. The Resilience Engine’s research insights give two big enablers: Being Present, and Energy, as the keys to shifting your contentedness day to day. This translates into

  • Give yourself a break, ease up on the expectation of yourself
  • Learn to ‘be present’. Be in this moment. This is your life happening, right here, right now. Being Present is the foundation of resilience, your adaptability
  • Invest in your wellbeing – your sleep, exercise, laughter, and yes, that old chestnut, nutrition
  • Do something creative, every – that is every – day
  • Deal with stuff that has been bothering you for a while – look inside, understand it, and either accept it or shift it

These more practical steps are great at helping you increase your energy day to day.

The stale feeling however may still remain, just be less dominating. What then?

I have been wondering why I personally am feeling stale. And I had my aha, when I considered my own Resilience River©. This is a simple metaphor we use with our clients, which explains that your resilience is like a river – when the water is high enough, it can handle the rocks it has to navigate around or carry ; when it’s low, everything seems huge and difficult and the river can run really dry.

(Look at the video on our website to understand more, just follow the link: Resilience River©.)

It took me a while of tuning into this to understand why I was feeling stale.

Here is my first aha:

  • It wasn’t about making major changes as in the first category above.
  • And whilst some of the second category of practical things can be improved on, I’m pretty good at doing these already

Here is my second aha:

  • I like my Resilience River©. I like the direction of travel, I can handle the rocks along the way, I even quite like dealing with some of them. Sometimes the river is really bumpy, but overall, the river bed/banks and direction are all good.
  • The thing that I needed to change is the actual water itself. Aha, that’s the bit that was stale!

And to do that, I had to go ‘up river’ to the source of my river. It flows because of my secure bases – things, people, activities, locations –  where I feel totally myself and where I also feel inspired to be everything I can be.

There I found that I had been trading on only one or two of the things that are really meaningful for me, and have in fact stopped the flow of everything else. Madness I realise! The result – I was out of balance, the mix of the river’s waters was not all of me, some if it was missing. I was missing my music, my reading and writing, and the research element of my work.

I had effectively in my busy-ness cut off incredibly meaningful parts of my life and activity, because work and family life had been so demanding. Yet in doing so, my river ended up running the wrong colour, and was much lower than it needed to be. Having stared the process of opening the valves on all the areas that are meaningful for me – my secure bases- the river has already started to flow more naturally and wonderfully again.

What’s more, to do that was easy. It wasn’t a big life change needed, it wasn’t more rigour around my wellbeing habits, it was more simple than that – it was- and is – just getting my balance back by connecting with everything that I love.

So if you are feeling stale, why not wonder about your own Resilience River©. It might just unlock what you need to feel more in flow again.

How resilience coaching makes the difference

What is the difference between resilience and normal executive coaching? Two main things:

  1. Being able to be aware of the client’s resilience defines very clearly their capacity for change. That means it can help you as the coach set expectations for yourself and the client.
  2. Given whatever start point the client has, knowing the key things for their resilience needs, for that exact start point, helps sift through the masses of options that you have as a coach. Resilience is a priority for all change and therefore for coaching

Read this client story.

Our coach worked with a senior Director in Academia, in an institute considering a merger with another academic institution. The Director has led his division through a difficult time already, and now was facing a much bigger issue of merger. For many complex relational and Board issues, the context of the organisation was a toxic one. There were SO many difficulties – financial, industry changes, people’s motivation was low, all areas were under heavy scrutiny, trust issues prevalent everywhere. The client felt very responsible for ensuring that his area came out ok at the end of blood letting.

In the first coaching session, there were so many questions, both client and coach found it all overwhelming. Where to start the work?

The thing that stood out from a resilience point of view was that the client was very, very tired. That meant they had little capacity for change. And ethically the coach knew this and knew that energy was the key to unlock the client’s resilience.

Checking this out as the first step in the coaching changed everything for the client in the next year of work. The coaching work was all about Adaptive Capacity1 – Energy, Pacing and Perspective. No business strategy was discussed without work on these fundamental resilience factors.

One year on, the client was caring for themselves, had entirely embraced his energy needs (‘I really believe in this resilience stuff’ were his actual words), and was leading the merger conversation, openly, wisely and with great clarity. His goals for his people and organisation were being met as best as possible within such a complex situation. But most of all, the client had the sustained resilience to keep going and not just see the challenge as a short-term one -in fact the coaching, and the merger, took a further two years to sort.

Two years on from that original period and the client continues to talk about and invest in their resilience. Proactively they take time out to connect with their research interests, connect widely and often with stakeholders, and most critically, ensure good boundaries between work and home. In the day to day, they notice if they get hijacked by particular old issues or behavioural patterns, and can interrupt these quickly. This attention to their Resilience River© is very simple but very effective.

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The Resilience Engine aims to make resilience accessible to everyone by equipping organisations with an internal resilience capability. Our clients can create cohorts of internal resilience coaches via our Resilience Accreditation Programme. Our next open programme is February 2021; we will be launching a Corporate version of this in the Autumn of 2020.

Clients also deploy our online services that give managers and their teams tools to support and extend resilience. Starting from £1+VAT per staff member, our extremely accessible pricing help organisations scale up.

Resilience is one of the key topics for now and 2021. Get in touch to learn how we can help you.

The Resilience Engine team

References

  1. Adaptive Capacity is part of The Resilience Engine® research model, which explains how to build resilience.