Perhaps every person is familiar with grievances. But we can talk about them in two contexts: resentment as a character trait and the inability to forgive old grievances. This article will focus on the second option: how to forgive insults and start living freely.
Grievances are stones tied to the neck and pulling to the bottom. Whatever grievances are discussed, it is always worse for the one who remembers them than for the one who inflicted them. Forgiving is vital, but not for everyone. This is one of the highest skills. And to make it easier for him to learn, you need to understand: you need forgiveness, not the offender.
The essence of grievances
Resentment is an experience that someone does not want or cannot meet your expectations.
Like every emotion, resentment is necessary, but in moderation. It allows you to control your behavior and adapt to new conditions, signals about changes. Through resentment, we learn the essence of human relations and merge into the world, grow personally. But this happens on condition of elaboration, forgiveness and forgetting of grievances. Otherwise, the person suffers and does not develop as a person.
Causes
There are several reasons for resentment:
- Resentment often stems from your erroneous expectations about other people. Learn to adequately assess the situation, relationships, people.
- Another reason for resentment is conflicts, contradictions, disagreements. Understand that they are always there. By themselves, these phenomena are neutral. They acquire color depending on the behavior of the participants. This is where it is important for the contradiction to result in a new joint product and personal growth of everyone, to rationally resolve issues in conflicts.
- Resentment as manipulation is the third option. Perhaps you do not have enough attention or you do not know how to communicate, do not know other ways to achieve what you want.
Conditions for the occurrence of offense
Resentment does not always arise. At a minimum, the offender should be significant to the opponent, that is, offenses are more common in close interpersonal relationships. But this is not the only condition.
- “They don’t take offense at fools.” Adults do not take offense at children either, we do not take offense at bad weather or insects. For the development of resentment, it is important to see in the opponent a similar person, an equal.
- Agreements (written or oral). If, out of the kindness of his soul, a person is used to doing something, and then he could not, then there is a high probability that he will be offended. Since unwittingly, his good deeds in the eyes of his partner became a duty. Or vice versa: you helped, but you were denied help. But you thought that it goes without saying. The same is true for gifts and greetings.
So, resentment always arises only in close relationships. In a situation where a person is not important to you or, in general, treats you badly, then a sea of other emotions and feelings arises: irritation, anger, indignation, but not offense.
Why forgive
What happens to someone who has been wronged?
- Resentment is reflected in the health of psychosomatic diseases.
- Resentment controls your thinking and behavior, which becomes focused on reducing suffering from experiences (defense mechanisms are activated).
- Resentment is fraught with quarrels and depression, since one memory is always followed by a sea of others.
- Resentment is a harbinger of chronic emotional stress. Under stress, all the body’s defenses are activated, which is good in an emergency situation: we see better, hit harder, run faster, act more creatively. But for permanent life, such a state is not suitable, since in such conditions the body will quickly wear out physically and mentally, immunity will weaken.
What else does a person experience when stressed, what are two popular reactions: fear (flight) and anger (attack). When we are offended, we feel the same, but we cannot run away from it, which means that it remains to attack. Aggression (latent, explicit, internal like “love and hate”) always accompanies resentment.
Resentment makes us angry and sick. Therefore, you need to be able to forgive. Letting go of grudges, you:
- cleanse your body of those emotions that are already caused by the images of offenders, situations;
- prevent the appearance of negative emotions in the future;
- release intellectual, physical and mental forces for building new life plans, self-development, creativity and achieving social success (freeing up space in thoughts and strength in actions).
Action plan
Getting rid of resentment involves getting rid of emotions (positive and negative). At first, it is important to make the image of the offender neutral, and later he himself will withdraw into the unconscious.
The purpose of working on oneself is the development of sanogenic (healing) thinking. Your task is to intercept the control of thinking and behavior, that is, life, from the resentment. For this, it is important not only to forgive offenses, but also to understand the principle of their formation.
Basics of sanogenic thinking
- First of all, you need to understand that we are offended in those cases when the behavior we ascribe to a person (expectation) does not coincide with real facts (reality).
- You are trapped in the past, which harms you and your loved ones in the present. If you constantly replay grievances in your memory and relive them over and over again (and this is what you are doing), then time will never heal.
- Keep expectations to a minimum. Don’t attribute stereotypes to people.
- It is clear that it is impossible to live without ideas at all. In this case, it is important to build realistic expectations.
- Reflection will help to weaken emotions. In a relaxed state, you need to remember the grievances and imagine yourself in this situation, but detached. As if you are an outside observer. Read more about this in the article “Sanogenic and pathogenic thinking – what is it in psychology. Teaching Orlov’s concept ”.
- Focusing on your expectations rather than the actions of your opponent will help ease the resentment.
- Now try to find the reason for the opponent’s alternative behavior.
- After that, try to accept your opponent as he is and recognize his right to freedom (alternative behavior).
- In a calm state, replay the situation again, it is important to remain detached.
It’s all the fault of waiting
Your expectations about the other person’s behavior require special attention. Play not only the situation itself, but also pay attention to your thoughts. After that, you need to answer a number of questions:
- How should a person behave so that I do not get offended?
- Where do my expectations come from?
- How real are they?
- Is it possible to bring them closer to reality?
- Can a partner meet these expectations?
- Does the partner know about my expectations?
- What’s stopping me from sharing this and changing expectations?
- Why is the opponent doing this?
- What motives are driving him?
- Is he aware of my expectations? If so, why doesn’t he do it?
- Does he have other interests and desires, goals?
- Are my expectations contrary to his beliefs?
- In conclusion, be sure to say: I have no right to judge and evaluate another person, otherwise I do not recognize him as a person and try to fit him to a certain standard, to deprive him of freedom. And no one has such a right.
As strange as it may sound, if you want to let go of the offense, then you need to find an excuse for the offender, not censure. If nothing comes to mind, you can simply say, “I’m sure he had a good reason. I forgive him. “
In conclusion, it is worth talking about forgiveness to yourself. And when forgiving the offender, it is important to find something to thank him for. At the end of the day, you can always thank for the experience.
Epilogue
The mechanism of resentment is as follows: my expectations regarding another person, my vision of his behavior, the mismatch of these elements. If one component (link) does not become, there will be no resentment.
You can get rid of grievances, let go of the past and start living in the future only by changing your thinking, refocusing your attention from grievances and feeding them to new plans.
Always remember that resentment is pointless.
- First, they destroy whoever is holding them back.
- Secondly, think: do you think the offender is higher than you, he pointed to a sore spot? If so, isn’t it worth it to adequately perceive the criticism and try to grow up to this person? And if he told a lie, turned out to be below you, then why attach any importance to this and descend to the same level?
“Socrates was never offended. He rightly said that this either does not concern him, or if it does, it deserves it. If you take offense at a person, then he is taller, smarter and more worthy than you. So take an example from him, reach for his level. And if he is lower, more stupid and less worthy than you, then when you take offense at him, you exalt him with your resentment, and humiliate yourself, “- M. Ye. Litvak.
