Resentments

I was thinking of the word and concept of resentment the other day.  As is often my habit I went to Dictionary.com and found their definition.  Their primary definition is:

noun

1.

the feeling of displeasure or indignation at some act, remark, person, etc., regarded as causing injury or insult.

The Cambridge online dictionary defines resentment as:

to dislike or be angry at something or someone because you have been hurt or not treated fairly:

The Oxford dictionary lists the origin of the word resent as:

Late 16th century: from obsolete French resentir, from re- (expressing intensive force) + sentir 'feel' (from Latin sentire). The early sense was 'experience (an emotion or sensation)', later 'feel deeply', giving rise to 'feel aggrieved by'.

The oxford dictionary says of the word indignation:

Anger or annoyance provoked by what is perceived as unfair treatment:

the letter filled Lucy with indignation

Now we have an important piece of the definition, which is not explicitly mentioned if we confine ourselves to the words resent or resentment.  By adding the word perception we begin to get at the source of the unpleasant feeling –a feeling that is often so unpleasant that we may feel “forced” to hurl overt or covert invectives at the person we perceive as treating us as unkind or unfairly.  Obviously this requires an assumption that the behavior of the person who committed the act that we perceived as unfair or which gives “rise” to the feeling of “aggrieved by” was about us and not about what was going on with them.

I can think of many examples of times when I or someone in my family of origin has been resentful or the object of resentment.    Just recently I was visiting my mother as well as two of my sisters and some of the extended family.  My mother is known in the senior community in which she lives now and in the community in which she previously lived as an enormously kind and generous person.  She is indeed that person. She is also a very human person who, as is true for all of us, has a very difficult time forgetting and/or forgiving those she thinks has hurt her.  She is often not able to make what seems to her that gigantic leap to ever again trusting someone whose behavior she experienced as hurtful - whose humanness has been naked with her!  Of course, she does not use the word human to account for the behavior of others any more than she does to account for her own behavior.   If she was able to see the perceived or experienced unkind behavior of others as the normal action of all we humans she would be in a position to practice what some Buddhists or Hindus call Maitri – the holding of oneself and others “in the cradle of loving kindness”.  This is done with full awareness and acceptance of the humanness of all of all  - that ability to be wonderful, kind, cruel, stupid, smart, judgmental, forgiving, etc.  (In the Christian religion one would call this same action Grace.)

In order for one to justify one’s resentment one needs to make a number of assumptions. These assumptions include:

·      The belief that the perception for the action of the other person is accurate and is grounded in an absolute, concrete reality.

·      The person deliberately set out to hurt us.

·      Unlike them, we would never set out to hurt another.

·      The act of the person was so egregious that it would be dangerous to trust that person again.

·      Holding on to resentment is worth the cost to our own health.  We know that anger and other negative feelings are not good for one’s health.

·      The behavior of the one whose action is the basis for the resentment is about us and not about their issues, fears, old grudges, etc.

These are a lot of assumptions, none of which may stand up well to “scientific” study.  There is probably some degree of truth or possible truth, in some of these assumptions.  On the other hand, there is also very probably a significant degree of room to question each of them.


I think back to those resentments, which I have stored in my own brain.  I like to think, of course, that I have let go of all resentments and that I am not collecting new ones.  Sadly that is not as true as I would like to believe.   Although. On a cognitive level, I do not reinforce many of the stories related to my boxes of resentments; I have not been successful in erasing, shredding or deleting the original feeling.   There could be no positive results of listing very specific old resentments of mine, which I no longer believed were “justified”.  I believe, for example, that the people I felt wronged me were doing the best that they could to take care of themselves.  Possibly their toolbox was not, at the time, varied enough to allow for other behavior.  Even though the behavior may have hurt me deeply, it was not about me. I did not cause them to behave in that manner. On the other hand, I am sure that, at times, my behavior has been such that others found it difficult to trust me to treat them with love and respect.

The question then becomes, “Am I really in a position to damn or judge another person?”   That would require, as I have mentioned in other blogs, a scientific system for weighing and assigning values to all of my behavior and comparing the number of  “points” with the behavior of all other humans.  Mercy! I have no idea of how to proceed with that scientific endeavor.

Surely there are times when some of we humans are not “present” enough to trust.   Untreated addicts, those with certain diseases of the brain such as specific tumors, Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia, those who are mentally challenged, and those who are so fearful of trusting that they live on the bottom rung of Maslow’s hierarchy cannot be trusted to behave in a kind manner.     Just because I cannot trust the action of their brain does not, of course, mean that I have the right to judge them or even resent their behavior. It is not only a mater of the right to judge, it makes no sense to hold someone even accountable if they do not have a functioning brain. 

Yes. I just introduced another concept, which, again, I have discussed in previous blogs. That concept is accountable.  The regular reader of these blogs might or might not remember that, for me, accountable does not mean that we can or should shame or otherwise punish the person who behavior is essentially no different than mine is at times.

I was chatting with a dear friend and colleague this morning when I stopped by the addiction treatment center she directs.  We were laughing about the fact that even those of us working in the addiction field as counselors or therapist seem to get surprised when someone in early recovery or active addiction acts like someone in early recovery or active addiction.  Silly us! Another bit of our humanness popping through our “professional” costume!

The bottom line, for me is that I need not focus on the resentments, which others hold.  I continue to have much work to do in getting honest with myself and in letting go of the content of much of the stories I have stored in my brain.  I need not be resentful of the resentment of others.