Who am I?
Letting go of resentments
During any holiday season, especially those which are associated with the gathering of family – blood and chosen – our human capacity for nurturing each other and bringing joy to each other is particularly evident. So, too, is the tendency of we humans to allow the fear of forgiveness to be in charge of important relationships. As we all know, the fear of forgiveness often translates into resentments. Mark Sichel in the March 3, 2011 edition of Psychology Today in the second The Therapist is in discussed “The Steps to Letting Go of Resentment.” In that column he quoted an anonymous author:
"The moment you start to resent a person, you become his slave. He controls your dreams, absorbs your digestion, robs you of your peace of mind and goodwill, and takes away the pleasure of your work. He ruins your religion and nullifies your prayers. You cannot take a vacation without his going along. He destroys your freedom of mind and hounds you wherever you go. There is no way to escape the person you resent. He is with you when you are awake. He invades your privacy when you sleep. He is close beside you when you drive your car and when you are on the job. You can never have efficiency or happiness. He influences even the tone of your voice. He requires you to take medicine for indigestion, headaches, and loss of energy. He even steals your last moment of consciousness before you go to sleep. So, if you want to be a slave, harbor your resentments!"
This author, as has such wise individuals as Parker Palmer, reminds the reader that forgiveness first and foremost benefits the person doing the forgiving. Holding on to resentments – those strong feelings of fear which are held up by a wall (frequently of anger) takes an enormous amount of energy and eats away at one’s soul and physical body. When one has the courage and generously to forgive one opens the door to emotional, physical and spiritual health – freedom.
A speaker I heard last evening reminded those of us in the audience that when one is pointing the finger at someone else one has three more fingers pointing back at oneself. We have all engaged in behavior which has been experienced as hurtful to others. We have also judged and resented others. Resentment requires a very sophisticated system for judging that the other person is less deserving of love and forgiveness than I am. Sometimes the resentment is directed toward oneself in which case we are deciding that we are less deserving of love and forgiveness than others. I say that this requires a sophisticated system because one has to design a set of criteria for assigning positive or negative points to every potential behavior. One then needs to not only carefully record such points but also has to add up the points for a particular time period. We can then decide who is deserving of love and respect. Those we deem has having more negative points we elect to resent and refuse to forgive.
I just had lunch with a young man who is clear that he does not want to visit relatives who have been very critical in the past. Although these relatives may have changed, he is not willing to risk exposing himself to further criticism. Not surprisingly this young man believes that this person always had choices about how to behave. Despite the fact that he knows that some of his friends think and behave differently when on medication, he continues to believe that one can override the often negative and critical thoughts of clinical depression or other neurological disorders. Yet, he is unable to see that he is reacting to negative thoughts and behavior with negative thoughts and behavior.
The real fear is, of course, that we may lose control over our own thoughts and behavior. If this were to come to past, we would then have to ask who we are. Letting go of resentments and other thought patterns/habits requires a redefinition of who we are. If one could become this person whose mind perceives and interprets the world primarily in a negative way than who is one? If one is not the loving person who is consistently an actor but can also be a reactor what gives one worth, self-confidence or self-respect?
Those three fingers which point back at one while we one is pointing at someone else raises the question of what makes us good or bad – deserving or undeserving.
If not careful, we tell others that it is perfectly safe to let go of resentments. We tell ourselves and others that one can will feel that one is lighter and free of the heavy weight of resentment. While that may be true, the new weight is the fear of who we are or who we might become if we are no different than the person who has wronged or hurt us or someone we loved. This is frightening and, thus, dangerous. Often my judgments of others come out of a need to delude myself about myself. That is dangerous. How will I know who I am if I am not what I tell myself I am?
In this series of inquires I will be asking the question of who we are if we let go of certain negative behavior – behavior which us humans often blame on God, other people, human nature, alcohol, other drugs or situations.
One might or might not want to play with the possibility of letting go of resentments – of forgiving. Be warned. It will not necessarily be comfortable, pretty or freeing. We may have to look at our own truths. We may also have to face the fact that the person who has been the recipient of our resentments may not welcome our forgiveness. They may then also have to consider letting of their view or concept of themselves.
Written November 26, 2016
Letting go of resentments
During any holiday season, especially those which are associated with the gathering of family – blood and chosen – our human capacity for nurturing each other and bringing joy to each other is particularly evident. So, too, is the tendency of we humans to allow the fear of forgiveness to be in charge of important relationships. As we all know, the fear of forgiveness often translates into resentments. Mark Sichel in the March 3, 2011 edition of Psychology Today in the second The Therapist is in discussed “The Steps to Letting Go of Resentment.” In that column he quoted an anonymous author:
"The moment you start to resent a person, you become his slave. He controls your dreams, absorbs your digestion, robs you of your peace of mind and goodwill, and takes away the pleasure of your work. He ruins your religion and nullifies your prayers. You cannot take a vacation without his going along. He destroys your freedom of mind and hounds you wherever you go. There is no way to escape the person you resent. He is with you when you are awake. He invades your privacy when you sleep. He is close beside you when you drive your car and when you are on the job. You can never have efficiency or happiness. He influences even the tone of your voice. He requires you to take medicine for indigestion, headaches, and loss of energy. He even steals your last moment of consciousness before you go to sleep. So, if you want to be a slave, harbor your resentments!"
This author, as has such wise individuals as Parker Palmer, reminds the reader that forgiveness first and foremost benefits the person doing the forgiving. Holding on to resentments – those strong feelings of fear which are held up by a wall (frequently of anger) takes an enormous amount of energy and eats away at one’s soul and physical body. When one has the courage and generously to forgive one opens the door to emotional, physical and spiritual health – freedom.
A speaker I heard last evening reminded those of us in the audience that when one is pointing the finger at someone else one has three more fingers pointing back at oneself. We have all engaged in behavior which has been experienced as hurtful to others. We have also judged and resented others. Resentment requires a very sophisticated system for judging that the other person is less deserving of love and forgiveness than I am. Sometimes the resentment is directed toward oneself in which case we are deciding that we are less deserving of love and forgiveness than others. I say that this requires a sophisticated system because one has to design a set of criteria for assigning positive or negative points to every potential behavior. One then needs to not only carefully record such points but also has to add up the points for a particular time period. We can then decide who is deserving of love and respect. Those we deem has having more negative points we elect to resent and refuse to forgive.
I just had lunch with a young man who is clear that he does not want to visit relatives who have been very critical in the past. Although these relatives may have changed, he is not willing to risk exposing himself to further criticism. Not surprisingly this young man believes that this person always had choices about how to behave. Despite the fact that he knows that some of his friends think and behave differently when on medication, he continues to believe that one can override the often negative and critical thoughts of clinical depression or other neurological disorders. Yet, he is unable to see that he is reacting to negative thoughts and behavior with negative thoughts and behavior.
The real fear is, of course, that we may lose control over our own thoughts and behavior. If this were to come to past, we would then have to ask who we are. Letting go of resentments and other thought patterns/habits requires a redefinition of who we are. If one could become this person whose mind perceives and interprets the world primarily in a negative way than who is one? If one is not the loving person who is consistently an actor but can also be a reactor what gives one worth, self-confidence or self-respect?
Those three fingers which point back at one while we one is pointing at someone else raises the question of what makes us good or bad – deserving or undeserving.
If not careful, we tell others that it is perfectly safe to let go of resentments. We tell ourselves and others that one can will feel that one is lighter and free of the heavy weight of resentment. While that may be true, the new weight is the fear of who we are or who we might become if we are no different than the person who has wronged or hurt us or someone we loved. This is frightening and, thus, dangerous. Often my judgments of others come out of a need to delude myself about myself. That is dangerous. How will I know who I am if I am not what I tell myself I am?
In this series of inquires I will be asking the question of who we are if we let go of certain negative behavior – behavior which us humans often blame on God, other people, human nature, alcohol, other drugs or situations.
One might or might not want to play with the possibility of letting go of resentments – of forgiving. Be warned. It will not necessarily be comfortable, pretty or freeing. We may have to look at our own truths. We may also have to face the fact that the person who has been the recipient of our resentments may not welcome our forgiveness. They may then also have to consider letting of their view or concept of themselves.
Written November 26, 2016
RSS Feed