A reader asks:
I have a lot of resentment toward my parents. And while I’ve come to a place where I realize there’s not much point in rehashing my childhood woes over and over again, I can’t seem to shake these resentments. I very much want to be free of them and get on with my life, but nothing I’ve tried seems to work. Any recommendations for letting go of old resentments?
Over the years, I’ve worked with a lot of people who struggled with chronic resentment…
- People who resented their parents for not being affectionate or loving enough when they were children
- People who resented their spouse for not appreciating all the sacrifices they made for them
- And certainly a lot of people who resented coworkers or managers at work
And while many of these folks realized intellectually that staying stuck in their resentments isn’t healthy, emotionally they just couldn’t figure out how to let those resentments go and move on.
In the rest of this article, I’m going to share my 3 best tips for letting go of resentment in your life.
1. Think of Resentment as a Verb, Not a Noun.
Suppose you’re walking down the street and you hear a song playing from a car that drives by. This song reminds you of your father, which in turn reminds you of a memory of how he hurt you in some way once when you were young. When that memory pops into mind, it’s natural to feel a pang of sorrow, anger, or some other difficult emotion.
But when people describe feeling resentful—especially chronic resentment—it’s nearly always the result of a mental habit of ruminating, which means engaging in negative and unhelpful thinking about the past:
- Replaying an event in your mind over and over and over again
- Continually trying to understand why someone hurt you
- Obsessively imagining how things would be different if only you had done something different
In other words…
Resentment is something you do, not something that happens to you—it’s a verb, not a noun.
Obviously you can’t change what happened in the past or whether memories of the past get triggered occasionally.
But you always have control over how you respond to those memories or other triggering events. Specifically, you can get better at not ruminating—noticing when your attention is drawn to events of the past and willfully redirecting your attention onto something more productive.
And the key is to practice distinguishing the trigger (like a memory or comment from someone) from your habit of ruminating.
As the great Viktor Frankl said:
Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
Learn More: 5 Ways to Stop Ruminating →
2. What Job Is Your Resentment Doing?
If resentment feels so bad, why do we keep doing it?
All habits stick around because we get something out of them—that is, they do a job for us. For example, if you drink too much alcohol before or during social gatherings, the job that alcohol might be doing is to alleviate your social anxiety. Which means if you want to stop drinking so much, you need to get that need met in a healthier way—creating a daily scheduled worry habit, for example, to change your relationship with anxiety.
So if you struggle with chronic resentment, ask yourself: What job is my resentment doing?
- Is it boosting your ego by making you feel like a victim? If so, you might need to find better ways to improve your self-esteem.
- Is it generating anger in order to block out sadness? If so, you might need to practice validating your sadness instead of avoiding it.
- Maybe it’s a way to procrastinate on something important but scary? And if that’s the case, clarifying your values behind that important thing might motivate you to take action on it rather than avoiding it.
In short…
If you want to get rid of resentment, you need to understand what need it’s filling, and then address that need in a healthier way.
Learn More: A Brief Guide to Functional Analysis →
3. Live Your Life Assertively
Having worked with a lot of people who struggle with chronic resentment, I will tell you that there’s one factor that best predicts who is able to let go of resentment and who will remain stuck in it…
The willingness to be assertive.
Living your life assertively means you have clarity about what you want and the courage to go after it…
- When you want something, you ask for it (despite feeling nervous or awkward about it).
- When you don’t want something, you say no (despite being afraid of other people feeling angry, sad, or guilty).
- And when you have something to say, you express yourself authentically (despite your fears about what other people might think of you).
When you’re afraid to live your life going forward, all you have left is the past—constantly revisiting old events and how you wish things had turned out differently. This is why so many people stay stuck in patterns of rumination and all the resentment it generates.
But once you start living into the future—going after what you really want out of life—you’ll find that even very large injuries or disappointments from the past have far less pull over your attention and affections.
Learn More:
All You Need to Know
If you struggle with chronic resentment, here are the three ideas you need to remember:
- Think of resentment as a verb, not a noun. You do resentment when you fall into ruminating on the past. But rumination is a habit, and like any habit, it can be broken.
- To let go of resentment, understand the job it’s doing. The habit of ruminating and all the resentment it generates is functional—it’s addressing some need in you. If you figure out what that need is—and address it in a healthier way—you can put your resentment out of a job.
- Live your life assertively. The more you live your life going forward—clarifying what you really want and taking bold, courageous action toward it—the less you’ll find yourself pulled back into unhelpful stories about the past.
Learn More
If you want to learn more about the psychology behind chronic resentment, here are some resources that might help: