How to Live Through Resentment and Forgive

In this article, we will discuss practical steps and strategies to help you navigate through feelings of resentment and ultimately find forgiveness.

“They carry water on the offended”, “Resentment is the problem of the one who is offended” – these proverbs seem to forbid taking offense. In fact, resentment is not only a very painful, but also a useful feeling that allows you to look at the situation in a new way. Psychologist Larisa Tarantsova explains why we take offense, how we show our grievances and why it is important to learn to forgive.

Table of Contents

What is resentment and why do we take offense differently?

When they say, “Don’t be offended!”, it’s useless. We all tend to be offended if our feelings are hurt. Resentment appears when we feel that we have been treated unfairly. Resentment is a reaction to pain caused by words, actions or inattention from a loved one. In order to live through this pain and understand how to act further, we experience a feeling of resentment.

The way to react to injustice is developed in childhood. People show their resentment in different ways. Some actively get angry, others make excuses, and for others the best way is to shut up or cry. And each way to react to injustice closes some need of a person. Shows why he is offended.

Often it depends on the child’s experience. For example, a child is diligently building a fortress in the sandbox. Another child accidentally touches one of the towers, and it collapses. And how the adult behaves will play a decisive role in choosing a strategy for behavior in such cases. If a parent says how offensive it is when efforts do not achieve the desired result, then the child sees that the adult accepts his feelings and understands his pain. Over time, his attention switches, he learns to live through the offense and move on.

It happens that an adult begins to feel very sorry for the child, offers to compensate for the consequences of the event, for example, to buy a toy or a sweet. As a result, the child will eventually develop the following behavior strategy: in a situation of injustice, he will be strongly offended, cry and expect “compensation for the damage” in the form of gifts and bonuses.

This behavior can also manifest itself in adulthood. Often, resentment looks like manipulation on the part of the offended. A person does not directly say what exactly he does not like in the behavior of another. But he demonstrates that he feels bad, is silent, cries and expects to be calmed down, pitied and rewarded.

If at the moment of the injustice there was no one nearby who could sympathize, then the child may show aggression in order to draw attention to himself and his condition. The child may hit someone, most often the offender. In response, he may break the sand tower of the “enemy”. If after this they pay attention to him and try to pity him, such a child may demonstratively not accept sympathy. It is important for him to draw attention to himself.

And some people choose the way to explain the reasons for their resentment , explaining to the offender that his behavior caused an adequate reaction, that it could not have been otherwise. For example, if a person did not keep his promise, resentment may be appropriate. And reasonable behavior will be to declare your feelings and explain your position. This is the way adults who have the skills of constructive communication take offense. Children master it gradually, by the example of adults.

What is behind the resentment?

Resentment is a complex experience that includes many other emotions.

Anger and self-pity may be behind the offense . The child does not allow himself to fully express his anger, since he depends on adults. If in childhood the parent – he is also the “offender” – consoles the child, then a stereotypical situation is created when the offender takes on the obligation to regulate the person’s emotions and responsibility for the situation. However, in adult life, everything is far from that. The one who offended us often does not intend to console us, and is not obliged to do so. And here the offense makes us feel anger and self-pity at the same time.

Resentment can manifest suppressed aggression . Since childhood, we were taught that it is bad to be angry , forced to suppress negative emotions in ourselves. With age, we get used to avoiding our aggression. But unfortunately, it does not go away, but accumulates inside us. It is very difficult to carry this feeling inside, so we show aggression “passively”. For example, we get offended, ignore the offender and wait for him to guess what he is guilty of, repent and fix everything.

Resentment can be a way to maintain a relationship with the offender . After all, while we are offended by a person, we feel a connection with him. Even if we do not communicate in reality, this connection continues to exist in our inner world. Therefore, we are constantly looking for reasons to be offended in order to maintain the illusion of a relationship.

Feelings of deprivation and disappointment may be hidden behind resentment . We dream of an ideal world of universal justice, but reality turns out to be completely different from what we imagined. Resentment arises when we encounter a discrepancy between expectations and what actually happens. For example, we hope for a promotion, but a colleague gets promoted. Or we expect a vacation at the sea for our birthday, but receive a set of saucepans. We feel disappointed and deprived, and resentment covers up these uncomfortable feelings.

Resentment can hide the fear of rejection . Remember how you felt as a child, when your parents put you to bed, but they themselves continued to watch TV or finish some chores? It was offensive, as if you were excluded from family life for the evening. You were angry, but because of the fear of rejection, you could not show aggression. Feeling humiliated, you submitted, going to your room. As adults, in similar situations, we can experience a feeling of rejection, but we will hide our pain under the mask of resentment: “Why is this happening to me!”

Often, resentment is envy , that the offender has something that you do not have. We envy not only material well-being, but also other people’s relationships, success at work, talent. At the same time, we feel less fortunate, incapable of something, poor. We become offended for ourselves: “What’s wrong with me? Why do others succeed, but I can’t?”

We can also feel offended when we don’t want to feel ashamed . For example, a friend promises to come over, you set a date and time, get ready, and your friend cancels. The first thing we can feel is anger and indignation at being neglected by our friend. But admitting that you really needed them is hard. It’s embarrassing to show your vulnerability to your friend. All you can do is feel offended.

It turns out that the ability to forgive depends on the structure of the brain!

Scientists have found that the ability to forgive is linked to neuroanatomical features. People with a well-developed anterior superior temporal sulcus are better at understanding other people’s emotions. It is easier for them to imagine what a person who has unintentionally committed a misdeed feels. Therefore, they are less likely to judge others harshly.

A team of researchers conducted an experiment involving 50 people aged 18 to 35. They were asked to give a moral assessment of people’s behavior in 36 situations with 4 possible outcomes: when intentional actions or random events lead to negative or neutral results. In each case, the participants assessed how guilty the person was and how deserving of punishment.

When the scientists analyzed MRI data from each respondent’s brain, they found that those with more gray matter in the anterior superior temporal sulcus were less likely to blame accidental culprits.

What does this mean? The gray matter in the brain is responsible for processing sensory information, muscle control, and conscious thinking. And the superior temporal sulcus is involved in the process of understanding actions and perceiving the human voice. Thus, according to this group of researchers, the amount of gray matter in the superior temporal sulcus of the brain affects a person’s ability to use their thinking to a greater extent to analyze the actions of others. And, as a result, such people are more inclined to forgive.

Is there any benefit in being offended?

Like any emotion with a negative charge , resentment has its functions. First, a signal – “Something is broken!” Resentment means that ideas about the world and others do not coincide with reality.

Secondly, resentment performs a regulatory function and helps to correct the situation. This is a reason to think that not everything always happens according to the intended scenario, and to add a little rationality to your emotional reactions. Here it is important to ask yourself a few questions.

Who am I offended by?
What does my resentment give me?
How should a person behave so that I would not be offended by him?
How did the person I was offended by actually behave?
Did he know about my expectations?
What need of mine do I want to satisfy?
How can I communicate my expectations to others regarding my need?
How else can I fulfill my need?

If you answer these questions consistently, consciously and honestly, you can understand a lot about yourself and your relationships.

Why are some people more touchy than others?

There are several reasons that can influence how prone we are to take offense.

Increased sensitivity . Sensitive people often feel devalued, they feel when someone looks at them “somehow wrong”, says “something wrong”, they can make up stories about what happened , attribute non-existent motives to others and suffer from grievances.
Psychological trauma. If in childhood a person was often ignored, his feelings and needs were rejected, then in adulthood he reacts more vividly to the failure to fulfill promises on the part of another person.
Inability to defend personal boundaries. It happens that a person is uncomfortable in a relationship, but out of fear of rejection, he is afraid to directly state this . As a result, he often gets offended, but remains silent and does not break off the relationship due to fear of loneliness and self-doubt.
Reaction to unfulfilled expectations . A person often feels offended if his deep beliefs about the world and people are too far from reality.

What happens if you don’t forgive insults

Sometimes we are so offended that it seems that we will never forgive the offender. Often the person does not even suspect that he has offended us, lives peacefully, works, rejoices. And at this time we are busy with the fact that our whole body is offended, we have stopped communicating with the offender. We try to control our emotions towards this person – they should be exclusively negative. We constantly think about how much we are offended. We are surprised how another person could do this to us.

Being in such a state for a long time, the body begins to give us signals: sleep is disturbed, vision deteriorates, cardiovascular diseases, hypertension, gastrointestinal diseases, endocrine disorders and other diseases that can affect all human organs can worsen. We can say that by being offended, we harm ourselves.

When we are offended by someone, we are often advised: “Forgive him!” However, truly forgiving, and not “swallowing” the offense, is not easy. To do this, you need to accept the other person’s actions. Give him the right to be who he is. Free yourself from the offense so that there is no unpleasant aftertaste.

To forgive is to give yourself freedom from the emotional burden of resentment, and to do this you need to learn to experience this emotion correctly, that is, without consequences for ourselves, our body, our psyche.