What is resentment and where does it come from? Resentment is a restrained accusation. Like any other complex feeling, it is multi-component. Resentment consists of the emotions of irritation, anger, anger and thoughts with claims against the offender. The culprit may be another person, people, a situation, God, etc. When a person is offended, he restrains his feelings and does not give them vent through his body or words. Thus, the resentment, as it were, settles in the body and remains in it. When I work with resentment using the method of emotional-imagery therapy, it often appears in the form of an image of a stone with lava inside, or another red substance symbolizing anger. That is, the unconscious shows us resentment as a fossilized emotion, restrained, unexpressed. And a person can have many such stones - in accordance with the situations and people against whom he holds this grudge. The psychological mechanism for containing grudges is paradoxical. A person who holds resentment inside himself thirsts for revenge, retribution. He hopes that in this way the offender will somehow repent of what he has done, understand what he did and ask for forgiveness. Or in this way he commits retribution and hopes that the person will get what he deserves, reveling in imaginary situations where he inflicts reprisals on him. But the desired retribution or repentance on the part of the offender never occurs. Moreover, the other person who is offended may not even know that he offended someone and live in peace. And the one who holds a grudge is, in fact, engaged in self-destruction. He may fuel this resentment with thoughts of revenge and imaginary situations where the offender is punished. Thus, he not only maintains the existence of his “stones”, but can also make more of them, not realizing that in this way he is simply poisoning his life. Deep causes of resentment Working with resentment in the method of emotional-imaginative therapy, we immediately understand that there is a weak part of the personality that needs to satisfy some of its needs. As a rule, this is an inner child who needs love and care. Perhaps the parent often promised something to the child, but did not fulfill his promise. There are often cases where a child was subjected to emotional, moral or physical abuse in childhood. Depending on the severity of the psychological trauma inflicted on the child, it can be quite difficult for a person in adulthood to let go of the offense and forgive his parent. But with the help of psychotherapy, this can be achieved. It often happens that in the environment where the child grew up, the parents constantly manipulated each other, showing how offended they were with each other in order to force the partner to repent of his actions and force him to somehow then to correct the situation - to make amends. Subsequently, the child learns this model of behavior and begins to use it in adult life with his partner, simply not knowing any other way to satisfy his needs. In this case, after working through the deep layers of the personality, in therapy we learn constructive expression of emotions and a confident model of behavior in which it becomes possible to negotiate with a partner and talk freely about your needs and desires. Some people deliberately use the manipulation of resentment, causing a feeling of guilt in their partner in order to get what they want. Such people rarely turn to a psychologist with this as a problem that they want to solve, until this leads to discord in the relationship and the risk of its breaking. How to work through your grievances on your own? In order to work through your grievances on your own, you can do the following exercise. Make a list of all the situations and people with whom you are offended. Prepare a separate sheet or several sheets of paper for each person and situation. After that, take some person or situation from the list and express on paper all your feelings the way you want, without censorship. Pour out on paper everything that is in your soul: all the emotions, feelings and thoughts about what happened. NotRestrain yourself in terms of politeness - you can use obscene language if you want. Paper will endure anything. It is important to express everything to the very end so that nothing remains unspoken or unexpressed inside. After all the situations have been worked out, you can read what you wrote again, and then dispose of it. After such work, you may feel some emptiness and fatigue at the end. This is normal, this is how it should be. This means that you have done a good job, and now you need rest. Allow yourself 1-2 hours for such work and organize a space for yourself where no one will disturb you. It happens that there are quite a lot of situations and it is impossible to work through them all at once. In this case, do not force yourself. Give yourself 1 hour a day to work through one situation. This may take time - 1, 2, 3 weeks. But such elaboration yields good results. After all the grievances are released, people usually feel light, as if wings are growing behind their back. And in such a state, you want to enjoy life, love and create. If during the process of doing the exercise you are overwhelmed by very strong emotions, then it is better to stop the process and continue working with a psychologist, since strong psychological traumas can be updated, which are very difficult to work through on your own without a specialist. Take care of yourself; don’t overload yourself emotionally beyond measure. It’s better to contact a specialist who will accompany you on this difficult path and provide professional help and support. How does grievance work through in personal therapy with a psychologist? The best way to get rid of grievances is personal therapy with a psychologist. If you are often offended and this torments you, then most likely you are acting from the ego-state of a wounded child who did not receive something from his parents. And now you are unconsciously trying to fill the need for attention, love, acceptance or care through your marriage partner, girlfriend or work colleague. When we start to deal with this in a session, we often come across an offended child who is angry, but not his own anger does not express or directly ask for what he wants. And here we conduct therapy - we allow the child to express his feelings: to get angry, grumble, or express what he wanted but never said. That is, we release suppressed, unexpressed emotions. After that, we meet the needs of that child. As a rule, this is a need for love, attention, acceptance, to be played with or positively assessed for what he has done, etc. After the child expresses all emotions and receives appropriate support, he becomes calm, joyful and satisfied. We somatize him like this, that is, we accept him as part of our personality and give him space in our inner world. After which your emotional state changes from resentment to calmness, satisfaction and joy. After working through it, we check the problematic situation in which the resentment arose in the imagination. The fact is that for our brain it makes no difference whether something happens in reality or in our imagination. Emotionally, we react equally to events and people that exist in reality, as well as to those that are remembered or imagined. If the work was successful, then you begin to look at the world not through the prism of an offended child, but through the eyes of an adult. You begin to see the world as it really is, that is, objectively. And now you understand that you were not offended specifically at your spouse, girlfriend or boss. The roots of the resentment were in early childhood and this resentment was against mom or dad. It was simply suppressed and not expressed, and sought to come out through interaction with third parties. After working through it, you will be able to calmly look at the one you were previously offended by. And you realize that you can simply say what you don’t like and what you want from him. That is, adequately, in an adult way, without offense or manipulation. Why be offended when you can do it in a safe and constructive way