Resentment is a negative psychological syndrome that destroys relationships if you don’t address it. Unfortunately, most people don’t even understand it, so they don’t get the help they need to save their relationships.
When you work with a qualified therapist, they’ll help you understand the components of resentment, which include:
- Two ways people actually “feed” their resentment.
- Identifying poor coping mechanisms and their dangers.
- The two types of resentment: hot and cold.
- Five steps to help people overcome their resentment.
At Therapy By You in Bingham Farms, MI, we’ll help you and your partner address and heal from resentments to help reinforce your relationship. Get help by calling (248) 919-8092 or contacting us online!
Resentment & How People “Nurture” This Negativity
You can think of this emotion as a kind of “slow anger” that eats away at your peace of mind over time. It can lead you to feeling like you’re being treated cruelly or unfairly.
If left unchecked, resentment festers and grows because people keep “feeding” it. They typically do this in two ways:
1. Story Locking
When people have an unresolved conflict, their brain tends to seek out a narrative to help explain it. These “stories” get locked into our brains and become an indictment of our partner.
When we’re “story locked,” you can turn a specific complaint about your partner’s behavior into a negative judgment of their character. For example, something like “you forgot what mattered to me” can become “you never care about me.”
2. Confirmation Bias
Once your story is “locked,” you’ll only focus on the things that highlight your partner’s shortcomings. This ends up “feeding” your resentment and heightening your anger.
If this is happening to you, your mind is in a kind of “prison” that traps both you and your partner. An experienced therapist can help you get to the root of the issue and address it effectively.
Identifying the 2 Types of Resentment
Once you better understand what resentment is, it’s time to learn how it presents itself inside your life. Resentment typically manifests externally in these two distinct ways:
- Hot Resentment: This is the volatile expression of resentment that’s loud, sharp, and highly critical. When it “explodes,” it brings the emotional power of every past hurt into the situation.
- Cold Resentment: This mask of silence is insidious because it can cause you to detach from your partner. This causes your relationship to decay over time.
A therapist helps you identify these two types of resentment that might be lingering inside of you. They then give you helpful tools for expressing these emotions without hurting your partner.
The Danger of Poor Coping Mechanisms
Avoidance and rumination are the brain’s attempts to cope with the hurt, but they are poisons. Rumination typically falls into two categories:
- Anger Ruminations: Rehearsing arguments and focusing on how wrong the other person is.
- Depressive Ruminations: Focusing on self-criticism and feeling entirely stuck in the relationship.
These constant mental loops keep your body in a state of heightened alert, which shuts down the empathetic parts of the brain needed to resolve the problem.
5 Steps for Overcoming Resentment
Most therapists agree that forcing yourself to forgive just to keep the peace actually makes your resentment worse. Overriding your hurt often leads to more pain.
When you work with a therapist, they can help you through this self-evaluation process using these five steps: five specific prompts:
- Target: Identify exactly who or what you are angry at.
- Cause: Pinpoint the specific action or broken promise stuck inside your head.
- Impact: Assess how this affected your trust, respect, or sense of safety.
- Underlying Emotion: Look past the initial anger to find deeper feelings such as fear, shame, or grief.
- Need: Identify your unmet needs, such as consistency, boundaries, or not being taken seriously.
This helps map your resentment and see how much you’re maintaining it. A therapist helps you and your partner make small, actionable changes to rebuild your relationship.
Therapy By You Helps People Identify & Address Resentment
Isn’t it time to reconnect with your partner and build a stronger relationship through therapy? Get the help you need by calling Therapy By You at (248) 919-8092, or contacting us online!
