In this week's blog I'm talking about why anger & resentment are so toxic, and I am offering you a free place at the online workshop I'm running at 12.30pm BST this Wednesday, June 28th, The Common Misconceptions Which Trip Us Up in Relationships. You can register for free.
If you can't make it, you'll get access to the recording.
My Mum had a special super-power. She could never be angry for more than a few minutes.
A childhood friend told me that her mother was the opposite – if you crossed her she’d spend all day being angry.
Maybe she didn’t get angry as often as my Mum did, but I was glad that it was always over so fast when Mum got mad. She would get triggered by something my sisters and I did, she’d fly off the handle, there would be shouting and maybe worse, and then she would regret her behaviour and apologise and repair the connection between us – ie give us all a cuddle.
However… looking back I can see that my mother harboured a lot of resentment towards my father, so maybe she was getting triggered more easily than she might have.
We tend to see resentment as being a low-level anger which persists over a long period of time. I felt a lot of resentment towards my ex, well actually probably all three of them. And I think it was mutual.
But why do I feel so much anger & resentment towards my partner?
The truth is our feelings don’t last more than about 90 seconds, unless we feed them.
Of course that’s what most of us do. Someone does something, which we don’t like – maybe they cross a boundary of some sort.
Then we have some angry thinking, such as:
Why can’t she learn?
He really doesn’t care! Or he wouldn’t do this.
They are so irresponsible!
It’s not fair, he always gets his needs met, and mine are ignored.
And then surprise, surprise, we feel angry towards them.
But it doesn’t stop there. Because once we start feeling angry, it seems to trigger more angry thinking, and so we keep the feeling alive for a lot more than 90 seconds.
While anger may subside and disappear as my mother’s did, and can be swiftly followed by an apology and a hug, resentment does seem to persist over a long period of time.
If you look up the word ‘resentment’ on Google, there are a lot of definitions and explanations, which are not all the same. So I’m going to stick to a very simple definition, because we are talking here about a bad feeling which may persist over months or years.
However it is not true that the resentment we feel is there all the time. Like any feeling it is only there when we are creating it in the moment. It’s just that like a bad habit, we’ve been repeating the resentful thoughts over and over again for a long time, so it’s not easy to break the habit.
Often the original event which triggered the resentment has long since passed and hasn’t been repeated. And yet we continue to create that feeling of resentment, perhaps because it’s come to occupy such an important space in our inner world that we don’t want to let it go.
But surely I’m right to feel anger if someone has upset me or crossed a boundary?
Well, maybe you’re right and maybe you’re wrong, but is that the only criterion?
What’s the answer when you ask yourself honestly, “does it work most of the time?”
Does your partner or your child or your parent change their behaviour because you flew off the handle at them?
Or do they dig their heels in and tell you that you’re:
too precious
unfair
too tetchy
or.. just plain wrong
Or maybe they storm out of the house or run upstairs to their bedroom.
Yes, you are right to feel anger; it’s what you are feeling and all feelings are equally acceptable. But maybe not so right to fly off the handle and shout at them.
Ultimately this approach leads to a descent into what my colleague, Kalen Hamman calls the Death Spiral, where Dr Jekyll morphs into Mr (or Ms) Hyde.
But there is another way.
It’s called curiosity and compassion.
When we get curious about why we get angry and why our partner sometimes does things we find hurtful, we start to uncover deeper truths which lead us to a more compassionate approach. And it gets easier to let go of anger so that it doesn't lead into the Death Spiral.
I’ll be talking about this and some other keys to successful relationships in my up-coming online workshop, The Common Misconceptions Which Trip Us Up in Relationships.
To register free of charge, use this link:
.And even if you can’t make it live, you’ll get access to the recording if you register.