Oh, the liberating feeling of resentment,
where we get to blame everyone else for what is going on in our lives. We get to tell the story over-and-over-again. The blood starts pumping and flowing, the cortisol and adrenalin are running through our body, and that story keeps getting bigger. And here you are angry all over again for something that may have just happened or happened 10 years ago. Unknowingly you have given that event or person control of you and your body to keep reaping havoc, you blame them for how you act and how you feel.
The question is why? People harbor resentment for many reasons, you got over-looked for a job promotion, someone in your family did something devastating, you were assaulted, treated unjustly…you get the picture. All of these things are agreeably awful. Some people hold so much anger and resentment wishing ill on someone else that they end up harming their own health.
By living in resentment and anger the normal internal flow of your body does not function properly because you are in constant survival mode. Your body does not have enough time to rest and re cooperate before the story starts to play again or you find new people to share it with and gather empathetic ears to listen re-affirming how wrong it was. This helps us hold onto and validate the venom of resentment.
The healing of Forgiveness
It could be, when we hit rock bottom, that we start to search for a way out of this cesspool of ugliness. For me learning about forgiveness came in a shocking way. I had a horrific trauma happen and for a time I allowed it to negatively affect my life. For several years I let the stress of resentment and anger get the best of me, I was constantly unwell with emotional and physical pain.
I went to a trusted mentor to talk, thinking I was going to get sympathy and would have someone to commiserate with. Instead, I got the opposite! My mentor pointed out that as long as I held on to the resentment I would not heal. In resentment I take that event or person to every meal, to sleep, to every place I went to, the reel would constantly be playing. My mentor also advised that in forgiveness it does not let the event or person off the hook for what was done. It does free me from carrying that burden around every minute of every day. Forgiveness was more for me than it was for them. Forgiveness gave me the ability to clear space for healing and, as crazy as it sounds, the ability to send love to what caused the pain.
This can take some practice, and strength. I will tell you, living in forgiveness and love and becoming aware of when I feel myself sliding is so much more freeing than living in the constraints of resentment and hate. I still have things that come up and have found that instead of taking pills to make the pain go away I know I have the ability heal my own internal energy around both the physical and emotional issues allowing the Freedom of Forgiveness to take over. I no longer look for something from the outside to heal what is happening on the inside. You too, have that power.
Suggestions to start on the path of Forgiveness:
- Look at the event and say “okay that’s what happened” as Dr. Wayne Dyer once said “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change”. Look for the lesson in what happened and how it can improve your life or someone else’s. Sometimes you have to dig deep. When you find it, taking steps to heal it starts to fill the hole with unconditional love.
- Take time each day and relax into a meditation that has soothing music, letting go of the chatter that is constantly playing in your head, notice what you want to create more of.
- Take out paper and a pen, start writing about anything, just start putting words on a page and get it out. Don’t think about what you are writing it does not have to be anything that makes sense just write, punctuation is not important here. It’s almost like screaming in a pillow only you will begin to find more clarity, peace and freedom with the writing.
