“He doesn’t call it resentment he just calls it ‘coming to terms with a sh*tty past’!” my client’s wife commented when she came in.
You may not call it resentment.
You might call it…
Frustration…
Disappointment…
Righteous anger…
Having boundaries.
I don’t care what you call it.
I just care that you free yourself …
and those you love …
from it.
People will anticipate how you’ll react if you live to be right.
Righteous resentment is an oxymoron.
There’s only so much people can take, til they decide they won’t anymore.
Research reveals that resentment has symptoms just like any illness:
· Negativity about many things that “leaks out” regularly
· Overthinking
· A general sense of unrest
· Sleep disturbance
· Extreme fatigue
· Gut disturbance
· Living in regret
Those are just a few of the many symptoms that scream resentment.
However, there are not only symptoms … there are also life cycles and patterns that also scream of resentment:
- Replaying old conversations in your head
- Reacting in ways with others that are 10x greater than what the moment calls for
- Feeling the same anger or hurt months, years, decades later
- Becoming agitated over simple tasks
- Speaking and behaving unpredictably
Simple stated … you/me/us become what we resent.
These are not just personality traits.
When people say things like: “That’s just the way I am …”
It’s a dead giveaway that resentment is on board!
These cycles and patterns are signs of an unresolved emotional loop.
In our bodies, resentment functions like chronic stress.
Neuroscience informs us that when we recall a painful person or event, the amygdala (our brain’s alarm system) and our bodies respond exactly as if (what we are thinking about) is happening in real time … right now!
Our cortisol levels rise.
Our heart rate increases significantly.
Our immune system takes a hit.
(Psychosomatic Medicine)
And just like a virus … resentment is contagious.
No matter how quietly you might think you’re keeping it …it’s there.
It’s present…and everyone around feels it’s disturbing vibration.
WE BECOME AND EMANATE WHAT WE THINK ABOUT!
Last week, we focused on what resentment does inside of us.
In our brains.
In our bodies.
This week, we’re looking at what it does around us.
Externally.
And through us — until it’s resolved!
To help us see that, I want to share two real letters…written by people who loved someone deeply but were losing that person to unresolved resentment.
“A stone is heavy, sand is weighty,
but a fool’s provocation
is heavier than both.”
Solomon,
King of Israel
1. You’re missed when you’re dancing with resentment!
Most people think that when they don’t speak of their resentments, when they keep them “under wraps” … that no one else knows!
If you’re holding resentments,
please let me speak to you this week.
For your sake, but also for the sake of…
Your marriage…
Your family…
Your friends…
Your business or career.
Your resentment screams.
Loudly.
Not in sound.
But in emotion.
You are absent.
Everyone knows it.
While you think you’re simply protecting everyone from it.
You are not.
And you are missed.
Because resentment has your mind, your heart, your attention!
NO ONE is truly present when you have to filter every thought through intruding thoughts of how life should’ve been.
I’d like to share with you the letter
I had my client’s wife write to him.
The exercise was for HER healing.
Because she was on the receiving end of the resentment.
He wasn’t present.
He was preoccupied.
He was short fused.
He was unpredictable.
And she couldn’t reach him.
I had her write the letter (not for him, or to give to him).
For herself.
For her healing.
So, she could heal and forgive.
I hope reading it will speak to you.
Babe,
I don’t know what to say or do anymore.
I’ve spent years trying to prove my love you.
Trying to have empathy and compassion for your awful first marriage.
When I first met you, you shared hours and hours about the hurts, the disappointments, the loss. I really cared about that and had deep compassion.
The lies, the affairs, the stealing money from your business.
The deception, the misrepresentation of you to your clients and customers. The ultimate abandonment.
I didn’t realize at the time that the fact you shared so many details with so much angst, hurt, and disgust could mean you were holding resentments.
I naively thought that if I loved you faithfully, remained calm and steady, and poured encouragement into you … that it would heal those wounds. I wanted to do that for you.
Early on in our marriage, you began blowing up on me about minor things. Me trying to answer your questions about a minor plumbing problem. Followed by you yelling at me, blocking me from leaving the room, and threatening to divorce me.
Then blaming me for being intense. You asked me the same question three times. I gave the same answer, and on the third time I did say it with a little intensity. Which I shouldn’t have. But threatening divorce?
Now I realize that I was getting the response that you have built up in rehearsing your resentments with your ex-wife.
You’d been divorced from her for over 10 years at that time.
I was receiving the punishment that she deserved. (Not that I think you should go back and punish her). But that’s what resentment does. It comes out as punishment. To the wrong person.
I learned to just deal with it for years.
Until you started doing it to our kids.
Then I began building walls to protect myself.
I went to counseling because I realized that your resentments pouring out on me was causing resentment to build up in me. It was then that I realized that resentment is contagious.
I will NOT pass it on to our kids.
As I’ve begun to heal, I can once again feel compassion for you.
For your resentments from decades ago.
I’m so sorry for my walls. For my resentments that I’m healing and letting go of.
I can’t reach you anymore. I know what an incredible man you are.
Please – would you consider addressing your resentments? I miss you.
I lie in bed at night beside you with your back turned, lonely.
I sit beside you at meals while you stare off into space, lonely.
I work around the house while you’re absorbed in sports, lonely.
I love you. I miss the “us” that we used to be! Please come home to us!
You could read a letter like that and dismiss it as over‑sensitive or emotional.
But relationship research backs it with sobering data.
Drs. John and Julie Gottman have studied thousands of marriages over a 40-year period.
They are the most prolific researchers of relationship issues in the history of marriage and family therapy.
Their research discovered that there’s one overriding predictor of relationship failure: the inability to repair after conflict, usually fueled by long‑term resentment.
In their words: “Contempt is sulfuric acid for love.”
And often the resentment was a build up from previous experiences and relationships.
When resentment takes root, communication enters a threat loop:
· Amygdala hijack: every disagreement feels like danger.
· Cortisol spike: the body goes into fighting, fleeing, or freezing.
· Oxytocin drop: the bonding and connecting hormone disappears.
(Biological Psychology, 2009.)
Then what?
Partners stop reaching for each other.
They protect instead of connecting.
Their love (starved of safety) begins to fade away.
When the wife in the letter above wrote, “I miss the us we used to be,”
she wasn’t just grieving romance — she was grieving neural connection.
Both of their brain’s chemistries for trust, peace, and unity had been hijacked by resentment’s reign of loneliness.
2. Your resentment affects your kids too.
After writing her letter to her husband, my client’s wife had gone to visit her son away at his first year in college.
Originally, they were both planning to go for the visit, but he had been agitated by something and stood at the garage door yelling that he still wasn’t over his resentments about his ex-wife and had stormed away, leaving her to make the trip alone.
Her son was sharing his disappointments with her, and she told him of the exercise she had done for me and suggested it might help him.
Not to send to his dad, but for his sake.
She’d asked him for permission to share his letter with me.
Dear Dad,
I wish you had come with Mom.
I know you have a lot going on with your business. But I had hoped we could go to the game, and you could see my life here.
I’ve spent my whole life wondering what would set you off next.
When you were in a good mood, life couldn’t have been better. But I never knew when you would flip to the Dad who would get huffy and say mean things.
I’m sure it was hard for you to rebuild your business when all of that went down. But it wasn’t ME who ruined your business. Why do you take it out on me?
I appreciate all you’ve one for me. But I feel like I’ve missed out on having a Dad since that happened. Mom says you aren’t mad at me. That you had bad things happen that I don’t know about.
I don’t know what they are, but I do know about them … because they live between us. They are more important to you than I am. Like this weekend. Mom says you were upset and needed some time.
What about me? When will you get that stuff sorted through so that I get my time with you?
I miss the Dad you are when you aren’t lost in that other stuff.
Love,
Your Son
Few things hit harder below the belt than realizing that our unhealed places became the environment our children grew up in (or are growing up in).
Psychological development studies show that kids don’t learn emotional regulation from lectures — they learn it through co‑regulation … watching how parents handle stress and/or distress.
When a parent lives in resentment,
the child’s nervous system duplicates that chronic alarm.
Research done at UCLA found that children exposed to prolonged parental hostilities and resentments have significantly higher baseline cortisol levels well into adulthood (Repetti et al., Psychological Bulletin).
These kids also show increased anxiety and relationship challenges.
In other words — the resentment we rehearse doesn’t end with us.
It becomes our family’s emotional DNA.
Eventually our DNA.
That’s why the adult child’s letter matters so much.
It says what many can’t yet voice: “I love you, but your pain took up the space where our relationship was supposed to grow.”
This is not meant to be a guilt trip.
Just a reality check.
And I hope you will take it that way!
Kids are resilient.
And believe it or not … dad or mom never lose their rightful rank.
Anytime you want your role back it can happen almost instantly.
All it takes is forgiving-humility.
The person with resentment rarely sees it this way.
To them, the reactions feel justified — “I’m just being real.”
But unprocessed pain always spills somewhere,
and often it lands on the people who least deserve it.
So … let’s DO SOMETHING about it!
Together!
3. A call to action from my heart!
(Why I hope you’ll address your resentments … before they steal everything good!)
By the way.
Healing resentment isn’t about being nice.
Or being weak.
It’s about being free.
Let’s look at the science behind releasing. Why it’s important and what it does:
· Research shows that forgiveness therapy reduces blood pressure and cortisol while increasing your mental well-being. (Journal of Behavioral Medicine).
· Brain imaging research shows that choosing empathy activates the ventromedial prefrontal cortex — the region responsible for meaning, self‑reflection, and serenity. (Frontiers in Human Neuroscience)
· Physiological research reveals that forgiveness expands heart‑rate variability — a metric of nervous‑system flexibility, resilience, and peace.
Translation: Letting go literally restores your body’s capacity for joy.
Now let’s address a touchy subject: Humility.
Science has given us the structure for “how” to let go and heal resentments.
But humility is the key to unlock the doorway to the path of healing (any and all) resentments.
[From my AA friend. “Justification to continue doing something that’s destructive (in my case drinking) becomes a mindset, a worldview for yourself. You and your brain join forces – and justification for the insanity of continuing something that brings you nothing in return, seems normal and something to protect and be.”]
Why is humility a touchy subject?
Because many see it as an admission of worthlessness.
Or weakness.
When truly … it’s the path to truth … and that path makes us FREE!
It’s the courage to stand before God (or your higher power),
as well as the people you love.
And to tell the truth in words from a place of strength and courage.
With…
No excuses…
No justification…
No defensiveness.
“What I’ve been carrying has hurt you. And it’s time to lay it down!”
AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) calls humility the foundation of lasting sobriety.
“We saw that pride, leading to self‑justification, was the root of most of our troubles.” (Twelve Steps & Twelve Traditions.)
Humility breaks the neural pride loop — the brain’s compulsion to defend instead of healing.
Defensiveness closes all doors to healing.
And therefore, we remain imprisoned!
Humility shifts the nervous system from defensiveness, victimhood, and what others did to me … to openness.
It shifts us from groaning to growing.
May I speak from my heart to your heart?
Your spouse needs your softness back.
Your children need your calm presence more than your perfection.
Your business, your creativity, and your purpose all require the energy you’ve been spending on rehearsing and reliving your past.
Humility isn’t losing face…it’s gaining freedom to live in the moment.
And going from zero to hero in just that one statement: “What I’ve been carrying has hurt you. And it’s time to lay it down!”
Not only does that set you free … but everyone you love feels like a load has been lifted too.
*****
“What if you decided that being right was less important than being free?
What if humility became the courage that saves your marriage.
Redeems your family.
Restores your peace of mind?”
Next week, we’ll walk the path of how — the specific, research‑backed and faith‑anchored practices that’ll lead your mind, body, and spirit to finally let those anchors of resentment go.
Until then, will you ponder your response to this one question…
“What would my life look like if I didn’t ever rehearse the unfortunate life events again and feel the feelings that come along with it?”
Because that freedom…
is how you were created to live!
And that sense of greatness…
is what you were created for!
“Good sense makes one slow to anger,
and it is to their glory to overlook an offense.”
Solomon
King of Israel