Resentments
I want to talk about resentments.
What exactly is a resentment? According to the Great and All-Knowing Google, a resentment is, “a bitter indignation at having been treated unfairly.” Google uses the example sentence, “He had a resentment about being demoted at work.”
Resentments are a major topic in a lot of my recovery support groups. People and literature have discussed how resentments feed our addictions. Resentments can be of people, institutions, and ideologies.
When I had to dig deep into my resentments, I would say 95% of it were people that I resented - mostly of family, friends, work colleagues and supervisors. A lot of people had “done wrong” to me, and “You would drink too, if you had the same problems I had.” I had a few institutions and ideologies as well - the fertility industry being an institution and homophobia being an ideology for example.
There were the smaller resentments - I was angry at a woman, because she as prettier than me (literally). I was angry at my husband’s cousin, because he didn’t contribute to paying for Taco Bell that night we had everybody over (yes, really). There were also the big resentments - my parents’ deception of how my brother and I were conceived, the sexual abuse I experienced in high school by an ex-boyfriend, the mistreatment I received from my previous management team at work, etc.
In addition to resentments, recovery support groups discuss what our part is in the resentment. For example, yes I was sexually abused by my high school boyfriend; however, I was also physically abusive toward him. We were a terrible match for each other, both experiencing mental health issues and trauma unbeknownst to us. Another example of my part is there was one Christmas Eve where my mother was so upset with my brother for not getting her a Christmas present, that she took my gift to her (a bracelet), threw it as hard as she could onto the glass table in our family room, and retreated into her bedroom for the remainder of the night. The next day, she wore the bracelet and showed it off to her entire family. “Look what Tori got me for Christmas!” I ended up getting blackout drunk for the first time that Christmas. Bad decision on my part; however, I had the mentality of, “You would drink too, if you saw what happened to us last night.” Excuses…
To circle back to the different kinds of resentments, I even have resentments that I had no idea what my part was in any of it!
I recently switched recovery mentors a couple weeks ago. This new mentor is having me dig deeper into my resentments and fears primarily with my parents. So, I started off with my mother - the person I resent the most. I wrote out a page and a half of resentments I have toward her. After writing and reading out all of these resentments toward my mom to my new mentor, I said to her, “I just don’t know what my fucking part is! Was this abuse or not?”
Resentments that I had come up were some of the following:
I am resentful toward my mom, because she stopped attending my soccer games for several months when my teammates’ parents found out I was suicidal and cutting myself.
I am resentful toward my mom, because she never took me to see a gynecologist when I was 16-years-old after I told her I was having sex with my then-boyfriend. It was five years later that I finally went to my first appointment.
I am resentful toward my mom, because there was one Mothers’ Day where I forgot it when I was a child. I ended up making her a card in the middle of the day. She looked at me and said, “This means nothing to me,” and threw the card into the trash.
There are obviously more and darker resentments that I have toward her, but these are a few. My new mentor is a social worker by trade and said, “This is emotional abuse and some neglect; however, how you react to all of this information now is your part.”
Huh, so how I react and behave having all of this information now is my part in things? It was like a light switch went off in my brain. I can handle that, I thought to myself. I do not have to react the same way I always had in the past. It clearly hadn’t work despite the feelings of comfort. Pain can be comfortable when it’s what you know, my mentor recently told me. The comfort to numb out from the pain starting at 13-years-old. I self-harmed, I drank, I smoked pot, I drank some more, I took pills, I drank a little bit more, I had an eating disorder, and surprise… I drank harder and fiercer.
I started writing out my resentments toward my father too. While I didn’t write an entire novel on him, these resentments appear to be darker. I do have a few of those with my mother as well, those that still hit too close to home. Those that I only feel comfortable sharing with my husband, certain loved ones, my mentor, and my therapist. Those that I don’t feel ready to broadcast out to the Internet netherworld.
My mentor had me write out my own definitions to the following words: expectations, resentments, acceptance, and forgiveness. I like to refer to these four words as the “Stages of Resentments” like Elizabeth Kubler-Ross invented the five stages of grief. Additionally, one can move into a different stage at any time, and the process isn’t linear. So, how do these four words apply to resentments as a whole?
Expectations: People have a tendency to expect people to behave, act, or feel a certain way. We also want institutions and ideologies to fit our narrative. These are expectations.
Resentments: I have heard in a support group meeting once that, “Expectations are resentments waiting to happen.” I loved hearing this! Resentments are exactly that - expectations that go haywire and result in us feeling like we were treated unfairly.
Acceptance: My mentor recently said this to me about acceptance. “You don’t have like the situation, Tori, and still have acceptance.” Uhh… what? Seriously? Why hadn’t I thought about this before? Acceptance is acknowledging that a specific situation for what it is, whether you like the outcome or not.
Forgiveness: Okay, I’ll be honest. I struggled with my own definition for this one. Partly because I am not quite at this plane of existence yet. For me, forgiveness is having compassion for that situation. We learn in recovery that non-alcoholics/addicts are just as sick as us, just in a different way. When we learn to have self-compassion for ourselves, we can turn that around and have compassion for others.
I think I am currently in the limbo phase of resentments teetering onto acceptance. I think it is why I have placed such an emphasis on combing through them. I want a better understanding as to why I think, feel, and see life in this hue. To understand is a way to heal. That is what we do when we are in recovery - we are trying to heal, both from the destruction we have made to ourselves, to others, and to what others have done to us.
Feel free to comment below about some of your own resentments and how you have dealt with them in the past.
This is such a good piece. Resentments keep us so stuck in the negative. When I first got sober I wrote down all my resentments and then everything bad I did and burned it. I didn't want to live in the past anymore and those people that I resented so much, like my mother, I simply do not speak to anymore because she is so toxic in my life.
This is super helpful today. Thank you.