Posted by RH on August 26, 2004, at 22:23:43
In reply to Re: Very triggering memories and questions-antigua, posted by Shadowplayers721 on August 25, 2004, at 17:16:45
AuntieMell and Shadowplayers721 and all:
Resentment is the emotion whose energy causes us to hold onto memories. For instance, AuntieMel, a few posts above this one you mentioned that you tend to internalize or hold in the resentment of small slights and such, then it builds up and you "release". That is the more or less normal response to enduring the resentment. The key is to not resent in the first place.
Same is true for Shadowplayer721. Yes, it's easy for me to say you have to stop resenting your tormentor. But in the end, there is no other way out. I am sure of this. It's sometimes called letting it go.
All of the negative emotions are entered or initally set up via resentment. This is even true of say, a PTSD resulting from seeing a gruesomely mangled body after a car crash, when you were perhaps only a bystander and played no role in the accident. It is the resentment of the sight and the episode in general that fixes the PTSD in place. Try to think of one negative emotional experience of any kind that does not first start with resentment, even if the resentment only lasts for 5 seconds and then morphs into something else, like fear or anger, etc.
See even when you hear a bump in the night, and you think there may be an intruder in your home, it is resentment of the violation of the home that is in play, along with the fear. So lets say there was a burglar and he heard your footsteps and ran away. Once you know his is gone, the fear subsides, but the resentment will usually persist - "How dare he break into my house" or "what is this world coming to?".
When a child is molested by an adult, that feeling of violation is a resentment, and when, as a child, you are afraid to "tell" on the adult molester, that too causes resentment -- of self.
Usually to get rid of resentment you have to forgive. But it doesn't have to be a kind of personal forgiveness to the perpetrator (which works, too), but a larger more universal forgiveness of understanding how things are and accepting them.
That is why Jesus the psychologist said "Forgive them, for they know not what they do."
And this is the basis of the the age old saying "Forgive and forget".
Forgetting is crucial to happiness.
I am going to post a new thread with one of my favorite essays on resentment (not one I wrote, found it elsehwere on the internet)
Best wishes,
RH
poster:RH
thread:379276
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20040820/msgs/382736.html