The Transformative Potential of Resentment

There's a saying about resentment that goes something like resentment is like drinking a poisonous substance and expecting the other person to die from it.

It's anger and hurt wrapped up in a frustration that our mind projects onto others but an energy we attack ourselves with. It's painful living inside the trance of resentment, a trance we get so used to that we don't even realize how much we are punishing ourselves and attacking life on a very deep, subconscious level.

Beneath resentment is often trauma or grief over needs that were never met.

Trauma means disconnection. It is a broken form of trust in life, love, others and in our ability to meet our innermost emotional and spiritual needs.

Where we have resentment, there is an inner wounded one that didn't get needs met, has a hurt that was never expressed/acknowledged, or there is simply grief over what never was. These kinds of disappointments are real and not to be glossed over.

In order to truly individuate into our true sovereign adulthood and move into our highest potential, we must soothe the inflammation of resentment through watering it with our tears of grief.

Grief is what heals us.
It is also love.

It's perfectly okay to grieve over disappointments, the hurts that transpired or what never was...not having been parented the way we should have been or needed...not feeling met or seen or understood....for having our boundaries violated...whatever it was. We are allowed to grieve what we have survived.

Unmetabolized pain turns into resentment and depression. We blast others in our minds with our feelings or turn it against ourselves. We become a victim of our own pain. So, too process our grief in order to transmute our trauma back into love is not being a victim, it is being a loving mother to oneself.

Acknowledging, grieving and honoring past hardship and what was never received, what never was or allowing the deep body to tell its truth actually frees us from the bondage of resentment. Then, we can get on to the business of forgiveness. Then, we are free to learn how to trust in love and life and our own hearts again.

Our resentment holds the seeds of our liberation.