By Dr. Dennis Merritt Jones
Holding On To Resentment Only Holds You Hostage
“You can’t have a harmonious relationship and hold on to your resentment, too. You can’t hold on to your anger and bitterness and still have a healthy heart and a settled stomach.” ~ Eric Butterworth
Have you noticed? Lately, there seems to be a LOT of toxic emotional energy floating through people’s minds and hearts. To deal with the negative energy of anger and resentment is a skill most people are still working at getting a handle on, myself included. Medical studies prove that long-held anger and resentment is damaging to our physical and emotional well-being.
The bottom line is, the energy of resentment eats away at our minds, our bodies, and the body of our relationships. Given this knowledge, why would anyone want to hold on to resentment, anger, and bitterness?
Someone once said holding resentment toward another person is like drinking arsenic and hoping the person you are resenting dies. Buddha put it another way: “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal intending to throw it at someone else. You are the one who gets burned.” This helps put it into perspective, doesn’t it? “Re-sent-ment” is re-sent anger. It is the mental and emotional act of resending toxic and negative energy through our own minds and bodies.
This is not to diminish the fact that many of us may have legitimate reasons to be angry towards another person. Sometimes people do thoughtless and even cruel things to each other. However, stop and think about it: Does holding onto resentment serve YOU in a positive, life affirming way? Most likely, the answer is no. Most times, the person or people we hold in resentment don’t even know or care…or worse yet, some of them are already in the grave, but we are still allowing them to hold us hostage to the past. Isn’t it time to set ourselves free?
I have discovered that communication is always the healing balm for relationship issues and forgiveness sets us free. It’s important to remember that forgiving doesn’t mean we are condoning the actions that evoked our anger—it means we will set ourselves free from the past by not “resending” the toxins of resentment through our mind and body in the future. Proactive, clear, authentic, transparent communication and forgiveness will set us free from the energy of resentment, anger and bondage to the past.
Consider this as a Mindfulness Practice:
Make a list of anyone you may hold in resentment. (This could include yourself.) If you are uncertain, go within and ask your wisdom-Self to reveal where there may be bitterness in your heart.
Then, commit to communicate with each person in the way. Call them, write them a letter, email them or go and to see them. If they are no longer alive, write a letter and then, in a moment of silence and peace, burn the letter, releasing the resentment as you bury the ashes. What can make the process easier is remembering that we forgive others for ourselves, not them. Holding resentment only holds you hostage.
Set yourself free today. Why? Because you love yourself too much to drink arsenic or hold on to hot coals, yes?