Living and Loving After Betrayal: How to Heal From Emotional Abuse, Deceit, Infidelity, and Chronic Resentment by Steven Stosny

Author:Steven Stosny [Stosny, Steven]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781608827541| 1608827526
Publisher: New Harbinger Publications
Published: 2013-07-22T04:00:00+00:00

The Resentment Experience: More Than a Feeling

Describing what resentment feels like is difficult, because it builds mostly under the radar—by the time you know you’re resentful, it’s in a highly advanced stage. People often give vague descriptions such as “I’m in a sour mood,” or “I’m just irritable.” If you ask how they feel, they’ll likely talk about other people cheating, lying, manipulating, or abusing them. At the same time, they will describe resentful others as having “a chip on their shoulders.”

The experience of resentment is hard to pinpoint because it’s really more of a mood than a discrete feeling. Emotions occur like waves that rise and fall, usually within a few minutes, while moods are like a steady current flowing beneath the surface of consciousness, always there, but rarely perceptible without careful self-reflection. This is an important distinction, because we tend to deal with resentment by trying to change how we feel, when the problem is the mood supporting the feelings. A change of feelings does little to alter moods. For example, if your underlying mood is positive, you are most likely feeling something like interest, enjoyment, compassion, or love. These emotions motivate behaviors that are caring, playful, romantic, supportive, cooperative, analytical, or creative. With this kind of behavioral reinforcement, a few negative feelings here and there, caused by disappointment, loss, or even transient thoughts of the betrayal, are not likely to change your mood. That’s why, when you’re in a good mood, things that might ordinarily hurt or offend you just roll off your back. But if your underlying mood is resentful, it’s most likely causing visible waves of anger, anxiety, jealousy, or envy, which motivate behavior that is controlling, dominating, impulsive, possessive, confrontational, vindictive, dismissive, withdrawing, or rejecting. With this kind of behavioral reinforcement, a few positive feelings here and there will do little to alter your mood. For these reasons, “sorting through your feelings” (commonly suggested by self-help sources) will not relieve resentment for very long. But replacing its defensive function with more viable, growth-oriented protections, like those described in this chapter, will make resentment and the self-harm it causes mere relics of the past.

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