A therapist helps someone trace their resentment about being the primary dog caretaker to something softer underneath: embarrassment at their own neediness. Naming that vulnerability and asking for shared responsibility becomes the path to relief.
Resentment has shown up in my life in a lot of different places and my response to it is anger and nastiness, meanness. And I would like to believe, I do believe that there's a vulnerable place in me that where the resentment is showing an emotion that feels less harsh than the way that I'm feeling it and displaying it. And I'd like to believe that I can show that to myself and others. But how do we get to that underlying vulnerability?
So if you gave an example of a time when you were resentful, that would be really helpful to isolate the vulnerability.
We just got a new dog, my husband and I, and I'm home a lot right now and I'm home with the dog and he's at school and he's working and my time is plentiful and his is limited. And I feel resentful of being the primary caretaker of our dog. And I knew going into this that that would be the case and I was fine with it. And now that we're here, I feel resentful and I don't feel fair for being resentful.
And so if you really express the resentment to him, just as a starter, what would you say? Even if it's absurd, I mean, let it be absurd because in this situation it might be completely absurd because you knew what you were getting into.
Mm, I knew what I was getting into and I wanted it, I still want it.
Right.
But I. But this feeling of resentment is there, Right. And if I just said, you know, the first thing that came to my mind, it would be, you're not, you're not holding your end of the bargain, right? Uh huh.
Keep going.
And you're not, you're not putting in 50. 50. And this is something that we decided to do together and I'm doing 90 and you're doing 10. And is this what it's going to be for the rest of our lives?
Right. Okay, now what's the laughter?
The laughter is, I know it's ridiculous and I know that it's absurd and that it's not practical or logical.
So in this situation it's very subtle. What I sense in the laughter is a certain kind of embarrassment, that you're embarrassed that you're resentful because you knew you agreed to it. And if you go into the embarrassment, the embarrassment is a softer emotion. And also the absurdity, the humor is a softer emotional state as well. And if you give yourself great permission to express the resentment, then you can get in touch with the laughter and the absurdity and the embarrassment. And then what you can say is, you know what? I know this is absurd because I'm the one with free time and it can't be 50 50. And this is a self centered part of me.
Absolutely.
That I don't want to judge, which you have a tendency to judge. What I want to do is see it more clearly as at times unreasonable and get the joke. And that giggle is a healing giggle, that embarrassment is a healing embarrassment. Because the real need in this situation, because we have the defense, which is the resentment, we have the embarrassment and the absurdity as the softer emotion, more vulnerable underneath. And the real need actually in this situation is for you to take responsibility for an agreement that the two of you made, not for him to change. Now, let's say it was a different situation where you had agreed to 50, 50, he had 50% of the time and he wasn't taking responsibility. Then the need would be, hey, we agreed to this, let's be fair. But in this case, the deepest need is, okay, Scott, I want to admit this is a self centered part of me that's out of control in this moment. I want to come to you humbly and admit my embarrassment and my absurdity. And in facing that, I feel cleansed.
I like that.
