In this solo spoken‑word episode, Dallas Bragg expands on an excerpt from his earlier interview with Josh about holding onto resentment. He frames the discussion within his broader concept of “self‑actualized recovery,” which he defines as living an emotionally sober life—a state he attributes to Bill W. and sees as the goal after completing the 12‑step program. Bragg explains that resentment is not a single emotion but a conglomerate of feelings (anger, surprise, disgust, fear, etc.) that arise when we perceive unfair treatment and lose trust. He identifies the primary driver of resentment as an unwillingness to forgive, often rooted in a fear of endorsing the offender’s behavior. Bragg then outlines a multi‑step process for releasing resentment: deep self‑introspection to uncover personal guilt or unprocessed trauma; acceptance of the situation without endorsement; recognizing rumination and moving from powerlessness to empowerment by taking responsibility; locating the felt emotion in the body, tracing it back to earlier life events, and healing the underlying belief; and finally, reframing the experience with three reflective questions (“How could this be the best thing that’s ever happened to me?” etc.). Throughout, he emphasizes that emotional sobriety—being able to let go of resentment—signals a mature, emotionally regulated state essential for lasting sobriety. He references additional resources (blog posts, an 8‑step guide) available in the show notes.
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All right, if you're watching, you can see I have these brand new glasses that make my eyes look about twice as big as they are. Long story, but I can't see without them. And I have notes again for your benefit. But, you know, we're going to talk about an extract from the episode Holding On to Resentment because it came to me when I was listening to Josh, and he has every right. To harbor resentment toward his mother. And based on the story he told on this podcast, I resent her a little bit. But you know what? He doesn't. He's arrived at a point of letting go and the state of being resentful and arriving at acceptance. And so I want to highlight this as a means of pointing out what I talk about on my blog a lot, which is self-actualized recovery. And if you want to know what I mean by that in detail, Read some of my blog posts. The link will be in the show notes. What self-actualized recovery is basically is living in an emotional sober life. Emotional sobriety is not something that I think we talk about enough in the recovery community, or almost at all. This is a term that was coined by Bill W himself. Emotional sobriety, this is my opinion, is what I felt like. I feel like he wanted us to have after the 12 steps are completed. Now, yes, you may have to go through the 12 steps a couple of times, whatever. Emotional sobriety is the state of being in actual recovery beyond needing a meeting or calling a sponsor when you feel activated or triggered or a craving. This is an elevated state of being where you are living your fullest potential day by day by day, and it can be equated to being emotionally mature or emotionally intelligent. One of the best ways I think, or one of the best signs that we are in an emotional sober state, is when that we can Let go of resentment. So let's talk about this for a minute. Resentment is not an emotion, right? It's a state of being that is a conglomeration of emotions. So something happened to us, in our opinion, we were treated unfairly. So the emotions around that situation of being treated unfairly could be anger, An appalling nature of surprise, disgust, you know, fear of what might happen next. All these emotions come into play. And so when someone has done something to cause you to be in a state of resentment, you feel you've been treated unfairly and you have lost trust in them or lost trust in others like them. Right? So you become distrustful. But I want to say that, first of all, deep emotional reactions that seem exaggerated, right? So let's say that you're reacting to a boss who treated you unfairly, a spouse or a partner or something like that. If you are having a really deep exaggerated response or reaction to something that maybe not— it's not in correlation to what happened. Like it's exaggerated response to being somebody pulling out in front of you in traffic. That's such a go-to example. But when your response is extremely exaggerated to something that is Not worth that, that type of response or that deep visceral reaction. There is something else going on here beyond what's in front of you. So that we're going to talk about that more in a minute. So what is causing you to hold on to resentment? More often than not, this is the unwillingness to forgive. This unwillingness to forgive. keeps you in this buffered resentful state. So you may— the natural tendency may be to withhold forgiveness from someone because that means if you did forgive them, that you are somehow endorsing their behavior, or that you have to— you have the need to know that you will stand up for being Or that forgiveness may give the subtle message that you are okay with being mistreated, and somehow resentment makes you the good person and makes the other the bad person. So if you've been with me long enough, you'll know what I feel, and I think that. Will help us in this situation is to understand that there's no place where I end and you begin. So resentment creates a separation between me and that person when really we're all one. If we truly believe that we are all one and unified as the same, then there is no other person to be Upset about. And, and there is no good person, there is no bad person. And then sometimes we get into this, you owe me, or you have to make this up to me, because somebody cheated on you or whatever. And that leverages you, right? This is a guarantee, this is a promise that you're going to get to be treated fairly by them no matter what, which becomes emotional bribery. So here are some ways on a highly emotionally mature person And an emotionally sober way to release resentment. So let's talk about this. Here's the first way. Many times we're making this a big deal, right? What someone did, and we're holding on to the resentment. And what this is doing is deflecting what we are really feeling toward ourselves. Now, this is some deep introspection that is required here. So ask yourself, Does this circumstance somehow point towards something that I feel guilty about, or that I haven't forgiven myself about or over? Right? Because you can't forgive someone. You can only forgive someone else as much as you can forgive yourself. What is what could be the underlying message here that is making you feel guilty? What are you not facing? What are your blind spots? What are the shadow aspects of you in this situation? So if you're drawing. Journaling about this, or if you're dissecting this and really trying to objectively see this situation differently, there's a first question for you. The next is to accept. Acceptance. So acceptance does not mean you're endorsing the behavior. Acceptance doesn't mean that you like what happened. But acceptance is a state of being also where you ask yourself, Is it worth being in this state anymore? What is this doing to me physically, mentally, and spiritually? And if I did accept it for what it is, what would that mean? What would it mean? What does it mean if I were to accept this situation? This happened. It is what it is. It's in this container. What would it mean if I just said, okay, I accept this as it is? Doesn't mean that I am happy about it. Doesn't mean that I like it, but I am accepting it. There's there's a a relief that comes into play. There's a diffusion, a deflation that comes by accepting what it is, what it is, right? I have notes and I'm still stumbling. I hope you're hanging on to this. So. The next step in this, in my notes, is resentment is— when you're in resentment, what comes with it many times is, and this is common with addicts, rumination. So to get out of a ruminating state, you have to get into an empowered state. Because rumination, you're letting your thoughts get out of control. You can't stop thinking about it. This gets you in a state of— Powerlessness. Helplessness and disempowerment because you feel like you've been victimized, right? And you may have, but you feel like a victim. You feel like you're out of— this is out of your control and you're feeling all this rage. So to find empowerment, you take responsibility, right? This is where, again, this is a really counterintuitive but emotionally sober way To look at this. Did I subconsciously bring this about? Was it my beliefs about myself? Was it the perception I have on the world? Was it my past trauma, which we'll talk about next? What about this could I have subconsciously caused? And there's something about taking responsibility and taking some ownership in maybe this part of this was me that empowers you. Immediately empowers you, immediately takes any kind of blame off anyone, and you rise above the situation. Now, if we were to think about this in Josh's— I haven't been comparing it to Josh's state. It would be really hard for Josh to say, how did I cause this? Right? How did I cause my mom to introduce me to heroin at age 8 and physically abuse me? You know, I didn't say any of these questions were going to be easy. Um, and in that, and when it's a child involved, most often that he can't, um, he wouldn't be able to take credit or responsibility or accountability for those things, obviously. But in a general sense, from what we're talking about, um, if we can look at it Objectively, from a higher point of view, there could be, and most often are, ways that we can hold ourselves responsible. So the next step is, and this is the most important for me, if you get anything out of this, this is the most important thing. And this frames the whole process, to be real, to be honest with you, is you get a hold of the emotion that you're feeling. in this resentment state or emotions. You feel that. And by the way, I have a quick guide for this. I have an 8-step quick guide for overcoming limiting beliefs that will help walk you through this. I'll put the link in the show notes as well. The whole process. So you get ahold of the emotion that you're feeling, and then you bring it up into your body. And then you close your eyes and you ask yourself, when else have I felt this same exact emotion in my life? Basically, you're asking yourself, yourself, when have I been treated unfairly and unjustly just like this in my life? And you're going to come up with, I guarantee you're going to, something will come up, either one event, two events, a series of events that were just like this. They brought up the same emotion. You were treated unjustly early in your life that caused a A belief about you and your life that I will be treated unjustly because I am not enough. I will be betrayed because I am not enough. This happened early on. And so what this means is, this is an indication that what you're holding on to here, what you're triggered by, is not the person in front of you. You're not reacting to the situation in the current state. In your current timeline, you're reacting to something that happened earlier in your life. The nervous system does not understand linear time. It does not classify by time. It classifies by emotion. So when you— this person in front of you, a partner or whatever, when they did something to treat you unfairly, you're feeling that same emotion you felt maybe when you're 5. The nervous system doesn't know the difference. The nervous system only— they— it thinks you're still 5. It sees that same emotion and it's saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, there's something here to take care of. There's something here to heal. There's something that needs your attention. Your nervous system, the universe, whatever you want to say, is always out for your good. It has your back. It's always pushing you towards self-actualization, reaching your full potential. To reach your full potential, you are— You will process and heal and fix the limiting beliefs, overwrite the limiting beliefs that you have, the unprocessed emotions, the unprocessed trauma that has happened sometime before. So what that does is it— again, you're not letting this person off the hook, but you are seeing the situation from a higher level to say, oh, maybe there's something more to this. Maybe there's something I haven't processed from what mom did to me or dad did to me or kids at school or whatever. There's something under there that needs your attention, and once you get in there, shine light on it, you take power away from it. Because right now it's a shadow part. This is something you've forgotten about. You're not aware of. You didn't know that. Oh, this is why in every relationship I'm cheated on. It's because you have a belief you're going to be cheated on, right? You have a belief that you're going to be. Unfairly treated. That might be too woo-woo for some of you. I don't care. But try it. Before you say it's too woo-woo or out there, try it. My favorite question, and you've heard me say this before, I know. How could this have been the best thing that's ever happened to me? What am I supposed to learn from this? And how can I see this situation differently? Those 3 questions, if you can implement them, you are going to blow this whole situation apart. You're going to diffuse the power it has over you. You're going to then be empowered to see the healing that's there in front of you. And you know what? You might actually thank that person. You might actually thank that person for being a catalyst the universe used to make you better, to improve your life, to— To emotionally get you to a state where you're emotionally regulated. Everything is a highly individualized curriculum for all of us. They were meant to trigger you. You were meant to be triggered by them. And when you take it that way, and when you see it that way, you understand that nothing in life is personal. That person didn't personally Didn't— didn't— that person didn't personally treat you unfairly. You're seeing it in a certain way, in a certain light. And that emotion, that state of being, all those emotions are there to say, hey, this— hey, excuse me, this is something you haven't dealt with. This is something that will make you happier. This was something that will give you more peace and help you see the world through different lens. So I hope that helps. I hope that helps. And how does this deal with— do with— what does this have to do with sobriety? Everything. Everything. This has everything to do with sobriety. So hope that helps, guys. I hope you enjoyed it, and I will see you next week.
