Working Through Resentments

I did it! Alright, I got a suction thing to put on my windshield so that it's not nearly as dangerous when I'm driving, my phone's not gonna fall anywhere, and I can just talk freely while driving. So this is Working Through Resentments Part 2. In Part 1, I talked a lot about how basically we need to look at our part. We need to identify why we're being so emotionally triggered by the person that we're resentful of, because seldom does it have to do with the person that's right in front of us. And what I mean is that oftentimes when we experience an emotion that's about a 5 or above on a scale of 1 to 10, that emotion has more to do with an unhealed wound that this experience is triggering than it has to do with the experience itself. So for example, if I am in a grocery store— and I'm going to use a trivial example here— if I'm in a grocery store and someone is really condescending to me and I feel really resentful at that person, it has less to do with that person who I have no ties with and I don't know, than it has to do with what in me that gets so easily triggered with condescension or anything that's remotely patronizing. And that's my own issue. Quite a while ago, I took a public speaking training. It was like a Dale Carnegie public speaking training. You know what? No, I'm thinking of the wrong training. Ah, I took a de-escalating, de-escalating crisis with patients or something like that. It was some kind of training like that. Like that. And they talked about the importance of the clinician identifying their own emotional triggers. And you may be asking yourself, "Okay, I'm supposed to be working on resentments, so what does figuring out my emotional triggers have anything to do with that?" The reality is it has everything to do with that. And I say this because I am so much more likely to get resentful at someone who's triggering an unhealed emotional experience in me. So it's interesting because, let's say, being at a 12-step meeting, the speaker can just trigger so much resentment in me, and the person next to me doesn't feel any kind of resentment at all. Why is that? Well, it has to do with this unhealed wound. So in working through resentments, the focus needs to be so much less on the person we resent and so much more on our unhealed emotional triggers and/or what is it in us that is continuously signing up for this exchange. So when you're thinking about resentments, you have to first look at the role that this person that you resent plays in your life. Now, if it's a family member, we may tell ourselves the fallacy of I need to be in their lives because they're my family member. And I talked about this a little bit in the last video, but that's just not true. There is nothing that says— and even if it did say it, all people have their opinions, including me— that we need to show up for our family. The reality is that, family or not, if someone is toxic and it's an enmesh dynamic or it's super codependent and there's no communicating because they're just unable to really meet me at the level of my needs and I'm consistently trying to meet them at the level of their needs, I'm allowed to detach with love. I am allowed to pull away to set boundaries, to communicate those boundaries, or to just slowly pull away and detach nonverbally. That's up to me. I think one thing that we forget often is that as human beings, we have more autonomy than we think we do. And so in identifying our resentments, first and foremost, what role does that person play in your life? And secondly, what is it in me that is continuously signing up for this relationship with them? Um, if it's a friendship, is it fear that I'll be talked about and gossiped? Okay, so that's the core issue, and I need to work through my self-centered fear, right? I need to work through sometimes sometimes the paralyzing discomfort of realizing, "If I set a boundary, someone's not gonna like me. If I set a boundary, there may be people that gossip about me," etc. So we need to identify the role. We need to identify what it is in us that's blocking us from taking any kind of action with our resentment, or we need to look at opportunities for acceptance, leveling our expectations, and meeting that person where they're at. I said this in the last video, but almost all of my resentments stem from a person acting a way that I personally think is not right. So I'm inadvertently projecting what I think to be right and wrong onto others. And so that's my problem. That is no one else's problem. And then we find all these quotes that are kind of corny and cliché, but they're also true, that, you know, having a resentment is like drinking poison but expecting the other person to die, or having a resentment is like holding a hot coal and expecting the other person to get burnt. The reality is I can live my life in resentment and it's not going to affect anyone except me and the people that I choose to surround myself with because they're going to have to deal with my toxicity, my misery, and my negativity. So this is super vague and all-encompassing because we all have different kinds of resentments, but I guess kind of the moral of this story, the plot synopsis would be identify what it is in you that's getting so triggered by this person or by this experience because that's where the real work can begin, not in just changing everything outside of you because I can bring myself anywhere on this planet and I'm bringing myself with me. Which means I'm still gonna get resentful at people acting a way that I wouldn't or that I don't think is right. And that's my problem and no one else's. And what I have found is that if I assume that people are doing the best they can with what they have, my quality of life is infinitely better. I believe Brené Brown says that about her husband. She says, "My husband Steve just assumes that everyone's doing the best they can, and he gives them the benefit of the doubt, not because it helps them in any capacity, but because it helps him to live a balanced, wholehearted life, and I try to subscribe to that, and I fall short often, but essentially the only person that can work through my resentments is me. So rather than trying to change everything outside of me, why don't I focus a little bit more on what's in my control? Okay, I don't know how the sound is going to be on this, but hopefully it was good. Have a great day, bye!