"We are all flawed, all imperfect—and we all make mistakes. Forgiveness enables us to release ourselves and others from our pain and fears, to grow closer, and to continue on together."
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Episode 240 -- September 29, 2022
From Resentment to Forgiveness: Learning to Let Go
In recovery it can seem like we're always the person who needs forgiveness. It's true that we have made our fair share of mistakes while we were in the throes of our addiction. Our road to recovery involves making amends for the harm we've caused others. Even as we focus on asking for forgiveness from these people, however, we must remember to forgive ourselves as well. Whatever the situation and outcome, we can be gentle and offer ourselves grace.
In Finding your Moral Compass: Transformative Principles to Guide You in Recovery and Life, Craig Nakken offers forty-one universal principles, paired as positive and negative counterparts, that guide behavior. We can use these tools to make life decisions in the pursuit of good, show empathy, be of service to others, and make the choice to stop being an agent of harm.
In the following excerpt, we see the emotional toll of holding on to resentment compared alongside the freedom that comes with allowing ourselves to forgive. We also hear a personal story that can help us learn how to acknowledge and move past our resentment. When we forgive, we make room for growth and connection, and find a kinder rhythm in our hearts
This excerpt has been edited for brevity.
Resentment
Resentment means "to feel again"—and sometimes, again and again and again. When we feel wronged, we may seek refuge in resentment, but resentment never actually gives us sanctuary or peace; instead, it destroys us from the inside out. In fact, resentment is so dangerous that some people say, "Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die."
When we feel wronged or put down or like we've had to submit to the power of another, we may replay a mental tape of what happened, over and over, noticing all the wrongs of the other yet seeing only our own rightness and innocence. But the funny thing about resentment is that, while we might feel temporarily vindicated or superior or righteous, we don't actually feel better. In fact, we feel worse, because we've trapped ourselves in a bubble of anger and negativity.
The only antidote to resentment is to step away from it. This means letting go of our rightness and the other person's wrongness, and letting go of the past in favor of the present. It's all too easy to become possessed by resentments. They can spread like cancer, breeding more resentment. They keep us from healing old emotional wounds. They also keep us stuck in the past (even if the past is just minutes ago) and in our own distorted memories. They pull us down into our reptilian brain.
People in recovery programs are often told that if they have resentment, they should pray for whomever they resent for thirty to ninety days. Prayer is a neocortex activity, so whenever we pray for someone, we help move our energy connected to that person from our reptilian brain to our neocortex. That energy can now be directed toward solutions rather than resentment.
Underneath resentment lies a hardened mixture of fear, sadness, and a sense of powerlessness. In his classic book The Spirituality of Imperfection: Storytelling and the Journey to Wholeness, Ernest Kurtz sums up the dangers of resentment beautifully: "Resentment is the refusal, out of fear, to cross the bridge of sadness and let ourselves back into the impermanent world of relationship. Anger as resentment refuses relationship, slashing at everything and everyone that comes close. But our pain can be healed only by some kind of closeness, some kind of connection with others. Sadness opens us to the need for unity and community."
Forgiveness
Forgiveness allows us to end resentment. It is a wholehearted acceptance that the past can't be changed.
Forgiveness comes in different forms. Sometimes we grant forgiveness; other times we receive it. In either case, however, forgiveness is a release, a liberation of energies. It creates healing for both the person being forgiven and the person doing the forgiving.
Forgiveness isn't only something we grant to others. When we have hurt someone else, we need to make amends and restitution, but we also need to forgive ourselves, whether or not others forgive us. But self-forgiveness only comes from a true willingness to change our actions and attitudes.
We forgive the past by not continually repeating the past. Forgiveness comes from learning the lessons we need to learn in order to end this repetition. In this way, forgiveness is often the last part of healing an old wound.
We are all flawed, all imperfect—and we all make mistakes. Forgiveness enables us to release ourselves and others from our pain and fears, to grow closer, and to continue on together. This is why forgiveness is such an important and powerful positive Spiritual Principle—because it preserves relationships.
When we forgive either others or ourselves, we rise above instinctual limitations. For a time—sometimes just moments, sometimes longer—we experience peace, serenity, and release. We let go of self-centeredness and ego, two key ingredients of resentment. As a result, new opportunities for growth and connection appear, and our minds and hearts are reset to a gentler, kinder rhythm.
Mikhail's Story
My client Mikhail told me this story: "It was a Tuesday, late in the afternoon. I was tired, angry, and lonely. For years, I had walked around full of anger, bitterness, rage, and resentment. I was sitting on a park bench when Martha, my ex-wife, walked up and sat down beside me.
"Martha and I had been married for nine years. One day, in a drunken, coked-up rage, she walked out the door, saying she couldn't take it anymore. I had not seen her in six years. She was the only woman I ever loved, and when she walked out that door, I retreated further into the bitterness and anger that had helped chase her away.
What was she doing here? What did she want? Martha asked if we could talk. Reluctantly, I said yes. She started to cry and said, 'I have something to say to you.' With that, she pulled out a list and started describing in detail all the mean things she had ever done to me. The time she passed out at my work Christmas party. The names she had called me. The things she had thrown at me. The list went on and on through dozens of items, including things I had long forgotten about, and others I had never known about or realized.
"I kept waiting for her to blame me, for that is what we had done for years—used each other as our excuse for inflicting hurts. But she didn't.
"She went on for fifteen minutes, crying and describing in detail all the things she had done. When she was finished, she asked what I would need from her in order to forgive her for the harm she had caused me.
"I knew in my heart that if I were to list all the wrongs I had done to her, the list would be just as long. So I asked her, 'Why are you doing this?'
"She explained that four years ago, she had gone through treatment for her cocaine and alcohol addiction, and it was now time for her to try to heal some of the wounds she had created during her years of addiction. I had no idea what to think or say. Finally, I asked, 'Why do you want my forgiveness?' She wasn't totally sure, she said, but she knew that she needed it.
"By now anger and adrenaline were rushing through me. I said, 'You know what you can do for me? You can leave me the hell alone. I never want to see your face again. If you do that, then I'll forgive you.'
"With tears running down her cheeks, she thanked me for the good things I had done for her—helping her through school, being there when her mother died, caring about her when no one else would, planting the seed that told her she needed to get help, and so on.
"Then she stood up and said, 'I'll be going now. Not to worry—if my disappearing is what will help you heal from the bad things I've done, I'll never bother you again. Thank you; you always were a good man and a good husband. The marriage didn't work because of me, not you. Thank you for the love you gave me. I don't think I'd be alive today without it.' And with that she turned and walked away.
"That was three years ago. I wish I hadn't sent her away that day. Recently, I heard through a mutual friend that she is doing well—still clean and sober, working at a local bank. She's now remarried and living across town. She has kept her promise not to contact me. But some day soon I plan to call her and seek her forgiveness for the way I treated her in the park that afternoon."
Questions for contemplation:
1. Are you presently carrying any resentments inside you? If so, in what way are those resentments helping or hindering you? How do you think you would feel if you were able to let go of each of these resentments? What would enable you to let go of each one?
2. Think of a time when you experienced someone else's forgiveness. How did you feel when you received it? How did it change your relationship with that person? How did it change your life from then on? How did it affect your willingness to forgive yourself?
3. As of right now, where do you place yourself on the continuum from resentment to forgiveness?
About the Author:
Craig M. Nakken, MSW, LCSW, LMFT is a family therapist, author, international lecturer, and trainer who specializes in recovery from addictions. Craig began his counseling career in 1972 at Pharm House in Minneapolis, where he worked with addicts who came in off the street. He served as Pharm House's director of outpatient treatment services from 1975 to 1977.
© 2011 by Craig Nakken
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