Do You Hold Grudges?

[On the Inside]

and to flip this on it's head, what about all the people who hold grudges against you for your behavior? Do you accept that they should never forgive you?

Exactly, "do unto others...."

 

[Aspergirl4hire]

and to flip this on it's head, what about all the people who hold grudges against you for your behavior? Do you accept that they should never forgive you?

I can't forgive myself, so it doesn't matter if they can't forgive me; more than likely, they've forgotten by now or no longer care even if they recall. My unforgiveness makes my negative emotions sticky. Negative emotions, the dark and powerful, aren't necessarily bad per se, but hanging onto them as a talisman against future pain doesn't work. I wish the feelings were as easy to dispose of as that sentence was to say.

 

[4gottenLoreKali]

If you call them grudges, sure, I hold them.

One against my mother, although I'd say my relationship with her is more "bipolar" in nature. There are some things she has done to me that I never will forgive her for.

Then there's my most recent ex-girlfriend, one of two girlfriends I've ever had in my whole life, who basically broke up with me for no given reason and screamed at me when I tried to ask her about it several months later. She had some serious problems, and I have a hunch that mine was not the only heart she broke.

And of course, not to mention all the fake friends who stabbed me in the back. I should've know they were nothing more than sh*t all along, their masks of feigned kindness toward me only stayed on for so long.

 

[zurb]

Had to think about this one as I believe I don't hold on to grudges. However, whilst I will forgive I also never forget, and I guess that could be construed as me holding a grudge. Tricky.

It's only a grudge if you haven't forgiven and still hold onto the hurt.
Forgetting is different from forgiveness and shouldn't be confused. Forgiveness is not being a doormat to be walked over. Memories can be hard to get rid of and there can be wisdom in remembering so that the same hurt isn't repeated, but can be prevented.

 

[Spiller]

and to flip this on it's head, what about all the people who hold grudges against you for your behavior? Do you accept that they should never forgive you?

I've known people who hold a grudge against me, even though I've done nothing untoward and, in fact, have always been considerate of others' feelings.. it seems to me that this is a 'saving face' attitude/behavior, whereby that person, in order to appear socially superior, has to create a circumstance in which holding a grudge is 'reasonable'.
An example would be my ex-wife still being awkward five years after breaking up with me to live with her boyfriend, telling people mistruths about why we separated, criticising my parenting ability, demanding money, threatening..
I hold no grudge against her, in fact I'm extremely grateful that I'm finally free to carry on with my life.. the question is, why is she still figuratively 'married to me?' Why is she still, like the monk, carrying the girl?
I can only accept that she holds a grudge against me and therefore be cautious in my dealings with her, as she shows no signs of becoming conscious of her attitude and thereby helping herself feel better about me, her choices, the world she perceives around her, herself. I know of no words I can say, no action I can take to help her, that's a lesson she'll have to learn by herself.

 

[Cosmophylla]

My counsellor and I were discussing grudges and resentment recently and I thought I'd ask the AC community for some input. I have issues with controlling my anger and holding onto grudges long term, and my counsellor and I are looking at strategies to help me cope and/or move on.

For me one the factors contributing to my resentment is my trouble with verbal communication. I feel deeply but struggle to express it face to face. The pictures in my head don't come out in the right words, and I also find that my emotions become overwhelming very quickly, meaning I end up either in tears or shouting. Neither of these is conducive to fruitful communication, although I find that generally when I'm trying to express something serious/important I sound angry (even when I'm not) and I think this is because anger seems to focus my thoughts better than if I'm a blubbering wreck. Given time (and solitude) I can write it out, but that is inappropriate in many situations; who has time to wait while I write an essay about my frustrations?

I've written in other threads that I'm a visual thinker. All thoughts play in head like movies, and memories are no different. Like some others I've met here, I replay old memories over and over, altering the outcome in my mind. Naturally I can't alter history, so the issue remains unresolved.

Some long standing issues, such as resentment about some things with my parents, have eventually been resolved when things happened in my own life to offer explanations or insights into why things happened the way they did. One of these is discovering my own autism. Another was having a second child.

I read recently that holding a grudge is like letting someone live rent free in your head.

How do you cope with resentment? Do you hold grudges? For how long? Does it make a difference what the cause of the resentment is? Are you able to consciously move on or does it just take time to get things in perspective? Do you find it easy to "forgive and forget"?

 

[Bro'Freak]

I'm finding that my inner state is not unlike yours Cosmophylla. I have just been throught the most painfull split from a girlfriend of my life. I tried soo hard to please her but all the good work could never please her. She'd always get some stupid fantasy in her head about what my motives were. She could argue, shout, hit, blackmail on a whim it seems looking back. One time I was looking after a friends place she came to stay & brought a mattress as she & I didn't like the idea of us sleeping in her ex's bed. Well when it came to sleep time she let me sleep on the single mattress as I'm tall & she's be happy on the sofa. Well 4 hours later I'm on my side, not on the mattress & my head is hanging at a funny angle. Problem is I'm wrapped in the middle of the cover & can't move as she'd jumped in with me. She had the ends of the mattress & was sound asleep. Now I had to move so I gently asked her if I could move. But all I got was a sudden elbow to the guts, which totally messed up my neck which was spasaming pain & locked... not good. I jumped up & said something like bloody hell typical & stormed off to sleep on my mates bed. By the time morning came I had a sore kneck, very sore indeed, but I'd decided that it wasn't right to be angry with her. I waited an hour before waking her with the offer of a coffee. But on waking up she procceeded to rudely tell me off for waking her, I said that we had things to do & lets get going or I'm going to start playing
some loud music. That's when things went bad & I told her to leave. I hoped that she'd get back to me but allas she didn't & on the monday some friends who'd just returned from a festival saw that I was down & invited me to their place for a little after festy party. I wanted her there but my friends said no because of her mood swings & because of what'd happened.

I did wish my ex could have been there. I made the mistake of telling her about the gathering & she took it personaly, took it as if I'd planned to exile her before my friends came back. It was all getting a bit too much. She seriously has a resentment problem.. it's as if she's lost all hope or understanding in the human race. Just recently she went to abroad with her ex, the day after I'd cooked her dinner at her place & helped her tidy her flat ( Bit rich of her saying I was messy ). She said the police were looking for her wtf?. Now I read your post & I see myself in there. I could have handled things better but now all i feel is regret, loss, pain & resentment for missing that trip. She thinks I'm in the wrong for being nasty after I'd found out she'd gone with him as there's nothing going on between them & that I should have sorted my passport out sooner because then I could have gone... If anything was an example of a grudge I think that was, because she went out of her way to do it. It wasn't like we'd just had a falling out & she did it on the spur.

Now I don't want to hold a grudge or resentment so I wont, just soul crushing worthlessness. Maybe its easier to hold a
resentment than it is to move on, i'm not sure. I just disslike this side of life so I try to avoid it because it hurts to much.

It takes time.

Edit- I feel sorry it all went wrong, so I will forgive now.

 

[AsheSkyler]

I hold people to the same standards I hold myself. Disastrous, I know, but it seems fair to me. If they make no effort to repair damage, then they do not deserve to be forgiven or forgotten lest they do it again. Logic of "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me." Sometimes I even hold things against myself and make a memo to fix later that others may forget years later. If they make reparations, I will forgive them, but it'll always be there in the back of my mind to make sure they don't do it again. I do get an awful lot of complaints about that, but usually the ones who complain about it are the ones that like to mistreat others in the first place.

 

[Suzanne]

I could be reading about myself!

My faith helps me to try and let go, but it is VERY difficult, because as you say, I see the scene in my head and that causes resentment to rear it's ugly head.

The trouble is and this honestly makes me really not like my own race at all, at times, is that you cannot control the tactlessness of another, which is pretty frightening!

My husband and I found out, early into our marriage that he is sterile, which has been a deep wound in our marriage. Well, some year's ago now I was talking to this woman briefly and could not believe it when she came out with: oh, I got pregnant so fast; I had no trouble! The thing is that then and now, I just do not know how to handle that kind of thing! Because it just seems to be inanely rude and unkind and tactless and so, renders me speechless and yet at the same time, does me no good because it still rankles!

My husband hates it when I relate something because I put the emotion in as well!

 

[Tom]

A very difficult struggle for me as well. Haven't found anything that worked much, except time.

 

[Aspergirl4hire]

I don't forget, but sometimes I stop caring. As Tom remarked, it takes time.

Sometimes a lot of it.

I guess the point, for me, is that time doesn't stand still, the tide doesn't stand still, and if I choose to freeze time, I've effectively created a lie twice over. The first is this deception that nothing is allowed to change in my head. The second is this deception that my head represents unalterable reality.

And that leads to a fatality: learning the wrong thing from the experience. The ability to learn faster is the best way to a better life from where I am. Willfully refusing to learn because of my pride, sloth, vanity, or my projection of blame onto someone else while wholly exonerating myself, is not going to help me get to a better life.

Forgiveness? Somewhat a different matter. I've learned, finally, that forgiveness means letting go of the frozen time in my head. That's not the same thing as permitting bad things to continue to happen, bad people to attack me or my loves or my values, and bad ideas to stick around.

 

[Progster]

It depends how serious it is. For example, I can easily forgive and forget that you broke my vase, it's no big deal, but I can't forget that you bullied me when I was a kid. I may be able to forgive, but I can never forget, and as much as I may want to move on, the memory is there, it can't be deleted from my harddrive and once trust is broken it's difficult to regain. Old feelings can also easily be retriggered.

holding a grudge is like letting someone live rent free in your head.

Very true, I like this

 

[watersprite]

My counsellor and I were discussing grudges and resentment recently and I thought I'd ask the AC community for some input. I have issues with controlling my anger and holding onto grudges long term, and my counsellor and I are looking at strategies to help me cope and/or move on.

For me one the factors contributing to my resentment is my trouble with verbal communication. I feel deeply but struggle to express it face to face. The pictures in my head don't come out in the right words, and I also find that my emotions become overwhelming very quickly, meaning I end up either in tears or shouting. Neither of these is conducive to fruitful communication, although I find that generally when I'm trying to express something serious/important I sound angry (even when I'm not) and I think this is because anger seems to focus my thoughts better than if I'm a blubbering wreck. Given time (and solitude) I can write it out, but that is inappropriate in many situations; who has time to wait while I write an essay about my frustrations?

I've written in other threads that I'm a visual thinker. All thoughts play in head like movies, and memories are no different. Like some others I've met here, I replay old memories over and over, altering the outcome in my mind. Naturally I can't alter history, so the issue remains unresolved.

Some long standing issues, such as resentment about some things with my parents, have eventually been resolved when things happened in my own life to offer explanations or insights into why things happened the way they did. One of these is discovering my own autism. Another was having a second child.

I read recently that holding a grudge is like letting someone live rent free in your head.

How do you cope with resentment? Do you hold grudges? For how long? Does it make a difference what the cause of the resentment is? Are you able to consciously move on or does it just take time to get things in perspective? Do you find it easy to "forgive and forget"?

I let resentments go, because I don't want the resented person in my head, & I like the way my mind feels when I let go of that sort of negativity. Yes I hold grudges but not long, unless it was something big like violence. That takes longer to rid myself of. I consciously nudge myself in my own ways that work for me, to move on. I find it very hard sometimes.
The worst part: I hold grudges against my own self, and am just now, little by little, finding ways to forgive me.
~ k

 

[AsheSkyler]

It depends how serious it is. For example, I can easily forgive and forget that you broke my vase, it's no big deal, but I can't forget that you bullied me when I was a kid. I may be able to forgive, but I can never forget, and as much as I may want to move on, the memory is there, it can't be deleted from my harddrive and once trust is broken it's difficult to regain. Old feelings can also easily be retriggered.

Aye, true dat. An absent-minded grandmother forgetting you don't want ice in your cup is very different from the nasty delivery guy shoving you into your register at work every time he restocks the drinks. It's nothing to just put the ice back in the freezer, but eventually you have to smack the delivery guy because your boss is too busy laughing her butt off to do something about it.

 

[DogwoodTree]

I'm not sure I can even identify what a long-standing grudge would look like. Maybe I've suppressed my anger too much to know what I experience, or maybe I just let it go really easily, I'm not sure.

However.

I do notice and remember patterns of behavior and relating that people portray. When people do things that are particularly generous or selfish, open-minded or closed-minded, critical or accepting...I remember those things about people, and tend to expect more of the same, and adjust my own behavior with them and expectations of them in response.

For example...someone who is chronically late. I notice that about them. And I never again expect them to be on time. But it doesn't usually make me angry after the first time or two, because I've adjusted my expectations to meet that reality.

If someone is very dismissive about my feelings around an issue, or regularly turns conversations around so that I'm nearly always the person "at fault"...there is anger in me that I have to face and deal with on that, but I also adjust my expectations of that other person to where I just stop sharing stuff with them or being vulnerable with them. They've shown they can't handle it.

And when they get offended that I've closed myself off from them, it always confuses me that they think I'm holding a grudge against them for their past behavior. I'm not holding a grudge, according to my understanding of grudges...I've just taken note of the pattern of their behavior, and adjusted my expectations in that relationship. Is that the same as holding a grudge?

Most people seem okay with my approach. But there is one particular person in my life who is highly offended if I think anything of her that is less than perfect. She seems to think that forgive=forget, and that if I continue to expect behavior from her that is less than perfect (and as a result make appropriate adjustments to my expectations for the relationship and my own behavior in the relationship), then it's because I haven't forgiven her for her past mistakes. It's very frustrating and painful to be blamed for problems in our relationship just because I won't ignore her character flaws. I'm not trying to fix her flaws...but I won't pretend they don't exist, either.

 

[Nisk]

I've been holding off on replying to this for a bit to figure out how to word it properly but here goes.

So I was an angry resentful person. It made me into a person I didn't like, doing things I'm not proud of. I reached a point in my life that to continue to hold on to all the anger and resentments would literally kill me (my old roommate was murdered a couple years after as result of the life we were living). So I sought help and a big part was dealing with the anger and resentments that had caused me so much pain. I made a sheet with 4 columns. In the first column I made a list of every single person I had a resentment to, even the small ones that I barely cared about. In the second column next to each resentment I wrote out the actual cause of each resentment. After that in the next column beside each cause I wrote out how the resentment had effected me, be it my self-worth, financial security, love life, self-esteem etc... In the last column I wrote out what my part in each resentment was had I been spiteful, afraid, prideful, did I say something hurtful during an argument, was I being lazy etc... If my part was fear based I'd try to dig a bit deeper into what was the fear.

After I finished this I found someone I trusted and sat down and read through it with them, I'd asked them beforehand to pay attention to my part and if they noticed I'd missed something to help me gain a better understanding by gently suggesting another reason for my part.

When this was all done I went somewhere I felt at peace and pondered over whether or not I was now willing to let go of the past. For the most part I was. I took that list of people that I'd had these resentments to and went to them apologizing for my part in the resentments, the key was I did it with no expectations that they'd forgive me or apologize for anything they did. The problem with my resentments was they were in "my" head the only way for me to be relieved of them was for me to accept my part in the resentment and apologize for it.

After I finished all this I made a point of doing this on a daily basis when I started to become resentful or angry I would take the time and look for the real cause, what was my part. Then I'd try to promptly take action to clear my side of the street.

There was people I didn't apologize and a very few cases that my only part was I didn't leave a situation before I became resentful but there us no real rule as to who I have to apologize to I do it for my benefit if I don't want the benefit I didn't apologize.

It's a long post I know but it's not a simple process to explain.

 

[Cosmophylla]

Wow, I'm really appreciative of everyone's replies. I'm going to need some time to formulate a worthy response.

But in the meantime, I have found it interesting to read DogwoodTree has a different take on it... I think there is something there for me to work with. Looking at the situation from a slightly different perspective, by being detached and analytical, in the same way as Nisk described making a chart.

I've found as I get older not only my analytical skills improve, but also my fluid intelligence/intuition. This helps me to work through things after the fact. But there is still the trouble of the "heat of the moment". With my daughter I can use a mirroring technique to observe her behaviour and remain detached from it. (e.g. Oh, you're angry! You're throwing your panda. You are very upset. Why are you upset? Etc.) but I feel very strange saying this sort of thing to an adult, let alone expressing my own anger in a detached way. If anger is left inside to fester it creates all manner of problems (as is manifested through alcohol addiction in my husband). Hmmm... Will keep thinking about the creation of resentment and grudges...

It's interesting to me that for some of us it seems that some resentment becomes a long term grudge, while other grudges fade with time. Is there a correlation between the type of trespass and the length of time the grudge is held? Such as being bullied or abused as a child... It seems many of us hold onto that for decades, myself included. Could it be because childhood is a time of innocence and we feel our innocence was taken away/harmed? Is it because we are autistic that we find such incidents harder to deal with? Just some thoughts.

This was supposed to be a quick response saying I would respond properly later... So much for that!

 

[DogwoodTree]

With my daughter I can use a mirroring technique to observe her behaviour and remain detached from it. (e.g. Oh, you're angry! You're throwing your panda. You are very upset. Why are you upset? Etc.) but I feel very strange saying this sort of thing to an adult, let alone expressing my own anger in a detached way. If anger is left inside to fester it creates all manner of problems

For me personally, straight-up mirroring seems demeaning and disconnected. I don't know why. But I don't use that approach at all, and it really annoys me when other people use it on me.

Instead, I'm learning to use what my T calls "holding space." It's not quite the same thing. Instead of reflecting someone's emotions back to them so they can "see" them, I simply make a space in the relationship for their emotions to exist without my being offended or triggered by them. Their emotions are not my responsibility, so I can be present to the person while they experience those emotions.

On that same note, my emotions are not their responsibility. It's my job to feel and explore my emotions, not theirs. If I find myself holding them responsible in any way for the way I feel, that's when things start to get yucky with me. (This has been a humongously difficult challenge for me, having grown up in a deeply enmeshed family system that still has its grips on me.)

This was a huge revelation for me with my kids (oldest is 13). If one of the kids is angry, that's not a reflection on my parenting and I don't have to be afraid of or threatened by what they're feeling in any way. That's simply what they feel right then. It's okay to let them feel it, and to tell them that it's okay to feel it. And I'll ask them what they feel. Then I'll talk about how each emotion carries a message--something that our heart is trying to tell us. And we need to listen to that emotion. What is it saying? What's so important that it had to speak up? And how do you need to respond to that message?

It's interesting to me that for some of us it seems that some resentment becomes a long term grudge, while other grudges fade with time. Is there a correlation between the type of trespass and the length of time the grudge is held? Such as being bullied or abused as a child...

Several weeks ago a friend talked about how she hated her dad when she was growing up. She would scheme about different ways to hurt him, like, to physically harm him. One idea was to put sewing pins in his pillow so he would get stuck when he went to bed.

Honestly, I was shocked listening to her. I experienced a great deal of abuse and neglect and emotional manipulation all the way through my childhood. I never had an adult in my life that I could trust and feel safe with--I don't know what safety feels like with anyone, even now in my 40's (even though I'm married to a great guy for almost 20 years now). I never learned to trust anyone.

But I never thought about trying to hurt anyone who was hurting me. I wanted to run away and find safety, but not at the expense of hurting them. That's actually what kept me from running away as a teenager, or from ending it all...I didn't want to hurt my mom. I didn't want to create any trouble for my family.

So I'm not sure that the type of offense would necessarily have anything to do with it. I've seen people keep grudges for years and years over stupid, little things. And I've seen people let stuff go that would have broken most people.

 

[Flinty]

I hold one grudge from the distant past. It is because the person is genuinely dangerous. That is all. The rest, so what?

 

[MEDL86]

In my experience, most people that do wrong to you in some fashion aren't really worth the energy of forgiveness, because in all likelihood, they'd do it again in a heartbeat and without a second thought.
A few years ago, I was talking with a group of people that I called 'friends' about a number of topics, and after a few incidents where they felt the need to argue pointlessly with me about an opinion that I have/had about their claims (which will remain unsaid), they proceeded to conspire against me, compare me to a nazi, satan, and a few others, and ultimately got an entire group (then, larger than it was) to leave me behind with an empty forum. That was all over an opinion.
Needless to say, I have never forgiven, nor will I ever forgive, them. Forgiveness does nothing to help me move on, and the more I hold onto something, the fresher it is in my mind. I never forget such an act, and I see no reason to waste energy trying to forget, seeing as how that would reopen me to the possibility of it happening again.