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Originally Posted by LiveLikeGold6  I need some help. Resentments ate like what I don't like about a person. Or does it have to be a constant nagging thought? Also, I've wrote. A lot of people down n the **** that bothers me with them but I can't define how it then affects me? Help? Let me know if you need further info! Thanks all. 19 days here  |
A resentment can take several forms. They can be deep seated residual anger from years ago. They can also be annoyances with other people, places, etc.
The word resentment comes from a French word which means literally to "re-feel." But resentment is more than just something I think about or something I feel. Resentment is the granddaddy of all spiritual illness.
For most of my life I had a sense of being separate and looking back, it seemed like I had a perpetual chip on my shoulder. So looking back, it is no surprise that my earliest memories were ones of resentment toward a father who wasn't the father I thought he should of have been, toward the town I lived in, toward the schools I went to, you name it. I was thirty-one years old when I wrote my first inventory. My sponsor had me make a list per the Big Book, of people institutions, and principles with whom I was angry. He told me to write a prayer at the top of the page and see what came out. I wrote this prayer "Dear God, please help me see what I need to see" and started writing.
One of the first names to come out of my pen was the name of a teacher I had when I was in the fifth grade.
I think that in the fifth grade I was about ten years old. Here I was thirty-one years old and I hadn't thought of this woman in years. What had happened is that she slapped me on the side of the head in front of the whole class, and when I wrote her name down, the same sense of outrage and embarrassment resurfaced. These had been in there all those years, distorting my thinking, giving rise to the anti-authority stances I had taken and the further resentment of any authority figure. No wonder I had felt separate most of my life! Just because you don't think about it doesn't mean that you've dealt with it or that it isn't there.
Nowadays, most of my resentments take the form of petty annoyances. For example I get resentments at a co-worker over stuff like the fact that he is moody, that he is uncouth, and that sometimes he has body odor. This leads me to treat him as if I were better than him.
The book uses some strong language for resentment-it destroys more of us than anything else, it is fatal, it is poison, it kills. Like I said, resentment is the grand daddy of all spiritual illness because it separates me from what I should not be separated from. It separates me from God and from God's children, and in that separation I become strangely insane where alcohol is concerned, in other words, the insanity of alcoholism returns and eventually I drink again. And to drink again is to die. I believe that an alcoholic doesn't have to drink again to die the alcoholic death. I believe that I start to die the alcoholic death the minute I become separate.
Jim
Big Book references from Alcoholics Anonymous, First Edition