Justifiable Resentments

[RufusACanal]

Do you have a resentment that you refuse to let go of? Is it with someone or something that you have judged as completely wrong; someone or something that you do not have the capacity, the power or the willingness to forgive? This sort of resentment is the launching pad for so many relapses each day and a return to the chaos of active drinking. Why can we not see the destructive power of the next drink beforehand especially when it comes to resentments? Why do we cling to the anger of the moment? Why do we justify our right to hate, our need to be right, when forgiveness would wash the matter away forever? I may be right today, but I am not whole until I let go and let God. Who ultimately pays the price for resentments? I can give you one clue; it is never the someone or the something that the resentment is directed at, never!

[Freedom1990]

Indeed! Resentment is the #1 offender according to the big book and destroys more alcoholics than anything else.

Thanks for the reminder

[Rob B]

The Jailer cannot return to his home until the prisoner is set free.

[nandm]

So very true. Thanks.

My experience has been that 90% of my resentments while they were eating me alive never even touched the person I was upset with. They never even gave the situation another thought. I could have saved myself a lot of pain if I had just let it go too.

[gravity]

I'm new to AA & the steps so please correct me if my perspective is off base. Steps 4, 5, 6, 7 deal, in part, with resentments not only to remove them but also to put them in a healthier, proper context. For example, I resent, to put it mildly, hard drugs (what they do to children/young people - scared for my kids), people who abuse children, & racist people - all in my inventory. I guess my thoughts are that, for me anyway, these are proper resentments to have but I can't let them eat at me, create so much fear/anger that I get into that danger zone. I have to be able to address them, even live with them, in a healthy way.

Still learning!

Great topic by the way. Thanks Rufus.

[CAPTAINZING2000]

Why give someone or something free rent in your head??

Early on, the guy who's now my sponsor told me, I'd never be able to have serenity until, I let go of old resentments.

I pretty much took him for his word

Resentments don't solve anything, the only person that suffers is you

[gravity]

Thanks CZ,

That helps but how can I not have negative feelings for individuals/things that hurt innocent children for example? I don't know if I have that kind of forgiveness or indifference in me to just let it go if/when I'm faced with it. I'm praying that my mind is serene and my reactions (thoughts & actions) are appropriate (anger or fear can be appropriate I think?) and that I can leave it at that - not drink over it or do something regretable. Maybe the part I really have to try and let go is resentment for things in the past & fear of the future?

[sugErspun]

I have a TON that I just don't have the power to let go of. But they tired me out, and I wrote them down and I was willing to look at them (and still practice regulary) and see what part I played.

My problems are of my own making - no one elses. But I don't have power to rid myself of them, there is one who does- I made a decision to do follow 'his' lead from now on.

That one is God. God has the power to relieve me of 'self' - the root of all my problems. Everything in God's world is perfect, even that which I perceive as bad or hurtful. I have stood in the sunlight of the spirit and those things I have no power over, and used to make me so angry and bitter and cast a shadow over the world - they just melted away.

Resentment hasn't really really got the best of me since I did a formal fifth step.

Thanks Rufus, needed this.

[nandm]

Originally Posted by gravity

Thanks CZ,

That helps but how can I not have negative feelings for individuals/things that hurt innocent children for example? I don't know if I have that kind of forgiveness or indifference in me to just let it go if/when I'm faced with it. I'm praying that my mind is serene and my reactions (thoughts & actions) are appropriate (anger or fear can be appropriate I think?) and that I can leave it at that - not drink over it or do something regretable. Maybe the part I really have to try and let go is resentment for things in the past & fear of the future?

I can actually relate to your question here. As the survivor of a pedophile father I struggled with how to get rid of my resentment, anger, and pain over what happened. How could I just let all that go? What he did was not only illegal but very harmful to my sisters and myself. It is something that scars a person for a lifetime.

So what did I do to let go of the resentment. I had to find a way to set me free from this. I got rid of my resentment toward myself about the whole thing. I realized when I did my 4th/5th step that all this time I carried the anger around part of that anger was directed at me. Although I blamed him I also had been blaming myself. I had to find a way to set me free from all of that. I had to forgive me, let go of my fear, take the control back in the situation. Make sure my side of the street was clean and keep it that way. Today, I am able to accept what happened. I have fogiven myself and let go of the hurt, shame, and resentments I had toward myself. I let go of allowing those things to take up space in my mind. I have made amends by doing what I was able to do about it. I have spoken with my sisters to make amends to them, although to this day my sister that is a year older than me blames me for not sticking around the house enough allowing her to wind up with him alone. She does not get that I was a kid trying to protect myself and it was not about her at all. I have made amends to my mother and society by telling my mother what happened, she chose to stay with him. I have made amends to myself by allowing myself the right to not speak to him or have any contact with him and not feel guilty or wrong for doing that.

Ultimately, resentments come down to letting them go or doing something to change them. If it is out of your control, a pedophile on the news for example then let it go, that is out of your control, you can't go shoot him. You can't change what he did. If it is in your control then do something to change the bad situation that in itself will help release some of the resentment.

The Serenity Prayer has been a lifesaver for me regarding resentments, it helps me to realize that there are things I just have to let go as they are not within my power.

Hope this helps answer your question.

[Tazman53]

Great post Rufus and a good topic.

Gravity I will back what Nandm said, the Serenity prayer helps me to find answers to many things, putting myself in your shoes I would use the answers to some questions to see what to do.

Is the person harming children someone I saw on the news that has already been arrested?

"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change."

If the individual has been arrested then I need to accept that he will no longer harm any other children and that he will be dealt with, his actions are beyond my control, there is nothing I can do. Why harbor a resentment when the situation is out of your hands and it is being dealt with?

Is the person harming children someone I saw do so and is still out there possibly endangering other children?

"The courage to change the things I can"

In this case there are things you can do, you can call the proper people to get children out of harms way and also report to the authorities what he is doing. By you taking action where you can you have done what needed to be done, the individual is being dealt with and the children are safe, there is no more you can do, why let a resentment build where you have done what needed to be done.

Nothing in the world says you should accept the wrongs of others, but if there is nothing you can do about their wrongs then there is no purpose in letting thier wrongs own you, what purpose does it serve?

Hate serves no purpose except to allow something to destroy us from within.

There are so many things that we hear of and see on the news that we dislike, but what good does it do to sit around letting something eat at us that we have no control over?

[Signal30]

Justifiable anger. We cannot afford justifiable anger no matter how "justified" it may be. We always need to remember that there are a lot of people who are spiritually sick whether they are alcoholic or not. "Normal" people may be able to have the privilege of getting angry because they don't have our disease.

"What about "justifiable" anger? If somebody cheats us, aren't we entitled to be mad? Can't we be properly angry with self-righteous folk? For us of A.A. these are dangerous exceptions. We have found that justified anger ought to be left to those better qualified to handle it." (12 Steps and 12 Traditions.)

There are people who p*ss me off all the time. I immediately have use the tools the program has given me. I need to pray for them and divert my attention to proactive and better causes. There's a guy in the fellowship that's speaks with words of great inspiration. He has a gift. But quite often his actions contradict his words, and honestly there have been times when I have been very close to calling him out on it. Doing that, only feeds my character defects of judging and the selfish action of me saying how he should act. Who am I to police other peoples actions? Would calling him out help put him in the right direction, or is it only a shallow and inconsiderate action that would only feed the character defect known as my ego?

Seeing other peoples shortcomings is a way of showing us how NOT to act and what NOT to do. Lessons playing out in life right front of us. God's big ol' classroom.



Tom

[bballdad]

a resentment is like me drinking poision waiting on the sucker to die I`m resentfull at.....

a oldtimer told me once ,you`re giving them rent free space in your head...I have some furniture I need to store by the way...I see you have plenty of room...


if I sit down and write out my resentment today,and see where it came from,it usually comes from 2 places
people just ain`t acting like I think they should
or
my mind has slipped away from the here and now into some crap ,probally from the past...if it stays there long enough,it can start some trouble.

so,I usually go back to step one,part 2-unmanagibity,of my life and others lives,and then it praying time because I cannot let loose of them myself,I needs God`s help...

[RufusACanal]

Every man, woman and child who has lived has harbored some form of resentment; it is part and parcel of the human condition. How I look at resentments and then how I take action to resolve the turmoil of the anger that circulates the cycle is how I find a way to peace. I can hang my hat on any "right cause", yet in doing so I trade my humanity without any real recompense. Resentment is anger regurgitated over and over. How can this be my course in life if I am striving for peace? Defining what I will stand for and what I will resent is best left when my spiritual condition is at its best and not when I decide it is most necessary.

[Emimily]

i brought up the topic of fully trusting god last night at my home group (i was the closed discussion leader), and one of the oldtimers that comes had something amazing to share. this is a guy who's been sober 30+ years, is in a wheelchair, has compression stockings on both legs and relies on help from others to get to his meetings - which he doesn't fail to do. so basically, this guy rocks my teenage party world. he shared that hanging onto anything makes us bitter, and if we're bitter we won't have friends, we won't be pleasant to be around, etc. he went on to say that even though he's in a wheelchair, he doesn't let it get to him because then he would stop being useful to god, and he'd become bitter and he wouldn't let that happen.

once more - this guy rocks my teenage party world.

so it is wonderful to see this topic on the board... there are so so many things i was convinced i would die angry at. my dad, my step-mom, etc. through working the 12 steps, i was able to find compassion and love for my father, and was able to cultivate a relationship in adulthood with someone who hurt me so much as a child. when he died, i knew i had made complete amends to him, and i was so grateful to god that i was able to let go and let god have all the crap so that i could get on with living my life and bringing more to the world than i took out of it.

resentments suck! i get 'em, but now i know how to get rid of 'em.

[Tazman53]

This has been an absolutely awesome thread!!!!! I have learned a lot from all of you!

Emimily your share brought a tear to my eye, one of the things that I will be eternally grateful for is being raised to never part company with a loved one on bad terms, to always no matter how mad I was to always part with the words "I love you." My dad died unexpectantly when I was 19, we had our times, but I can go to my grave knowing honestly that the last words I said to him were..... "I love you!"

[Sheryl85]

Originally Posted by RufusACanal

Do you have a resentment that you refuse to let go of? Is it with someone or something that you have judged as completely wrong; someone or something that you do not have the capacity, the power or the willingness to forgive? This sort of resentment is the launching pad for so many relapses each day and a return to the chaos of active drinking. Why can we not see the destructive power of the next drink beforehand especially when it comes to resentments? Why do we cling to the anger of the moment? Why do we justify our right to hate, our need to be right, when forgiveness would wash the matter away forever? I may be right today, but I am not whole until I let go and let God. Who ultimately pays the price for resentments? I can give you one clue; it is never the someone or the something that the resentment is directed at, never!

Truer words were never spoken.

One of the major reasons I drank was over resentments although I did not recognize it as such. When we get here many of us bring the baggage from so far back in our past that it seems as if these things are a part of our personality. My resentment developed from injuries received during childhood. It was dressed up in the garb of secrecy and shame and was the type of topic never talked about in polite society. All resentments (whether you think they are justified or not) are as the saying goes…a corrosive acid that eats away at the vessel that carries it. Therefore when I arrived at the doors of AA I carried this baggage into the program with me.

When my sponsor and I worked my Steps together, I hit the proverbial wall on this one particular resentment. For many of the resentments I had dealt with before, I could see where I had gotten that ball rolling and I could see what it was affecting; jealousy, financial insecurity, fear of losing something, fear of loneliness, fear…always the underlying emotion I was dealing with, but this one was different. There was also the fact that even at that moment, I still felt that on this one, the anger and the resentment I had was indeed justified! What could a four or five year-old child have done that had brought about the pain of sexual child abuse? As “nandm” touched on, those types of circumstances can twist around inside you to the point of where you have all this resentment directed at the abuser, but somehow it also gets directed at us, too. Sexual abuse of any type at any age is hard for a person to deal with, but when it happens to us as a child, then sometimes that coping mechanism can be carried into adulthood, usually with bad results. Mine certainly was.

When I realized that as an adult I had tried to kill the pain with alcohol and that my unwarranted fear of more pain was used as the basis to drive away every man that came into my life, I had to ask myself who was the abuser now? This is simplified enormously, because it took a long time before all the facets were discovered. The point I’m trying to make is that it took forgiveness and making amends to all those I had hurt before I could receive the relief from the pain and to end that gnawing resentment I had been carrying around in me for all those years. (I had the opportunity to have a conversation with my abuser and verbally forgive him, telling him that he was not to blame for my alcoholism, that it was a road I chose to travel, and that cold knot of resentment dissolved away.) So, as it turned out my sponsor had been right when she told me that regardless of what it was, there was no such thing as a justified resentments for us alcoholics. Resentments are the number one offender for a reason because untreated they have the power to kill.

Anyway, that's what happened to me. ..

[Barto]

Are there any other kind?

[bballdad]

tks everyone for a good thread.

I used to have one re-occuring resentment.It was against a sister in law I have.
Finally,someone told me to write down 5 good things about her.
I got my pen and paper.I had trouble finding 5 good things about her.It took me about 20 minutes.I finally had my good 5 things about her and I learned a lesson.
I had focused on her faults so hard,I was blinded to her good traits.As I saw some good about her,I realized we was in the same boat.We both have good and bad in us,and maybe,just maybe we both are spiritually "not quite well " yet.

Things have improved a lot,and today I can say I do not resent her.We get along ok today.Another crazy thing about resentments is I tend to hold onto them a while and wallow in the muck.When I`m tired of it,I then get into the solution.

[gravity]

What incredible & powerful words. I found some posts heartbreaking at first but the strength to overcome, truly inspirational. So many ways to look at resentments, "justifiable" or not. I'm actually re-doing my steps 4 & 5 on the resentments that I just can't seem to let go of - started doing this after reading through this thread (thanks everyone).

I want to add something my sponsor told me when I was doing my step 5.

I consider honesty to be essential and I always thought I was a highly honest, ethical person. Yet, what was revealed to me when I was doing my step 4 was that much of my resentments involved to some degree or another my own dishonesty - clearly one of the underlying reasons why I couldn't stop drinking.

A large part of my work involves negotiating for financial resources for an impoverished demographic group. These resources are used, in part, to provide support for children in need, youth at risk (abuse, suicide), education, caring for elders, etc. I find this work so rewarding, a true honour & privilege. But there is dishonesty (on both sides) involved in the negotiating processes. Call it bluffing, posturing, tactics, strategy...it's dishonesty. But it is "accepted". If I were to be fully honest all the time (eg. not withhold certain information), I would be out of a job.

I found myself in a bit of a catch 22. Continue with my life work and live with this dishonesty? Or would I have to quit my job to stay sober? I asked my sponsor and he just said "What do you think God would want you to do?" No hesitation from me - help the kids.

Is this "justifiable"? I don't know. I do ask for the Creator's guidance & forgiveness everyday. Also, I have been told by my spiritual elders that I have been given certain gifts by the Creator and this is what I am meant to do. Ends justifies the means? Maybe...

[laurie6781]

99.9999999999999999% of Resentments are based on Expectations.

100% of my Resentments have been based on my expectations of others and of myself.

I very rarely get a resentment today..................................however, it has taken me almost 27 years to get to this point.

I don't 'give' resentments intentionally either. However, if per chance someone does get a resentment against me, then it just means more prayers for me, lol

As far as resentments go, I finally figured out that they take one h*ll of a lot of energy, energy that I could be putting to better use. Also finally figured out, that folks just were not going to live up to my expectations, after all they are human, so why have expectations of others? Why not accept them the way they are, and if I can't, well then why were they in my life?

Changed my attitude big time, by asking myself all those questions.

I'm not sure that 'resentment' is the correct word for things that are wrong in the world today, ie the drug dealers, what drugs do to individuals and families. The various DUI laws, different from state to state, the "Good Ole Boy Network" in politics, and on and on and on.........................................I do know that Sober, I can get involved in various ways, volunteering at the one of the youth centers, getting the kids involved in activities and getting them interested in various subjects, helping them with their homework, etc, giving them a reason to stay in school.

Trouble in the Nursing Homes? Yep that one has bothered me for a long time, so..............I became a volunteer at several here in town, purposely visiting those who no longer get visitors. What an education for me, and it's FUN.

So Resentments, nnnaaaaaahhhhhhh they aren't worth it!!!!!! Too much to do.

As I live each day, being the best I can be for that day and being thoughtful, kind, and considerate to all who cross my path and treating them as I would wish to be treated......it just doesn't leave time for any resentments.

J M H O

Love and hugs,

[sugErspun]

Gravity

I have the same dilemma in a way. The industry I am in is being blamed for a lot of turmoil in our economy, though I am not directly responsible and play more of an analytical role- I am one the the pack.

I pray. God puts me where I need to be, and when the time comes for me to be somewhere else - there I will be.

That was a piece of advice that was handed to me, maybe you can find it useful.

[GlassPrisoner]

Justifiable Anger is that dubious luxury of others.....

Remember too, when I an angry or upset, there is something wrong with me.

To answer the OT, my first 4th step took care of all of the resentments that I brought with me to AA. I sleep pretty well at night now