Where in the BB about resentment?
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Join Date: Sep 2009
Location: Oregon
Posts: 50
Where in the BB about resentment?
Hi everyone,
I'm 10 months sober this Sunday, and working on Step 4. Does anyone know where in the BB there is a prayer/formula for working through resentment? Something about praying for the person you resent? (My sponsor mentioned it last night but couldn't remember where to find it.)
(If you want to know what the resentment is, read on; I don't blame you if you don't care, I'm sick of it myself).
I'm 6 years into a relationship with a man who has a lazy, selfish, mouthy, disrespectful, manipulative, entitled child, and I resent that her father doesn't crack down on her. She's 10 years old and she weighs 20 lbs more than I do. She spends her days watching TV or on the computer. She argues about everything. She's the only thing he and I fight about. Her biological mother is even worse than her father is in terms of controlling her). I am trying to "give it over to my higher power", but my thinking is still that I'm right: The kid's getting her way constantly, and "he's doing it all wrong", and the teen years are coming (God help us all). After years of pretending, I finally admitted to him that I dislike and resent her. It makes me feel terrible about myself, but I felt I had to finally come clean about how I feel. I worry that he's going to leave me. If we do stay together, even if I totally stay out of their interactions, their frequent fights still affect me. How can I let go of the resentment I feel?
Thank you for any help you can provide.
I'm 10 months sober this Sunday, and working on Step 4. Does anyone know where in the BB there is a prayer/formula for working through resentment? Something about praying for the person you resent? (My sponsor mentioned it last night but couldn't remember where to find it.)
(If you want to know what the resentment is, read on; I don't blame you if you don't care, I'm sick of it myself).
I'm 6 years into a relationship with a man who has a lazy, selfish, mouthy, disrespectful, manipulative, entitled child, and I resent that her father doesn't crack down on her. She's 10 years old and she weighs 20 lbs more than I do. She spends her days watching TV or on the computer. She argues about everything. She's the only thing he and I fight about. Her biological mother is even worse than her father is in terms of controlling her). I am trying to "give it over to my higher power", but my thinking is still that I'm right: The kid's getting her way constantly, and "he's doing it all wrong", and the teen years are coming (God help us all). After years of pretending, I finally admitted to him that I dislike and resent her. It makes me feel terrible about myself, but I felt I had to finally come clean about how I feel. I worry that he's going to leave me. If we do stay together, even if I totally stay out of their interactions, their frequent fights still affect me. How can I let go of the resentment I feel?
Thank you for any help you can provide.
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Join Date: Apr 2009
Posts: 3,095
There is much debate about the intent and usefulness of that idea contained in the Freedom from Bondage story. Some love it, some hate it.
I have gotten a tremendous amount of benefit out of that realization at the bottom of pg 66. We realized they, like ourselves, were perhaps spiritually sick. When I write inventory, before the 4th column I write the realization of how have I done this same thing or similar things to this person or others?
If I'm resentful at someone's laziness, I ask if I have every been lazy. If it's their rudeness, I ask if I have ever been rude to them or others. And so forth.
This allows me to see that I'm just like all those people I resent. And for the first time in my life, I join the human race. I'm a flawed human being, doing my best, just like everyone else. Compassion stars here, I believe, when I see myself in those I hate.
If the 12 Steps were just a self-examination, psychology exercise, this is where it would stop for me. I see the 12 Steps as much more than that. I don't do inventory so that I can learn how to cope with resentments. I do inventory because those resentments block me off from the sunlight of the spirit.
When I'm in the sunlight of the spirit, as the result of a spiritual awakening from taking those Steps, resentments seem to take care of themselves without any coping necessary on my part.
I can not truly love another without 'borrowing' from God's infinite love.
Sometimes this atheist shakes his head in disbelief at some of the things he finds himself writing.
I have gotten a tremendous amount of benefit out of that realization at the bottom of pg 66. We realized they, like ourselves, were perhaps spiritually sick. When I write inventory, before the 4th column I write the realization of how have I done this same thing or similar things to this person or others?
If I'm resentful at someone's laziness, I ask if I have every been lazy. If it's their rudeness, I ask if I have ever been rude to them or others. And so forth.
This allows me to see that I'm just like all those people I resent. And for the first time in my life, I join the human race. I'm a flawed human being, doing my best, just like everyone else. Compassion stars here, I believe, when I see myself in those I hate.
If the 12 Steps were just a self-examination, psychology exercise, this is where it would stop for me. I see the 12 Steps as much more than that. I don't do inventory so that I can learn how to cope with resentments. I do inventory because those resentments block me off from the sunlight of the spirit.
When I'm in the sunlight of the spirit, as the result of a spiritual awakening from taking those Steps, resentments seem to take care of themselves without any coping necessary on my part.
I can not truly love another without 'borrowing' from God's infinite love.
Sometimes this atheist shakes his head in disbelief at some of the things he finds himself writing.
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