andyh

I'm surprised you haven't heard of the ABC tool if you've been doing SMART - it's one of the method's core techniques, originally from REBT/CBT:

https://www.smartrecovery.org/smart-...-crash-course/

Gottalife

Step 10 saved my life. It is the one step we can practice out of order. (Vigourously we commenced this way of living AS we cleaned up the past)

It has five parts:

Continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment and fear.
When they crop up we ask God at once to remove them
We discuss them with someone (sponsor?) immediately.
We make amends quickly if we have harmed anyone.
Then we resolutely turn our thoughts to someone (another alcoholic?) we can help.

It is the most practical and effective way I know to keep the decks clear, and it is a lot less panful to clean something up immdediately than it is to let it fester and grow as is inclined to happen if remedial action is deferred.

Step ten is like spiritual medicine. Like any other medicine, the condition does not improve and usually gets worse until the medicine is taken.

Berrybean

I think as time passes we do get slightly less resentful in nature, but those resentments do continue to come and we need to watch for them and remain willing to work past them. Sometimes the pebbles trip us more easily than the boulders in life, and I reckon that can be true of resentments as well. It does get easier over time in that we know and trust that dropping the resentment will feel better than holding it. You're doing well as it took me a long time to drop my anger, as I really did believe that it kept me safe. It was like carrying a huge spiky weapon on my back, just in case I wanted to use it on someone else, but of course those metaphorical spiky spikes dug into my own back constantly and put the nice kind people off far quicker than anyone who was likely to hurt me.

As someone else said, it's not only alcoholics who get resentful. All humans do. We just have to be extra careful of them. As someone said / wrote - they're a luxury that we can ill-afford. Why? Because they're the kind of thing that is damaging to our sobriety.

BB

PeacefulWater12

I have learnt painfully and over a long time, that if something someone else is doing is annoying me, the problem is usually in ME.

I am expecting other people, places and things to be the way I want them. I am trying to control. I am judging. I am comparing MYself to others to make Myself feel better, more superior, more recovered.

Often the very trait in another that sets off a burst of inner rage in ME, is a trait I have.

Before working my program, life was kind of easy. I could spend all MY time pointing MY finger of blame at others. Taking no responsibility for all these things happened to ME that wasn't MY fault.

Haha, I had that backwards.

Great question from OP and great shares in response.

August252015

^^^^"if I am not the problem, there is no solution."

entropy1964

Lots of good posts here.

I hate not having control. But alas I have very little over anything other than myself. When I'm in a 'situation' with another human being, even an institution (like my HOA or the IRS), and some kind of kerfuffle happens, I can get really worked up over the part that I have no control over. Why do I have to do this? Why did this happen to me? Why aren't they doing xyz? Why are they doing xyz? Expectations, immaturity, victim thinking.

What helps is for me to closely examine MY behavior. Apply all those same questions and change my behavior and expectations accordingly. At least this way I have some level of control. Over myself.

The emotional maturity part is realizing that shlit happens, to all of us, all day long. And that getting pissy over something is a-ok. But staying pissy is not. I can be irritated and not have it be some kind of huge event. Its just life. Do what I can on my side of the street, do what is required of me to do, let the rest go. Sometimes people are just azzhats. Often times I'm just an azzhat. Just is. Move on.

biminiblue

God grant me the serenity to accept the things about other people that I cannot change.

The courage to change the things about myself that I can,

And the wisdom to keep my mouth shut.

Andante

I agree wholeheartedly with the gist of the responses here and do my best to practice those principles in all my affairs, as they say.

However, I’ve found that I must extend my elimination of expectations to include not expecting the outside world to share my views about the elimination of expectations, if that makes sense. In other words, not everyone agrees that resentments are a bad thing.

I’ve found that many otherwise good people not only don’t share my philosophy about getting over resentments, but actively repudiate it. They have high expectations of the world and of other people’s behavior, and they resent it when those expectations aren’t met. They seem to prefer living in a constant state of outrage (of course, they’re not alcoholics).

With the resentment-free approach to life I’ve worked so hard to cultivate in recovery, it’s really difficult for me to be around people like that, so it has cost me some friendships — couple of close ones, actually.

Just an odd wrinkle to the whole topic.

Branches

I haven't been practicing sobriety all that long, a little over a month, but I have had a lot of practice with dealing with resentment - various family issues and a very expensive divorce gave me lots of material to deal with. Along with asking God to forgive me for my misdeeds as well as asking Him to help me forgive others, I also have taken to saying to myself as a positive affirmation when the occasions warrants it, "I am not easily offended." That has helped me a lot, and I think that even if you're not of a religious persuasion, just making that positive affirmation and hearing it come out of your own mouth starts a new way of thinking in the brain.. And on the topic of forgiveness, it's a process. You think you have an issue settled or you're good with a person and then something brings the resentment up all over again. With some people, I ask and I keep on asking for my HP (God) to help me forgive, and over time I find that anger/hurt/pain slowly being erased like pencil marks on a page.

Meraviglioso

I have really benefitted from something I learned from my sponsor, which is praying for the person or thing that is causing me resentment. Pray for them to have all the things I want for myself. I never would have imagined it could work but it does.

August252015

^^^ same here Mera. I didn't get it from my sponsor, as it was actually a big part of the Christianity my parents raised me in, but I study material like the writings of Friar Richard Rohr and this something that is important to me too (AA talks about this as well, when the BB talks about not praying for our own selfish ends but for others).

Berrybean

Gotta love Richard Rohr.
His audio publication of The Art of Letting Go was massively helpful to me.

MantaLady

Adante, while at rehab we had a good mindfulness coach who said something that stuck with me “for addicts expectations are just pre-meditated resentments”

Gottalife

I got the same advice from my sponsor and it worked pretty much as advertised on the lesser resentments. But the trouble with prayer is it sometimes brings an unexpected and perhaps more challenging solution.

A couple of months into sobriety I got a humdinger of a resentment, or more accurately, series of resentments, of the most dangerous kind - the justified resentment.

I prayed desperately for the other person for weeks, and the pile kept growing. I became concerned it might even get between me and AA, which would have been a death sentence for me. (The power to actually kill).

Then, in a moment of clarity perhaps, the answer to my prayer came to me. It was an idea that I could not possibly have come up with myself as it just never would occur to me being beyond my life experience. I realised two things. I had a part in all of this for which I must make amends, and that I need to disregard the other persons wrongs completely. I made amends for my part, and the problem was solved - for me anyway. The other party had more lessons to learn and eventually had a series of relapses, though they eventually got sober.

August252015

Real talk from me this morning.

Right now, I am working to give up my resentment and anger at my husband for how he handled a situation yesterday with his fam. I had thought we were on the same page about it and apparently....not so much. I reacted with anger and confusion and some raised voice ness, and before I went to bed last night I apologized. We aren't through this situation and aftermath discussion....but I have prayed for me to understand his perspective on how he handled it and let it stay turned over to my HP.

We do best when taking a break of a few hours or til we can spend time talking the next day, so I imagine we will do tat more fully tonight. So, today, have expressed myself as much as possible including my part in the post mortem of his family time, I need to go about today focusing on service to others in action and spirit and remembering that love and its supporting actiones are priorities with him.