How to process anger and resentment
Anger and resentment can be the most difficult emotions to metabolize. Often when we experience either/both of these feelings, they can detonate internally — I suck! I should know better! I am so mad at myself! — or they detonate externally — You suck! You should know better! I am so mad at you! And the reality is that so many of us choose the former over the latter in order to keep the peace.
When I work with clients regarding anger, a big theme is how scary anger can be. Often, the work requires exploring your anger narratives. Here are some reflection questions for you to consider:
What story do you believe about “anger”?
How was anger shown, felt, or processed in your family growing up?
Who was allowed to be angry? Who wasn’t?
Today, what are you angry about?
When you feel anger, what other emotions come up?
For many, anger can be an automatic sign that something is bad or punishable. This makes conflict resolution a difficult experience because you may believe that in order to feel at peace in a relationship, there shouldn’t be any conflict. That anger should cease to exist altogether. But this is not realistic. Many of you were not modeled conflict resolution — only conflict.
If communicating anger is still difficult for you, consider ways to move it through your body to allow yourself permission to experience it without having to articulate it.
Can Anger Be Healthy?
Yes, it can! Anger in itself is just an emotion like any other emotion. However, we have been conditioned to believe it’s bad, because when it’s not managed or controlled, we believe it to be dangerous and unhealthy.
If we are aggressive, passive-aggressive, or suppressing anger we aren’t managing it in healthy ways, but anger is often a sign that we need to be assertive and speak up for what we feel, need, or advocate. If we don’t, this unprocessed anger can lead to resentment.
If you are aggressive or passive aggressive, you are doing yourself a disservice when it comes to knowing yourself and connecting with a loved one. If you suppress your anger, you may actually be physically hurting yourself because suppressed anger can lead to depression, hypertension, high blood pressure and more.
Anger is often alerting you to what you feel threatened by. It’s inviting you in to learn more about your needs, your relational patterns and dynamics, and it’s asking you to explore: Do I need to protect myself from a real threat, or is this a perceived threat that I want to unlearn and explore why it feels this way
Processing resentment is not easy, but it’s a gift you can give yourself
When you keep holding people to the expectations you have of them beyond their capacity to meet them you will be disappointed and even more you will constantly be hurting yourself.
A lot of times our built up resentment is a product of us not managing our expectations and constantly being disappointed in our loved ones. Here’s a video I recently made that really resonated with a lot of folks:
Keep reading for:
Tips on how to work through resentment
What ‘acceptance’ really means
And a few gentle yet hard truths about resentment that you may be avoiding
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