Your stomach is all chewed up.
Tension across your shoulders. Headaches. Disturbed sleep, disjointed and disturbed dreams. Chronic irritability and an inability to concentrate. Not a pretty list is it? For me, these are just some of the physical symptoms that come with holding a grudge.
Someone wounds you, there is an injustice. It hurts. You hold onto the incident, allowing it to fester and brew, to gain power over you. You nurture it, holding and caressing it – ‘it’s not fair, look what they did to me, I don’t deserve this, I’ve been wronged, I want everyone to know what they did, how can I go on now‘ – and it takes root.
And of course, resentment grows, and the root has a name – bitterness. And you know what, bitterness will eat you alive, digested slowly from the inside with pain, unpleasantness, loss of joy. You name it. It will suck the life out of you.
The cost of holding a grudge.
As someone once very wisely said:
Bitterness is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die”
When we are wronged – the Wrongee – we very naturally feel hurt, wounded, and a sense of injustice, and often we want others to know what harm we have befallen. We want the person who hurt us – the Wronger – to have their comeuppance.
And it is important that we own those feelings and acknowledge them. Pushing them down into the deepest recesses of ourselves will not help, those emotions will only grow of their own accord and suddenly spring out of us when least expected.
I have written about emotions often, and you can read more here about the importance of allowing yourself to feel all the emotions you do feel, without judgement, and here on the importance of not suppressing our emotions.
What can we do differently?
But – and here is the key – once we have owned those feelings, we then choose to reflect on what happened and learn what we can for our own character growth, and then LET THEM GO before a grudge is formed. Because ironically, the chances are the Wronger may be blissfully unaware and going about their business with gusto and cheerfulness whilst the Wrongee suffers and is eaten alive with bitterness.
Choosing to let go of the hurt, not holding onto a grudge, and – here is the even trickier part – to forgive the Wronger – is our route back to our sense of peace and self.
I have been musing here recently on common death bed regrets, and this is one of them:
Having courage to express our feelings.
Holding a grudge is one very damaging outworking of not expressing our feelings. I am not of course advocating that we go around telling everyone how much they have wounded and angered us. But I am suggesting that it is important that we acknowledge and own to ourselves how we ARE feeling, especially when we feel we have been wronged or wounded.
There will be many other occasions when it might be our preferred behaviour to not own or express our feelings.
We might be seeking to win approval or have people-pleasing tendencies and find it hard to express our own voice.
Perhaps anger issues get in the way, we don’t know how to express that safely and thus anger and resentment build internally.
Or it might be that we have been brought up to fear big emotions and so keep them locked away inside, no matter what they are.
How do we express emotions safely?
Once we have named how we ARE feeling to ourselves, and allowed ourselves to experience those emotions, we are then in a much better position to decide what to do about how we feel.
It might be that there is something that WE need to take responsibility for, some area of our own character that needs attention.
Perhaps we do need to go and have a conversation with someone who has wounded us, but do so calmly and seeking the best outcome for both parties.
Or it might be that we can practice expressing our feelings and seeing what happens:
We might say ‘no’ calmly and kindly to a request that we actually really don’t want to do.
Maybe we allow ourselves to get a little bit excited about something that is joy-filled, rather than fearing what others might think.
There is more here on why paying attention to feelings like anxiety, overwhelm, sadness and excitement is important and how that information can empower our choices. And more helpful input here on emotional management.
But this week, notice how you ARE feeling, and what it means to express those feelings kindly, safely, respectfully but not keep them locked up inside. This is an important aspect of living true to oneself.
How do I feel? What do I need to do with those feelings? Food for thought.
