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Hello, everybody and welcome back to the psychology of your 20s.
The podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology.
Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show.
Welcome back to the podcast.
New listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world.
It is so great to have you here back for another episode as we of course break down the psychology of our 20s.
All right. We talk a lot about emotions on this podcast that is basically my bread and butter.
We've spoken about anger and envy and heartbreak, happiness, everything in between.
But one that we have missed all this time is resentment.
And I was kind of thinking about why.
And the reason I came to is probably because it's kind of an ugly emotion.
At least that is what I think society would like to convince us.
Resentment is that deep sense that we have been wronged, that we have, you know, been double crossed, treated unfairly, mistreated.
And sometimes people confuse that with entitlement and feeling like we deserve more or better than what we have received.
I tend to disagree. I think the root of resentment is respect and a sense of fairness.
And when we feel resentful of somebody, it shows that we respect ourselves enough.
And we have enough sense of self worth and self-esteem to know when somebody has crossed a line.
We're not always the best at handling that resentment though.
Even if it does come from a justified place, it can sometimes blind us, blind us with disappointment, blind us with anger or bitterness.
It can cause us to lash out or sometimes to end relationships.
We otherwise would have saved.
I think it's the behavioral response to resentment that is what we see as ugly.
But more than that, it's our shame.
It's our shame around how our resentment causes us to act and to behave.
So few of us have been really taught how to manage reactions like the ones caused by resentment.
And what can emerge is a pattern of suppression and eventually explosion.
I've been considering this a lot in my own life recently, especially when it comes down to friendship.
And it's something I know I really have to reach some kind of peace with.
To be vulnerable for a second, I think I've definitely been feeling a bit of resentment around feeling taken advantage of or like my efforts and some of my friendships have been taken for granted recently.
And it's left me feeling kind of bitter and unacknowledged.
Unacknowledged is probably the best word for it.
And what I've come to realize is that when it comes to resentment, you have three options.
And only one of them is actually helpful.
You can let it control you, which often means fixating on past grievances or trying to justify your emotions, not letting bygones be bygones.
You can let it consume your life and your relationships without ever giving anybody the opportunity to address it or to give you a differing version of reality.
You could ignore it, which is basically the same as the above.
It just delays the inevitable.
It's going to produce the same outcome.
Your resentment will take control and most likely result in some kind of loss.
It's not to say that sometimes that's necessary.
Sometimes people have wrong to you and your resentment is coming from a healthy place.
But the final option, and I think that involves the example I just gave is sitting with it, validating your response and why it was only natural to kind of feel that you're not going to be able to do it.
It's not natural to kind of feel that way given the circumstances.
You can really take away the shame of feeling what others might call entitled or what others might call ugly.
And a step beyond that, you can address it with those around you.
I think maturing is realizing that bringing up grievances or slights or problems is actually one of the biggest signs that you truly care about the other person, you care about the relationship.
But also you care about yourself enough to endure the awkwardness and the tension of trying to improve things.
It really does show a commitment to wanting to be there or at least a commitment to giving yourself some kind of answer.
So I think resentment is such a maze.
It's such a complicated emotion.
Let's talk about how we can navigate it today.
I want to speak on its psychological origins, its purpose, even though it's a quote unquote ugly emotion.
We know all emotions have a function.
But also its consequences and its expression.
How we can find a healthy resolution despite our often knee-jerk reaction to lash out in response to resentment.
Whatever it is that has called you to this episode, whether it is a lack of recognition at your job and unequal friendship or relationship and unresolved conflict, a broken promise.
I hope you can find some answers and if not, at least you find some clarity and some information.
So without further ado, let's get into it.
resentment has a lot of different sources.
The biggest one being a sense of unfairness or mistreatment as we spoke of before.
Each of us has some kind of perception about how we should be treated and what we deserve from those around us.
It's something that we develop pretty early on by watching how others are treated, experiencing how our parents treat us.
What they tell us is right or wrong.
How we feel when we are treated poorly and of course our self-esteem and our sense of self-worth.
Things that we commonly believe we deserve are pretty basic.
I would say these aren't controversial.
Every single person alive today deserves respect and recognition, deserves kindness, reciprocity.
We want to feel like our emotional, physical, social, mental, all those contributions are matched.
We want to feel valued and loved and cared for.
These are often our basics, the bare minimum of what is expected from others as a human being.
And if you have a healthy sense of self-esteem and sense of self-worth, you don't feel like it's too much to ask for for people to meet these emotional needs or these basics of respect knowing that you would treat them the same way.
These are, as I said, the fundamental, the most basic things.
Obviously the more we trust someone, the more we may come to expect from them.
Yes, your boyfriend or your best friend and a stranger on the street should both show you respect and kindness.
But we might expect our best friend to show us things like generosity, more reciprocity, more kindness than we would expect from a stranger.
Studies have shown that resentment is most powerful when it is felt towards someone close to us.
We are less likely to experience as intense amount of resentment towards that stranger than towards someone that we love because our expectations of them and our trust in them is more significant is higher.
Essentially, resentment emerges when our expectations about how we should be treated based on the individual, based on the context and our actions.
Our expectations are not met.
And this can be triggered by a number of experiences like being taken advantage of, maybe you're always paying for everything, you are always giving people gifts, never getting thank you, you're always putting down gas money and never getting that reciprocated.
Another example is being put down or comments or criticisms that you think are unfair.
You feel like someone is not seeing the situation the way you are or giving you credit.
Maybe you resent them for an assumption that they've made about you without full information or the fact that they feel like you don't have enough self respect and that you would allow them to speak to you that way.
Being dismissed I think also fits into this category feeling overlooked or unheard like it work when you put in the long hours and they don't turn into a promotion or a pay rise.
Having your feelings or your interested neglected by someone you thought would care is another pretty serious example.
An example of this that really comes to mind for me is cheating.
How can you not feel resentment around something like that being so vulnerable and open and trusting someone letting them see you and kind of finding out that perhaps they just don't care.
I think this comes back to perhaps the biggest source of personal and relational resentment.
Having these kinds of relationships with people who insist that their needs are more important than your own.
It's interesting because a friend of mine was telling me the other day about how unfortunately her parents are getting divorced after being married for nearly 30 odd years.
She was really fine with me sharing the story but she was explaining to me that her mom had basically never recovered from being the one who gave up her career and it was meant to be temporary but then her siblings were born and eventually her dad basically had convinced her to stay at home permanently.
Here she was years later feeling like she hadn't fulfilled her potential, harboring a decade's long resentment around her needs not being as important that she'd never really processed.
Her needs were being put second, she had these desires and these intentions for her life and she kind of resented I guess my friend's dad for never taking them seriously and I'm sure it's more complex than that but I think it's a really good example.
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