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Goodbye Jesus

Resentment


Margee

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I find the saying that "Acceptance is the key to happiness" is rather true. I try to accept people and circumstances just as they are and then decide to go from there. Some people need to be told off, some situations need you to wait and let themselves resolve, some areas of our lives need improvement, some people need to be avoided as they are not healthy for our psyches. With acceptance you don't pretend the situation isn't what it is. Then you go from there. The world is the way it is and it is myself who decides how to react to it.

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I find the saying that "Acceptance is the key to happiness" is rather true. I try to accept people and circumstances just as they are and then decide to go from there. Some people need to be told off, some situations need you to wait and let themselves resolve, some areas of our lives need improvement, some people need to be avoided as they are not healthy for our psyches. With acceptance you don't pretend the situation isn't what it is. Then you go from there. The world is the way it is and it is myself who decides how to react to it.

 

 

Right on! Another 'nail on the Head! Good words of wisdom! Thanks!

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When I investigated this word it said that - One thing which could easily cause a person to lose touch with his own feelings and to lose his natural sense of conscience, is an extremely painful childhood or adolescence. Such people have experienced so much pain that they shut themselves from it. This pain may have come from physical, sexual or emotional abuse. The end result though is similar. They do not experience their own pain, so they have no compassion for the pain of another. Nor do they have any empathy.

 

They are also likely to be extremely needy. In other words they have many, and deep, unmet emotional needs.. As adults, they have developed defense mechanisms in an attempt to block the pain coming from both these unmet needs.

 

In the absence of a conscience, behavior must be controlled by fear, guilt, threats and punishment. That's it! :twitch: This is what some people do! This is what the Church does when you leave!

That kind of sounds like me, although I don't think I've experienced nearly as much abuse as some people.. I've been able to experience my own pain a couple of times and it was definitely life changing. I'm grateful for that. There must be some hope for me because I was able to escape the religious dysfunctional part of my life.

 

From reading the posts I think I just need to understand other people and accept to be able to deal with my resentment. I have compassion for people but there's also a thick jungle of hate that I don't know how to get through. I don't know how to make myself experience the pain so I can get better, the couple of times I did it was just something that happened out of the blue.

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When I investigated this word it said that - One thing which could easily cause a person to lose touch with his own feelings and to lose his natural sense of conscience, is an extremely painful childhood or adolescence. Such people have experienced so much pain that they shut themselves from it. This pain may have come from physical, sexual or emotional abuse. The end result though is similar. They do not experience their own pain, so they have no compassion for the pain of another. Nor do they have any empathy.

 

They are also likely to be extremely needy. In other words they have many, and deep, unmet emotional needs.. As adults, they have developed defense mechanisms in an attempt to block the pain coming from both these unmet needs.

 

In the absence of a conscience, behavior must be controlled by fear, guilt, threats and punishment. That's it! :twitch: This is what some people do! This is what the Church does when you leave!

That kind of sounds like me, although I don't think I've experienced nearly as much abuse as some people.. I've been able to experience my own pain a couple of times and it was definitely life changing. I'm grateful for that. There must be some hope for me because I was able to escape the religious dysfunctional part of my life.

 

From reading the posts I think I just need to understand other people and accept to be able to deal with my resentment. I have compassion for people but there's also a thick jungle of hate that I don't know how to get through. I don't know how to make myself experience the pain so I can get better, the couple of times I did it was just something that happened out of the blue.

 

This is a really good point Chosen! I kinda feel this way too!

 

How does one get to 'acceptance'? Maybe, there is some grieving that should take place?

Can anyone help us with this please? :shrug:

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Sorta related to what Galien said, I had to learn that forgiving doesn't mean you have to forget. I was caught in a cycle of "I don't want to be angry, I'm going to pretend the situation that hurt me never happened", and then getting myself hurt in the same way again, over and over. When trying to break that cycle I was very resistant to the idea of forgiveness because I equated it with turning myself into a victim.

 

I've since learned that anger in small amounts can be good. I... have a part of me that feels overwhelming rage, that wants the world to end in fire and blood and one last surge of pain before everything goes numb. That is NOT healthy anger, but there is anger that is healthy. It's ok, for example, to feel a little angry at how poorly your body functions in the morning if you use it to get yourself out of bed and do something constructive to help yourself feel better. Then let go of the anger. It is ok to feel angry when someone says something hurtful to you, as long as you use that to stand up for yourself, declare your feelings, and work on improving communication between you and the person that hurt you so that it's less likely to happen in the future. I guess... helpless rage is bad and leads to resentment, but allowing yourself to use some anger towards a constructive end is ok and provides a feeling of accomplishment that makes the anger easier to let go of.

 

The tricky part is retaining enough emotional triggers about what went wrong to recognise and avoid such situations in the future, without getting trapped and dragged down by the bad memories. I'm still working on that. It does seem to be helping that I have a few memories of bad situations that were positively resolved that I can look back on, but those were all with good friends who worked with me on resolving the conflicts we'd had. It's harder with someone like my parents who I want to feel certain ways towards me and things I care about, but know they are too different from me to ever achieve that. I'm learning to let myself feel justified and ok with myself, and just trying to accept that I have no control over anyone else's thoughts.

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Sorta related to what Galien said, I had to learn that forgiving doesn't mean you have to forget. I was caught in a cycle of "I don't want to be angry, I'm going to pretend the situation that hurt me never happened", and then getting myself hurt in the same way again, over and over. When trying to break that cycle I was very resistant to the idea of forgiveness because I equated it with turning myself into a victim.

 

I've since learned that anger in small amounts can be good. I... have a part of me that feels overwhelming rage, that wants the world to end in fire and blood and one last surge of pain before everything goes numb. That is NOT healthy anger, but there is anger that is healthy. It's ok, for example, to feel a little angry at how poorly your body functions in the morning if you use it to get yourself out of bed and do something constructive to help yourself feel better. Then let go of the anger. It is ok to feel angry when someone says something hurtful to you, as long as you use that to stand up for yourself, declare your feelings, and work on improving communication between you and the person that hurt you so that it's less likely to happen in the future. I guess... helpless rage is bad and leads to resentment, but allowing yourself to use some anger towards a constructive end is ok and provides a feeling of accomplishment that makes the anger easier to let go of.

 

The tricky part is retaining enough emotional triggers about what went wrong to recognise and avoid such situations in the future, without getting trapped and dragged down by the bad memories. I'm still working on that. It does seem to be helping that I have a few memories of bad situations that were positively resolved that I can look back on, but those were all with good friends who worked with me on resolving the conflicts we'd had. It's harder with someone like my parents who I want to feel certain ways towards me and things I care about, but know they are too different from me to ever achieve that. I'm learning to let myself feel justified and ok with myself, and just trying to accept that I have no control over anyone else's thoughts.

 

Your right. Forgiving someone means letting go of the anger. It doesn't mean you pretend the other person can't hurt you again in the future. It doesn't mean you pretend the other person is better than they are. It doesn't even mean you re-establish positive feelings for the other person. It simply means letting go of the negative.

 

To some extent, I have done this with my ex-wife. I no longer feel the resentment towards her that I once did, though I bet there is still a little bit of resentment lurking in my brain somewhere. She is who she is and I can't expect her to be anything different. I certainly do not want her to ever be a part of my life again, but that doesn't mean I have to harbor resentment. With my wife's family, it is a similar thing with our neice. She will never amount to anything. She's a pathological liar. She's a thief, a crack whore (in the literal sense), and she's very narcissistic. She's a lost cause. That doesn't mean we resent her for all the drama she's caused in the past or wish bad things for her. But forgiving her for her past drama does not mean we are willing to allow her to be in a position to cause more for us. I'm polite to her when I see her, but at the same time, she's not allowed at our house.

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