Untangle you

How can I be grateful when I feel so resentful?

Dr Kerry Howells

When we reflect on what we are grateful for and really bring this into our hearts, we are able to access an enormous power that can help us improve our wellbeing and grow our resilience. Indeed research shows that gratitude leads to more refreshing sleep and improved heart health and immune system functioning, and also improves mood, lowers fatigue, and protects against burnout.

We can access what I call ‘deep gratitude’ when we are motivated to give back in some way out of acknowledgment for what we receive. In this sense, gratitude moves from being just a feeling or a way of thinking to becoming an action. We change our focus from what we are grateful for to who we are grateful to.

When we express our gratitude to others in a meaningful and authentic way, we bring about a certain kind of recognition that only gratitude can achieve. This in turn greatly enhances not only our physical and emotional wellbeing, but also our relational wellbeing.

The impact of difficult relationships

But what happens when we can’t access this gratitude?

In my past 25 years of researching and teaching gratitude, the most prevalent question that arises from my participants, often with pain in their eyes, is how they can possibly be grateful when they feel they have been wronged by someone or bitterly disappointed by them in some way.

In terms of our health and happiness, this is probably one of the most important questions they could be asking. Research shows that difficult relationships lead to a 34% increased risk of heart problems, and are also a major cause of chronic stress, hypertension, inflammation and poor immune function.

No matter how hard we try to let it go and be the ‘bigger person’, sometimes it’s impossible to find gratitude in a difficult relationship. However, gratitude has an amazing power to illuminate where it is missing. We recognise that it’s impossible because what we are actually feeling is the very opposite of gratitude: resentment – that stuck feeling that festers and causes us to ruminate over a perceived injustice. Whereas gratitude awakens us to what we have been given, resentment makes us linger over what we feel has been taken away from us. 

Everyday resentment

We are not talking about traumatic resentments here, but what I call the ‘everyday resentments’ which we tend to suppress or put up with in our lives. These don’t get much conscious attention because we often feel ashamed or pressured to be a ‘grateful person’ who only has positive thoughts about others.

We might also feel that we should have moved on because the grievance seems trivial. Maybe we feel the need to keep the peace or the status quo.

No doubt you have experienced everyday resentments in your life: a sibling you feel was favoured by your parents; a neighbour who won’t deal with their barking dog; a workmate who is promoted ahead of you; a partner who doesn’t do their share of the housework or looking after the children.

These everyday resentments keep simmering away, robbing us of joy and wreaking havoc on our health, relationships and workplaces. They also often dominate our decision-making.

Moving from resentment and towards gratitude

Firstly, this is not about replacing resentment with gratitude. That would be just like putting a positive veneer over a situation that is crying out for attention.

However, understanding that gratitude and resentment are opposite states of being can help us see that every time we move away from resentment, we are making a move towards gratitude. As such, identifying our resentment and trying to do something about it is an important and powerful gratitude practice. 

However, to take up this kind of gratitude practice is no small feat. Such a move often requires humility and courage. We are outsmarting resentment, which runs by the logic that usually tells us we should wait around (often for years) for the other person to do the work and the apologizing.

In actual fact the person who is most harmed by our resentment is ourselves. As Nelson Mandela famously said, ‘Resentment is like drinking poison, and then hoping it will kill your enemies.’ Indeed, the other person may not even be aware of the pain they have caused us.

Gratitude practices for addressing resentment

In the context of moving from resentment towards gratitude, it’s important to remember that gratitude is a practice in which we are not trying to be perfect, and we are certainly not trying to be grateful in all the difficult relationships we are facing.

The following are just a few examples of gratitude practices that are relevant to moving from resentment and towards gratitude. Many more are offered in my book, Untangling you: How can I be grateful when I feel so resentful?

• Self-gratitude

One of the most contentious areas of considering gratitude as a way of being is the thought of being able to express it to those who have harmed us, or in inequitable or unjust situations that are crying out for our concern and action. If we are not able to express gratitude in those situations, does that mean that we should give up trying to practise gratitude?

We should never forget gratitude to self in these kinds of situations. Self-regard, or what we might also call self-love, helps us establish a clearer position on how we wish to be treated by others. This is an important practice, allowing us to build our own strength and resilience first so we are able to address the pain others may have caused us.

• Identifying resentment

Just by giving those hurtful, murky, stuck feelings a name—resentment—and recognising its damaging effects on our wellbeing and those around us, we can be more empowered and motivated to do something about it.

Although it may take some time, we can gain a greater sense of objectivity and a greater sense of agency in a situation because we see that we can choose our response in moving forward. This opens the door for us to remember what we were grateful for about this person in the past.

• Choosing one difficult relationship at a time

If we embark on a conscious practice of gratitude, we are more likely to give priority to relationships. This includes those relationships where we find it hard to express gratitude, as this is where the greatest impact can be made, and often where the greatest personal growth can occur.

To start, we might take one difficult relationship where we recognise feelings of resentment and make this our focus for a period of time. It is best to choose a situation just a little out of our comfort zone rather than one that may require professional help.

If we can start to address our resentment in these ways, gratitude can play its important role in giving us better health, peace and harmony, both in our lives and our community.

By Dr Kerry Howells