August 21, 2025 • 39 mins
Why do some things sit heavy in our chest for weeks, months, even years - while others seem to slide right off? In today’s episode, we’re unpacking the psychology of resentment, exploring why letting go can feel so hard, and what our grudges might actually be trying to tell us about ourselves. Grudges are often dismissed as petty or immature, but they’re rarely that simple. They’re emotional archives - stories we keep retelling in our minds, not just to stay angry, but to make sense of hurt, to assert boundaries, or to reclaim a sense of control. Whether it’s a betrayal from years ago or a passive-aggressive comment from last week, the feelings linger for a reason.
We explore:
• The psychological function of holding a grudge
• How rumination and memory shape emotional pain
• The role of power, justice, and unmet needs in long-term resentment
• How resentment harms us more than them
• Why forgiveness isn’t the same as forgetting
• Tools for emotional processing and (maybe) letting go
If you want to get curious about what your lingering anger is pointing to, this episode is for you.
Listen to my NEW PODCAST, Mantra: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Ckds0BoJDDpODInN9cWcc?si=b6ad5d555c1940e0
Follow Jemma on Instagram: @jemmasbeg
Follow the podcast on Instagram: @thatpsychologypodcast
For business: psychologyofyour20s@gmail.com
The Psychology of your 20s is not a substitute for professional mental health help. If you are struggling, distressed or require personalised advice, please reach out to your doctor or a licensed psychologist.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
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 twenties. Before we begin, I just
want to let you know that this episode is actually
a collab episode with my other podcast, Mantra, So if
(00:46):
you would like a more succinct, spiritually minded version of
this episode to get you started before we dive into
the psychology and the research, do check it out. I'll
leave a link in the description. But as for our
subject matter today, we are diving into a topic that
I think everyone has experienced in some way or another,
(01:07):
even if you don't always want to admit it, something
that can kind of simmer in the background for days,
for months, sometimes years. We are talking about grudges. I'll
be honest, and I don't feel great admitting this, but
I have held grudges for like a decade for many,
(01:30):
many years, even after a person is long gone from
my life, even after I am sure they have grown
and they have matured, as have I this there is
this lingering feeling of anger and resentment that has stayed
and that comes up from time to time. The thing is,
I know for a fact I'm not alone. I know
for a fact that none of us are innocent of
(01:52):
this because holding grudges, well, it turns out, surprise, surprise,
is a lot more universal and human than we think,
and is linked some very core human behaviors. So today
I really want to ask the question, what are those
core behaviors? Why do we hold grudges? What purpose do
they serve? And more importantly, what do they actually secretly
(02:14):
reveal about our emotional needs, our relationships, and the story
of our life that we are almost telling ourselves. Because
underneath this resentment, underneath this kind of bitterness, there's usually
something deeper and quite soft that we don't want to acknowledge.
You know, there is a boundary that was crossed, There
(02:36):
is a part of you that felt unseen. There is
a story that you haven't finished telling. And that's why
the grudge stays, even when it doesn't really seem to
serve a purpose anymore. This part of you that has
felt hurt or injured just really isn't ready to let
it go because they still don't feel like they have closure.
And when we understand there's a lack of closure as
(02:56):
a reason for our resentment and as a reason for
holding on to grudges, we understand them a lot better
and in a more complex way that goes beyond just
forgiveness or black and white thinking. You know, this person
was the villain, this person was the victim, this person
was good, this person was bad. Nothing, ever, is that
(03:19):
simple when humans are involved, and this topic is included,
grudges are included in that matter. So whether you are
nursing a silent grudge or you're just trying to figure
out how to stop feeling this kind of anger towards
someone else, how to process the pain. If you're wondering
should I like go or maybe should I hold on
(03:39):
a little bit longer, this episode is most certainly for
you today. Let's unpack the psychology of grudges and why
they seem to matter to us. Stay with us. So
let's get something very very clear. What is a grudge
(04:02):
really and what is it not. What's different about a
grudge compared to a fleeting moment of anger or sadness
is the persistence of the feeling. It is this persistent
feeling of resentment or malice that has resulted from a
past insult, a past offense that actively lingers and does
(04:24):
not go away. Psychologically, a grudge involves one core ingredient,
and that core ingredient is active rumination. That is that
for something to be a grudge, we have to be
repeatedly dwelling on the offense, repeatedly analyzing it from every angle,
re experiencing the negative emotions associated with it for it
(04:46):
to have the kind of hold that it does over us.
It's not simply I haven't forgotten. It's I haven't forgotten
and emotionally I am still bothered by it, and that's
why it feels like it matters. One study conducted by
researchers at York University in England, they theorized that the
(05:06):
act of holding a grudge is actually a cyclical process
that is characterized by negative emotions and intrusive thoughts that
continue to kind of trigger each other and impact our
quality of life. Participants. In the study, they conveyed that
whilst the intensity of the negative thoughts and the emotions
(05:27):
may dwindle over time, the underlying negativity connected to that
memory or event is always kind of in the background.
It is always ready to be summoned at any point.
So whilst grudges don't necessarily have to be all consuming
every single day, there is a negativity there that is
(05:48):
lying dormant and is very much ready to be reignited
when it feels like it's going to serve a purpose.
So there are a few compelling reasons why our mind
might default to holding on rather than letting go. The
first is that some people just unfortunately have a harder
(06:09):
time releasing resentment. It's just in their personality. According to
research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
individuals high in neuroticism, which is a personality it's very
similar to anxiety, they are more likely to ruminate on
negative experiences, making it harder for them to move on
(06:29):
or harder for them to reframe those events in a
neutral light, meaning that they have a higher collection higher
prevalence of grudges. A similar study also found that people
with an insecure attachment style are also more prone to
grudges and also individuals with ADHD, particularly people whose ADHD
(06:52):
presents itself through a strong sense of justice and fairness,
or who have rejects and sensitivity disorder RSD alongside the ADHD.
I was reading about this on Reddit actually the other day,
and it's a Reddit page for women with ADHD, and
there were literally hundreds of individuals talking about small slides
(07:16):
from years ago or decades ago that they just couldn't
let go of that they really wanted to, and all
of them said it got worse when the adh symptom
ADHD symptoms got worse as well, so it seemed kind
of connected to a larger cluster of things that were
going on. Now. This is still an area of emerging research,
(07:39):
but it could be one part of the explanation for
you if you feel like, compared to friends compared to relatives,
grudges just sit heavier with you compared to them. On
a more general level, I think the reason that humans
in general seem hardwired towards remembering over forgetting is because
our memory and our bil to recall specific events, it's
(08:02):
not particularly honest or objective. It is highly selective. It
is a strategically biased filter. We remember only what emotionally
resonates with us, but we of course also only remember
it from our perspective and through the lens with which
we originally viewed or experiencing something happening, So there's no
(08:27):
way to tell what the objective truth is. Your opinion
is always going to be involved. We also tend to
remember pain and negative experiences more vividly and more persistently
than ones that are positive or ones that involve pleasure.
So this is known in psychology, specifically in cognitive psychology,
as a negativity bias. Almost all of us have this
(08:48):
pessimistic optimistic Whatever you are, there is a part of you,
from an evolutionary standpoint, that we'll always prefer to remember
negative things of positive things. Think about it this way.
It was much more important for you as an ancient
human to know where the poisonous snake lived or to
(09:12):
know where the predator alerked, rather than to know where
the berries grew. Yes, the barriers are nice and they're lovely,
but the snake and the predator, they are the thing
that is really going to cost you. This was really
crucial for our survival. Our ancestors who quickly learned from
negative encounters were more likely to live another day. Of course,
(09:32):
environmental information isn't the only thing that's important. Social information
is also really valuable to us. So the dangers that
may have been present back back in ancient times are
present in a new form. They're more present socially and
through what we perceive as social threats. So if someone
(09:53):
wrongs us, if someone does something that really hurts us,
that feels not just painful but threatening, and so it
gets tagged in our memory storage system as a high priority.
Because it has been tagged that way, it is encoded
with a greater emotional intensity, It triggers stronger psychological response,
(10:14):
and is therefore, in the future more easily recalled, especially
when we encounter similar situations, or we encounter similar people,
or even when we just encounter internal triggers beyond just
you know, memory and the strangeness of our memory systems.
As humans, holding a grudge can feel like a vital
(10:36):
act of self protection. If someone hurt you deeply in
the past, your mind might cling to that resentment as
a really powerful psychological shield, but also as an emotional
barrier that is designed to prevent future pain. It's often
this very deceptive internal declaration that says, if I can
(10:59):
tell you to be angry, it means that this isn't
gonna happen again, because I will be on God and
I will know to be prepared for it. Clinging to
the grudge kind of ensures that you don't forget the
bitter lesson that you learn from the injustice, and as
a result, you continue to be hyper aware of future
(11:20):
potential threats. So you save yourself. You stop yourself from
being naive, you stop yourself from trusting too easily, and
therefore you stop yourself from experiencing pain. It's actually quite
sad when you think about it. You know, one bad egg,
one bad fruit. I think, what's the saying one bad
bad fruit spoils the whole bunch. One bad human who
(11:42):
does something terrible might make you hypervigilant for the rest
of your life. For some I think it also again
helps you reinforce a necessary boundary. The fact that the
grudge is still there means that you'll never let this
person back into your life because you have a constant
reminder of how they made you. This can be a
very genuinely adaptive behavior in the case of harmful or
(12:06):
abusive relationships where you know, maintaining no contact is crucial
for safety. However, this same mechanism can become maladaptive when
it kind of keeps everyone out, when it stops you
from letting there be new opportunities for genuine connection, for empathy,
(12:26):
for positive healing experiences with people who aren't going to
hurt you. Well, you know, the intention is undeniably perhaps
a good one, and it is protective. I think the
long term effect can be profoundly self isolating. You know,
we do possess a very primal need for justice. The
thing that really contributes to this is what we know
(12:47):
is the just world hypothesis. Basically, beyond just wanting to
protect ourselves, we all kind of want to believe deep
down that the world is fundamentally fair and that people
generally they get what they deserve. If they do bad things,
bad things will come back to them. If they're good
and kind, the world will be good and kind to them.
(13:10):
When a profound or seemingly arbitrary injustice happens to us,
when someone does something bad and they get away with it,
it really shatters this comforting illusion, and that is what
causes us to feel even worse and to perhaps question
life in a way that's kind of kind of distressing.
(13:33):
You know, if someone does something bad to you and
they get away with it, Suddenly you're thinking, what's the
point of me being good? If they get to be
awful and still get a good life. Why am I
trying so hard to be good? Wouldn't it be easier
to just not care about other people? Wouldn't it be
easier to just not be good? Obviously we don't all
want to think that way, So holding a grudge can
(13:55):
be kind of a subconscious antidote to that discomfort me
holding a grudge me not forgetting that is their punishment.
That means that karma has worked, because there is this
like lingering thought that I have about them that is
sitting over their head. We feel like the world is
(14:15):
very again because somewhere in your brain they haven't gotten
away with it. So, in some ways, holding a grudge
can be a very desperate, if ultimately futile, attempt to
return the world to how you think it should operate
and how you know we want it to operate. It
returns a very fragile sense of internal order. I think
(14:35):
potentially the most deceptive reason And one of the final
reasons we hold onto grudges comes from the fact that
it provides a sense of control. And that's where all
these explanations are kind of leading. When an injustice occurs
and we feel utterly vulnerable, that's a very very shaky feeling,
(14:57):
it's a very uncomfortable feeling, and it can make us
really again ask some very big questions of the world.
How could this happen? You know? How does this person
get to hurt me and get away with it? How
was this allowed to occur? Do I really have any
(15:18):
sense of control? You know? The answer is you probably don't.
But if you cling to the resentment, and you cling
to the grudge again, it reinforces that perhaps you can
do something about it. It's also the same reason why
we may replay over and over again hypothetical confrontations or
pretend arguments that you might have with this person. These illusions,
(15:41):
these imaginations provide once again a powerful but illusory belief
that we are still dictating this narrative. But here's the
stark and kind of undeniable reality. We may feel like
we're in control with the grudge. We may feel like
it's protecting us. We may feel like it's justice, but
(16:02):
in reality, a grudge is always going to harm us
far more and far more consistently than it's going to
harm the original target. It sucks. But the fact is
is that the true pain of resentment is not one
that someone else can feel. It is one that we
are going to feel the full force of ourselves. And
(16:26):
so with that in mind, there has to be a
healthier approach to this. Knowing all the reasons that we
hold a grudge, despite all those reasons, there has to
be something that we can do about it. Surely, Well,
that's exactly what we're going to talk about. We're also
going to talk about again how the resentment and the
pain of a grudge does actually physically harm us and
(16:47):
why that's something to be aware of when you find
yourselves doing after this shortbreak. Okay, so the question that
we have for this part of the show is how
did grudges kind of linger in our bodies in invisible
but still painful ways. I saw this interview with none
(17:08):
other than Miley Cyrus the other day, super random. You
probably didn't think that her name was gonna show up
in this episode, but here we are. Anyways, Miley Cyrus.
She's doing this interview and she's talking about how she
has all this rage, and she had all this resentment,
and she had all these grudges towards people who had
wronged her, and she didn't let herself get angry about it.
(17:31):
She just let them stew. And after a while, she
was noticing that there was all this pain showing up
in her body, pain that she didn't understand for years.
And she realized that that pain was coming from the
fact that she never let herself feel the full emotion
behind her resentment. She wasn't able to let it go
because she hadn't had that release. This is a great
(17:53):
example of what a grudge can do. Now, obviously a
celebrity experience is one thing, but she is a real
person and how she explained it really resonated with me
because so many people feel this way but can't express it.
She had the platform to be able to explain what
she was experiencing and what she's experiencing. It's called samatization,
and it's a term that has been around for over
(18:16):
one hundred years, and it describes how our body actually harbors,
feels and is pained by emotions we don't release, i e.
A grudge I backed in what we're talking about today.
There was a paper written about this a few decades back,
actually in the late nineties, so a little bit dated now,
but still relevant, and it talks about this exact, exact
(18:38):
experience and all these instances where medical professionals will encounter
someone who has chronic pain, who is suffering, and they'll
do all the blood work, they'll look at all the
obvious biological signs of stress and of pain, and there
aren't any There is no reasonable explanation for it. But
then this person goes to therapy. This person starts talking
(19:01):
about their rage, starts talking about their resentments, starts talking
about the pain of their past, and their physical condition improves.
And these cases have always kind of shocked doctors because
they're like, what are you talking about, Like, surely you
must be taking some kind of medication, surely you must
do it, be doing it, must be exercising differently, something
else must be happening. But the thing is is that
(19:22):
they were looking at chronic pain as purely a physical thing,
when at times it can be an emotional thing. When
you hold onto a grudge, you constantly replay an offense
and all that rage, all that anger, all that fear
and frustration and sadness, it comes rushing back to your body,
and so your body is going to respond as if
you are in a perpetual, ongoing state of threat. There
(19:45):
is this very interesting idea that your body actually can't
tell the difference between its imagination and what's happening in
real time, or an idea or a vision that you
can cock for it, and a real offense. And so
just thinking about a previous grudge or a previous thing
that happened to you that hurt you is equally as
triggering as that thing happening to you right now. Because
(20:07):
this relentlessly activates your fight or flight system, a very
ancient stress response. You start to really feel it in
your body. I know, when I think back to you know,
a time that I was hurt, I feel it like
in the center of my chest. I feel it like
a balloon that it's getting so big in like my
chest cavity that I can't burst it, but it won't
go away, like it's a tightness. It's every single one
(20:29):
of us can describe this pain. If you think about
someone who has harmed you in the past, you feel
a sudden tightness in your jaw, You feel adrenaline, You
feel this rising in your chest, like there are physical
reactions to things that we think only exists on an
emotional plane. You know, the phrase holding onto anger is
(20:50):
like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.
This is where it is incredibly relevant. In essence, carrying
a grudge is keeping your body in a state of
stress that it's only meant to be in temporarily, and
we continue to keep it in that state for years.
You think that by holding the memory of this past defense,
(21:10):
you're hurting someone else, or you're making sure they're not
getting away with it, but they actually don't know how
you're feeling, like you are not actually inflicting any kind
of pain or suffering on them because they don't know
You're the only person who was suffering is you. It's
experienced solely by you, and beyond these physical impacts, you know,
grudges also act as invisible emotional shackles because they involve
(21:34):
such a great deal of rumination. This anchors us to
a painful past, and it actually affects our capacity to
connect with new people. In one study published in twenty
twenty one research conducted very in depth interviews with dozens
of people about the grudges they held and who they
felt had harmed them in the past, and they found
that almost all of them had seen some lingering effect
(21:58):
of this feeling on their current relationships, on their friendships,
on their quality of life, and on how much they
chose or could trust other people. Many of them also
spoke about being trapped by their grudge. This emotional stuckness
is often caused by this lack of resolution. You know,
if a grievance is never communicated, or if an apology
(22:19):
is never delivered, or if it feels unsatisfactory, the wound
remains wide open. As humans, we have such weird little
creatures in that we hate stories that don't have an ending.
We just we can't deal with it. That's why it's
a whole genre of like uncomfortable TV and uncomfortable movies,
is movies that don't have endings because it just feels
(22:41):
so like weird to us, very naturally weird. Holding a
grudge is a story that has not ended. That is
why it feels so emotionally painful, even if they have died,
even if we haven't seen them in years. That doesn't
matter because to us the wound it feels like it
happened yesterday. That's what means we are unable to move on.
(23:04):
Often when we experience these emotional reactions of suddenly being
angry ten years later, suddenly feeling a sense or a
desire for revenge months after the fact, when we feel that,
we can be like, oh my god, I'm so immature.
Why can't I just like let this go? Like what's
wrong with me? Am I a bad person? That's not
(23:25):
the right way to think about it. This is actually
a very valid and natural human response. It is a
signal that a boundary has been crossed, that an injustice
has occurred. It's this thing though that it's not your fault,
but now it has become your responsibility, and how you
deal with it from here on out actually has nothing
(23:47):
to do with the other person and everything to do
with you and how you want to continue living your life.
Of course, this is absolutely easier said than done, especially
if we haven't been taught how to do this, especially
if there's unprocessed pain, especially if you think there is
an ongoing threat. But we do have to learn how
(24:08):
to shift this narrative from a grudge being about another
person to being about ourselves, and we have to shift
our ability to deal with the grudge from being like
this person needs to take responsibility, this person needs to
feel pain to I need to allow myself to feel peace,
and I actually owe it to myself to move beyond
(24:31):
this in spite of them. We can start by firstly,
like we've spoken about before, letting ourselves be angry. Anger
and rage have been painted as such impolite and dirty
emotions like there are a sign you can't emotionally regulate. Regulate,
and they are a sign that you know you are
(24:53):
just unbridled and you're gonna go off at any given point.
Actually letting yourself feel angry is a sign of emotional regulation.
Letting yourself just be upset in a safe way is
how you stop an emotion from making its home inside
of you and staying for decades. I think, especially for women,
(25:15):
I wish we would just let ourselves get fucking pissed
every now and again and not try and silence what
that might mean, and not try and silence ourselves because
we think it makes us a bad or unhinged person.
There are plenty of ways to express anger in a
way that is very productive, very healthy, and very safe. Firstly,
(25:36):
you can just scream it out. I remember when I
was at university, there was this creek behind some of
the old dorm rooms, like at my college on my campus,
and at night, like I have this distinct memory of
me and my friends going down there, and I think
one of like some guy I had just broken up
with one of my friends, and we someone was dealing
(25:57):
with some terrible man and some terrible teacher, whatever it was.
We just all like screamed. We just like screamed. I
hope there was no one like walking around there who
thought that we were distressed, but we were, like we
just got to let it out. And it was definitely
like an angry scream, not a fearful screen, and it
was euphoric. It felt amazing, like it felt like we
were high boxing classes as well. Such a good outlet.
(26:18):
Manual labor. If your neighbor needs some yard work done,
that is your opportunity. Chopping wood, raking leaves just like
gives those feelings somewhere to go. Some therapists also recommend
like full body shaking, where you just let your body
go loose and you dance wildly. They say that's a
very effective strategy, belting out angry songs in your car,
(26:40):
ripping up cardboards, smashing ice, rage rooms. You gotta find
your outlet. You have to get over this hurdle of
not letting yourself feel the emotion before you can start
to consider more complex pursuits like forgiveness, like moving forward,
like forgetting, because you can never forgive if the emotion
isn't ready to be let go or hasn't been released.
(27:03):
Let's talk about forgiveness now. I feel like I've been
dancing around this topic because I know it's somewhat controversial.
I said this in our episode over on Mantra, but
there is still no consensus within our society about whether
it's better to hold on forever, forgive but not forget,
forgive and forget, like no one really knows which camp
(27:27):
is best. Personally, though I've talked about this before, I
think that forgiveness is a form of self care, even
if it's not for everyone. For me, I see it
as a way to address what is hurting me or
what is hurting you, without necessarily needing the other person
to be involved, not even needing to know that you
(27:47):
have forgiven them. Psychologically, you know forgiveness is a deliberate
decision to release resentment, to release anger, to release the
desire for retribution towards someone else for your own sake,
not for their sake, because you understand that the burden
I guess for not forgiving is going to be greater.
(28:08):
It's an internal shift from I think, an emotional state
that is dominated by punitive emotions like anger and hatred
and revenge, to one characterized by more positive or at
least neutral emotions like peace, the acceptance of reality, and
even in some cases like compassion. Now, let's get very
(28:29):
crystal clear that forgiveness is not condoning the offense. It
is not excusing the person's actions. It's not erasing the
memory of the discomfort that they caused. There is a
big difference between forgiveness and reconciliation. Right, forgiveness is internal,
reconciliation is external. You can totally forgive someone without ever
(28:52):
having to interact with them again. In the cases of abuse,
repeated betrayal, ongoing harm, forgiveness is perhaps a possible act.
Reconciliation will maybe never be a possible act. That's the
real difference here because your primary responsibility is always going
to be your own safety and your own well being
and establishing healthy boundaries. It doesn't mean that what happened
(29:15):
was okay, and it absolutely doesn't mean that you have
to be friends with this person. It just means that
you are allowing yourself to be okay with the fact
that it did happen, and you're releasing the burden of
the grudge. Forgiveness also cannot be forced if you're not ready,
or if the act of trying to forgive actually causes
(29:37):
more distress, It's okay to wait or to focus on
other things or other coping strategies. First, I think it's
irresponsible for someone to approach someone else's pain by saying
there is a timeline for forgiveness and you are behind
on that timeline. When that person has an experience what
you've been through. You may never forgive it all, and
(29:57):
that's okay. But it is a gift to yourself if
it's one that you feel you're capable of delivering, And
I hope you realize that if the time is ever
right for you, if you ever want to forgive the
other person, they're not going to benefit from that this
isn't a gift for them, like again, it's a gift
(30:19):
for you. There is this researcher, his name is Everett Worthington.
He's a leading expert in forgiveness, and he really emphasizes
that the essence of this is about finding peace from
the pain of the past, not forgetting that it didn't
happen or not pretending that it didn't happen. And research
(30:39):
findings will at least tell you it does improve how
you're feeling and it can lessen the emotional pain. For example,
a twenty twenty three study looking into the effectiveness of
an intervention to promote forgiveness randomly assigned four five hundred
participants to either engage in exercises of rewriting their own
(31:01):
story from their perspective, or just to all out try
and forgive someone else. And what they found was that
the easiest way towards forgiveness is recognizing the role that
you did not play in this happening and recognizing that
the story was written by someone else and rewriting it
or rewriting the ending in a way that feels better
(31:23):
for you. And research will constantly say, like when we
do it, this way when we focus on I don't
know whether there was a lesson in that, whether there
was meaning for us when we focus on the fact
that we had no responsibility in it. This is significantly
linked to lower levels of anger, lower depressive symptoms, lower
(31:44):
levels of anxiety, improvements to sleep, less stress, the sense
of feeling lighter, all things that I think that we
can advocate and that we want for ourselves. It also
just frees up so much mental space to focus on
other things, and it means that actually the other person
hasn't won. They haven't one by being able to sit
(32:05):
in your brain for longer than they deserve, and to
being able to make a home in your mind, you
have won because they have done this terrible thing. You
have accepted that you can never understand why they did that,
and yet you have still chosen to choose peace, and
that means you have one on a whole other dimension
(32:27):
at least. I guess that's kind of how I see it.
So I think to give you a quick guide to
how we actually do this, I think there will be
good days, there will be bad days. First, the most
foundational step isn't a force forgiveness. It's just to acknowledge
that something happened, and it's to acknowledge that it was
unfair and that you do have anger towards it, and
(32:50):
just consciously kind of respect that that anger needs somewhere
to go and that is completely valid. Next, be honest
with yourself when no one is watching, when no one
is around you. Do you feel like this emotion is
actually making you feel better? Or is it making you
feel worse? Do you feel like the energy you're pouring
into holding this grudge is worthwhile? Is it consuming you
(33:15):
or is there a part of you that does maybe
want to live without it. Maybe part of that is
also recognizing what the grudge has rubbed from you already.
Recognizing this personal cost can also really help motivate you
to find on an approach that works. When we then
start to ask ourselves, what does this grudge represent? Is
(33:37):
where we really have those breakthroughs? You know, I've noticed
that often a grudge isn't about the event itself, but
it's about what it symbolizes. Someone rejects you, you hold
a grudge against them, but it's not because they rejected you.
It's because perhaps it touches on a deeper story you're
telling yourself about your worth, whether you deserve love. Maybe
someone betrays you, and yes, that sucks, But the pain
(33:58):
really comes from the fact that you could see it coming.
And maybe that means that you're not able to protect
yourself and that you don't feel safe. Maybe someone bullied
you as a child and you couldn't let it go.
It's not really about them. It's about the fact that
maybe when you were younger, you didn't feel protected and
you didn't feel like you could help yourself. You know,
(34:18):
there's always something beneath the surface. What is the story
that this grudge is keeping alive about who you are,
who you are as a person, or who you have been.
And here's a layer of forgiveness we often overlook, but
this is where it's absolutely vital. We need to also
in some ways forgive ourselves. When we hold grudges against others,
(34:39):
we frequently, I think, also harbor a silent, corrosive grudge
against ourselves. We might replay our own I guess role
in the past hurt even though we don't have a role.
We might ask very agonizing questions like, oh, how did
I let myself get treated like that? Why didn't I
speak up? Why did I trust them when, in fact,
(34:59):
like this, self condemnation has no place here. Like you
were not weak, you were not foolish. This criticism towards
yourself is getting you stuck, not just within the grudge,
but it's getting you stuck in a place of self
blame that is not helpful. Forgiveness towards someone else requires
(35:20):
an act of kindness and understanding towards ourselves and recognizing
that you did the best you could with the knowledge
and the emotional resources that you had at the time. Finally,
and this might sound controversial, I know I'm probably gonna
get pushed back, but ask yourself if the roles were reversed,
if this was me, would I want forgiveness? Would I
(35:41):
want someone to understand the reasons or decisions or just
plain stupidity that drove someone to do this thing? If
I had done this, would I want someone to forgive me?
If the answer is yes, the easiest answer we can get,
then I think that acknowledgment can make it easier for
you to have compassion for that other person, but also
(36:02):
compassion for yourself. If the answer is no, that's sometimes
just as liberating because it reconfirms that you could never
be like them. You could never stoop that low because
you are moral and kind and responsible and good, and
because you possess those traits and they don't, you have one.
(36:23):
You are officially the better person, full stop. And so
you forgiving them and choosing to move on, that's something
that they are now indebted to you for. You're the
bigger person, the braver person. You are the winner. And
you know what, I get that that sounds kind of egotistical,
but who cares. I think, whatever it takes to release
the emotional burden, you must do it. Grudges, yes, they
(36:49):
cost us. They're also universal, and there's something that we
can't always control. There is some deep ancient psychology that
wants to keep you trapped in a bad thought, in
a boat memory, in a bad time. But you also
have agency, and you have power to rethink whether that
is beneficial to you. Rethink, Hey, is this actually helping
(37:11):
me or harming me? And making that decision. You know,
as much as I have given you advice and I
have opinions, maybe you don't want to forgive someone. Maybe
the anger fuels you, maybe it feels nice. Maybe you
aren't dealing with the consequences of this, like other people are,
and if that's the case, that's entirely okay. I think
this is such an intimate and personal kind of conversation
(37:32):
because it is going to differ for everyone. But if
a grudge is costing you anything, I think it's important
to reevaluate whether that's something you want to give up
and whether you're willing to pay your dues to the
grudge or it's time to let it go. So I
hope this has been a nice introduction into how you
can do that, into the psychology behind it. I feel you,
I get you. There are grudges that I am still
(37:55):
trying to work through. I don't know. I was thinking
about this the other day. Like when I was like seven,
there was like this group of girls who bullied me
as a kid, and I saw one of them the
other day and I was immediately angry, and I was like,
what the heck? Like that was two decades ago. This
person has changed a lot, But grudges are irrational. So
as much as I'm sitting here preaching, there is still
stuff I need to work on. And so hopefully you
(38:16):
understand that this advice is also coming from someone who
is imperfect and is struggling with this just as much
as you are, But I hope we were able to
kind of learn something together. You can also share this
episode with someone else if you feel like it's something
they may need to hear. Share it to your Instagram.
If you want to give someone a silent message, then
maybe you're not over something. Just kidding that's unhealthy. Maybe
(38:38):
you don't do that, and make sure you leave us
a five star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you're listening.
It really does help the show to grow to reach
new people. Hopefully this episode will reach more people who
need to hear it. Maybe not, maybe it just sticks
with us. But if you have made it this far,
leave a little emoji down below of what a grudge
(38:59):
kind of represents to you, what it feels like in
your body, what it feels like in your mind. What's
a visual way that you can kind of deliver that
or show that feeling. I also want to thank Elizabeth Colbert,
our researcher, for her assistance on this episode. And until
next time, stay safe, be kind, be gentle with yourself,
(39:19):
and we will talk very very soon,
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
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 twenties. Before we begin, I just
want to let you know that this episode is actually
a collab episode with my other podcast, Mantra, So if
(00:46):
you would like a more succinct, spiritually minded version of
this episode to get you started before we dive into
the psychology and the research, do check it out. I'll
leave a link in the description. But as for our
subject matter today, we are diving into a topic that
I think everyone has experienced in some way or another,
(01:07):
even if you don't always want to admit it, something
that can kind of simmer in the background for days,
for months, sometimes years. We are talking about grudges. I'll
be honest, and I don't feel great admitting this, but
I have held grudges for like a decade for many,
(01:30):
many years, even after a person is long gone from
my life, even after I am sure they have grown
and they have matured, as have I this there is
this lingering feeling of anger and resentment that has stayed
and that comes up from time to time. The thing is,
I know for a fact I'm not alone. I know
for a fact that none of us are innocent of
(01:52):
this because holding grudges, well, it turns out, surprise, surprise,
is a lot more universal and human than we think,
and is linked some very core human behaviors. So today
I really want to ask the question, what are those
core behaviors? Why do we hold grudges? What purpose do
they serve? And more importantly, what do they actually secretly
(02:14):
reveal about our emotional needs, our relationships, and the story
of our life that we are almost telling ourselves. Because
underneath this resentment, underneath this kind of bitterness, there's usually
something deeper and quite soft that we don't want to acknowledge.
You know, there is a boundary that was crossed, There
(02:36):
is a part of you that felt unseen. There is
a story that you haven't finished telling. And that's why
the grudge stays, even when it doesn't really seem to
serve a purpose anymore. This part of you that has
felt hurt or injured just really isn't ready to let
it go because they still don't feel like they have closure.
And when we understand there's a lack of closure as
(02:56):
a reason for our resentment and as a reason for
holding on to grudges, we understand them a lot better
and in a more complex way that goes beyond just
forgiveness or black and white thinking. You know, this person
was the villain, this person was the victim, this person
was good, this person was bad. Nothing, ever, is that
(03:19):
simple when humans are involved, and this topic is included,
grudges are included in that matter. So whether you are
nursing a silent grudge or you're just trying to figure
out how to stop feeling this kind of anger towards
someone else, how to process the pain. If you're wondering
should I like go or maybe should I hold on
(03:39):
a little bit longer, this episode is most certainly for
you today. Let's unpack the psychology of grudges and why
they seem to matter to us. Stay with us. So
let's get something very very clear. What is a grudge
(04:02):
really and what is it not. What's different about a
grudge compared to a fleeting moment of anger or sadness
is the persistence of the feeling. It is this persistent
feeling of resentment or malice that has resulted from a
past insult, a past offense that actively lingers and does
(04:24):
not go away. Psychologically, a grudge involves one core ingredient,
and that core ingredient is active rumination. That is that
for something to be a grudge, we have to be
repeatedly dwelling on the offense, repeatedly analyzing it from every angle,
re experiencing the negative emotions associated with it for it
(04:46):
to have the kind of hold that it does over us.
It's not simply I haven't forgotten. It's I haven't forgotten
and emotionally I am still bothered by it, and that's
why it feels like it matters. One study conducted by
researchers at York University in England, they theorized that the
(05:06):
act of holding a grudge is actually a cyclical process
that is characterized by negative emotions and intrusive thoughts that
continue to kind of trigger each other and impact our
quality of life. Participants. In the study, they conveyed that
whilst the intensity of the negative thoughts and the emotions
(05:27):
may dwindle over time, the underlying negativity connected to that
memory or event is always kind of in the background.
It is always ready to be summoned at any point.
So whilst grudges don't necessarily have to be all consuming
every single day, there is a negativity there that is
(05:48):
lying dormant and is very much ready to be reignited
when it feels like it's going to serve a purpose.
So there are a few compelling reasons why our mind
might default to holding on rather than letting go. The
first is that some people just unfortunately have a harder
(06:09):
time releasing resentment. It's just in their personality. According to
research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
individuals high in neuroticism, which is a personality it's very
similar to anxiety, they are more likely to ruminate on
negative experiences, making it harder for them to move on
(06:29):
or harder for them to reframe those events in a
neutral light, meaning that they have a higher collection higher
prevalence of grudges. A similar study also found that people
with an insecure attachment style are also more prone to
grudges and also individuals with ADHD, particularly people whose ADHD
(06:52):
presents itself through a strong sense of justice and fairness,
or who have rejects and sensitivity disorder RSD alongside the ADHD.
I was reading about this on Reddit actually the other day,
and it's a Reddit page for women with ADHD, and
there were literally hundreds of individuals talking about small slides
(07:16):
from years ago or decades ago that they just couldn't
let go of that they really wanted to, and all
of them said it got worse when the adh symptom
ADHD symptoms got worse as well, so it seemed kind
of connected to a larger cluster of things that were
going on. Now. This is still an area of emerging research,
(07:39):
but it could be one part of the explanation for
you if you feel like, compared to friends compared to relatives,
grudges just sit heavier with you compared to them. On
a more general level, I think the reason that humans
in general seem hardwired towards remembering over forgetting is because
our memory and our bil to recall specific events, it's
(08:02):
not particularly honest or objective. It is highly selective. It
is a strategically biased filter. We remember only what emotionally
resonates with us, but we of course also only remember
it from our perspective and through the lens with which
we originally viewed or experiencing something happening, So there's no
(08:27):
way to tell what the objective truth is. Your opinion
is always going to be involved. We also tend to
remember pain and negative experiences more vividly and more persistently
than ones that are positive or ones that involve pleasure.
So this is known in psychology, specifically in cognitive psychology,
as a negativity bias. Almost all of us have this
(08:48):
pessimistic optimistic Whatever you are, there is a part of you,
from an evolutionary standpoint, that we'll always prefer to remember
negative things of positive things. Think about it this way.
It was much more important for you as an ancient
human to know where the poisonous snake lived or to
(09:12):
know where the predator alerked, rather than to know where
the berries grew. Yes, the barriers are nice and they're lovely,
but the snake and the predator, they are the thing
that is really going to cost you. This was really
crucial for our survival. Our ancestors who quickly learned from
negative encounters were more likely to live another day. Of course,
(09:32):
environmental information isn't the only thing that's important. Social information
is also really valuable to us. So the dangers that
may have been present back back in ancient times are
present in a new form. They're more present socially and
through what we perceive as social threats. So if someone
(09:53):
wrongs us, if someone does something that really hurts us,
that feels not just painful but threatening, and so it
gets tagged in our memory storage system as a high priority.
Because it has been tagged that way, it is encoded
with a greater emotional intensity, It triggers stronger psychological response,
(10:14):
and is therefore, in the future more easily recalled, especially
when we encounter similar situations, or we encounter similar people,
or even when we just encounter internal triggers beyond just
you know, memory and the strangeness of our memory systems.
As humans, holding a grudge can feel like a vital
(10:36):
act of self protection. If someone hurt you deeply in
the past, your mind might cling to that resentment as
a really powerful psychological shield, but also as an emotional
barrier that is designed to prevent future pain. It's often
this very deceptive internal declaration that says, if I can
(10:59):
tell you to be angry, it means that this isn't
gonna happen again, because I will be on God and
I will know to be prepared for it. Clinging to
the grudge kind of ensures that you don't forget the
bitter lesson that you learn from the injustice, and as
a result, you continue to be hyper aware of future
(11:20):
potential threats. So you save yourself. You stop yourself from
being naive, you stop yourself from trusting too easily, and
therefore you stop yourself from experiencing pain. It's actually quite
sad when you think about it. You know, one bad egg,
one bad fruit. I think, what's the saying one bad
bad fruit spoils the whole bunch. One bad human who
(11:42):
does something terrible might make you hypervigilant for the rest
of your life. For some I think it also again
helps you reinforce a necessary boundary. The fact that the
grudge is still there means that you'll never let this
person back into your life because you have a constant
reminder of how they made you. This can be a
very genuinely adaptive behavior in the case of harmful or
(12:06):
abusive relationships where you know, maintaining no contact is crucial
for safety. However, this same mechanism can become maladaptive when
it kind of keeps everyone out, when it stops you
from letting there be new opportunities for genuine connection, for empathy,
(12:26):
for positive healing experiences with people who aren't going to
hurt you. Well, you know, the intention is undeniably perhaps
a good one, and it is protective. I think the
long term effect can be profoundly self isolating. You know,
we do possess a very primal need for justice. The
thing that really contributes to this is what we know
(12:47):
is the just world hypothesis. Basically, beyond just wanting to
protect ourselves, we all kind of want to believe deep
down that the world is fundamentally fair and that people
generally they get what they deserve. If they do bad things,
bad things will come back to them. If they're good
and kind, the world will be good and kind to them.
(13:10):
When a profound or seemingly arbitrary injustice happens to us,
when someone does something bad and they get away with it,
it really shatters this comforting illusion, and that is what
causes us to feel even worse and to perhaps question
life in a way that's kind of kind of distressing.
(13:33):
You know, if someone does something bad to you and
they get away with it, Suddenly you're thinking, what's the
point of me being good? If they get to be
awful and still get a good life. Why am I
trying so hard to be good? Wouldn't it be easier
to just not care about other people? Wouldn't it be
easier to just not be good? Obviously we don't all
want to think that way, So holding a grudge can
(13:55):
be kind of a subconscious antidote to that discomfort me
holding a grudge me not forgetting that is their punishment.
That means that karma has worked, because there is this
like lingering thought that I have about them that is
sitting over their head. We feel like the world is
(14:15):
very again because somewhere in your brain they haven't gotten
away with it. So, in some ways, holding a grudge
can be a very desperate, if ultimately futile, attempt to
return the world to how you think it should operate
and how you know we want it to operate. It
returns a very fragile sense of internal order. I think
(14:35):
potentially the most deceptive reason And one of the final
reasons we hold onto grudges comes from the fact that
it provides a sense of control. And that's where all
these explanations are kind of leading. When an injustice occurs
and we feel utterly vulnerable, that's a very very shaky feeling,
(14:57):
it's a very uncomfortable feeling, and it can make us
really again ask some very big questions of the world.
How could this happen? You know? How does this person
get to hurt me and get away with it? How
was this allowed to occur? Do I really have any
(15:18):
sense of control? You know? The answer is you probably don't.
But if you cling to the resentment, and you cling
to the grudge again, it reinforces that perhaps you can
do something about it. It's also the same reason why
we may replay over and over again hypothetical confrontations or
pretend arguments that you might have with this person. These illusions,
(15:41):
these imaginations provide once again a powerful but illusory belief
that we are still dictating this narrative. But here's the
stark and kind of undeniable reality. We may feel like
we're in control with the grudge. We may feel like
it's protecting us. We may feel like it's justice, but
(16:02):
in reality, a grudge is always going to harm us
far more and far more consistently than it's going to
harm the original target. It sucks. But the fact is
is that the true pain of resentment is not one
that someone else can feel. It is one that we
are going to feel the full force of ourselves. And
(16:26):
so with that in mind, there has to be a
healthier approach to this. Knowing all the reasons that we
hold a grudge, despite all those reasons, there has to
be something that we can do about it. Surely, Well,
that's exactly what we're going to talk about. We're also
going to talk about again how the resentment and the
pain of a grudge does actually physically harm us and
(16:47):
why that's something to be aware of when you find
yourselves doing after this shortbreak. Okay, so the question that
we have for this part of the show is how
did grudges kind of linger in our bodies in invisible
but still painful ways. I saw this interview with none
(17:08):
other than Miley Cyrus the other day, super random. You
probably didn't think that her name was gonna show up
in this episode, but here we are. Anyways, Miley Cyrus.
She's doing this interview and she's talking about how she
has all this rage, and she had all this resentment,
and she had all these grudges towards people who had
wronged her, and she didn't let herself get angry about it.
(17:31):
She just let them stew. And after a while, she
was noticing that there was all this pain showing up
in her body, pain that she didn't understand for years.
And she realized that that pain was coming from the
fact that she never let herself feel the full emotion
behind her resentment. She wasn't able to let it go
because she hadn't had that release. This is a great
(17:53):
example of what a grudge can do. Now, obviously a
celebrity experience is one thing, but she is a real
person and how she explained it really resonated with me
because so many people feel this way but can't express it.
She had the platform to be able to explain what
she was experiencing and what she's experiencing. It's called samatization,
and it's a term that has been around for over
(18:16):
one hundred years, and it describes how our body actually harbors,
feels and is pained by emotions we don't release, i e.
A grudge I backed in what we're talking about today.
There was a paper written about this a few decades back,
actually in the late nineties, so a little bit dated now,
but still relevant, and it talks about this exact, exact
(18:38):
experience and all these instances where medical professionals will encounter
someone who has chronic pain, who is suffering, and they'll
do all the blood work, they'll look at all the
obvious biological signs of stress and of pain, and there
aren't any There is no reasonable explanation for it. But
then this person goes to therapy. This person starts talking
(19:01):
about their rage, starts talking about their resentments, starts talking
about the pain of their past, and their physical condition improves.
And these cases have always kind of shocked doctors because
they're like, what are you talking about, Like, surely you
must be taking some kind of medication, surely you must
do it, be doing it, must be exercising differently, something
else must be happening. But the thing is is that
(19:22):
they were looking at chronic pain as purely a physical thing,
when at times it can be an emotional thing. When
you hold onto a grudge, you constantly replay an offense
and all that rage, all that anger, all that fear
and frustration and sadness, it comes rushing back to your body,
and so your body is going to respond as if
you are in a perpetual, ongoing state of threat. There
(19:45):
is this very interesting idea that your body actually can't
tell the difference between its imagination and what's happening in
real time, or an idea or a vision that you
can cock for it, and a real offense. And so
just thinking about a previous grudge or a previous thing
that happened to you that hurt you is equally as
triggering as that thing happening to you right now. Because
(20:07):
this relentlessly activates your fight or flight system, a very
ancient stress response. You start to really feel it in
your body. I know, when I think back to you know,
a time that I was hurt, I feel it like
in the center of my chest. I feel it like
a balloon that it's getting so big in like my
chest cavity that I can't burst it, but it won't
go away, like it's a tightness. It's every single one
(20:29):
of us can describe this pain. If you think about
someone who has harmed you in the past, you feel
a sudden tightness in your jaw, You feel adrenaline, You
feel this rising in your chest, like there are physical
reactions to things that we think only exists on an
emotional plane. You know, the phrase holding onto anger is
(20:50):
like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.
This is where it is incredibly relevant. In essence, carrying
a grudge is keeping your body in a state of
stress that it's only meant to be in temporarily, and
we continue to keep it in that state for years.
You think that by holding the memory of this past defense,
(21:10):
you're hurting someone else, or you're making sure they're not
getting away with it, but they actually don't know how
you're feeling, like you are not actually inflicting any kind
of pain or suffering on them because they don't know
You're the only person who was suffering is you. It's
experienced solely by you, and beyond these physical impacts, you know,
grudges also act as invisible emotional shackles because they involve
(21:34):
such a great deal of rumination. This anchors us to
a painful past, and it actually affects our capacity to
connect with new people. In one study published in twenty
twenty one research conducted very in depth interviews with dozens
of people about the grudges they held and who they
felt had harmed them in the past, and they found
that almost all of them had seen some lingering effect
(21:58):
of this feeling on their current relationships, on their friendships,
on their quality of life, and on how much they
chose or could trust other people. Many of them also
spoke about being trapped by their grudge. This emotional stuckness
is often caused by this lack of resolution. You know,
if a grievance is never communicated, or if an apology
(22:19):
is never delivered, or if it feels unsatisfactory, the wound
remains wide open. As humans, we have such weird little
creatures in that we hate stories that don't have an ending.
We just we can't deal with it. That's why it's
a whole genre of like uncomfortable TV and uncomfortable movies,
is movies that don't have endings because it just feels
(22:41):
so like weird to us, very naturally weird. Holding a
grudge is a story that has not ended. That is
why it feels so emotionally painful, even if they have died,
even if we haven't seen them in years. That doesn't
matter because to us the wound it feels like it
happened yesterday. That's what means we are unable to move on.
(23:04):
Often when we experience these emotional reactions of suddenly being
angry ten years later, suddenly feeling a sense or a
desire for revenge months after the fact, when we feel that,
we can be like, oh my god, I'm so immature.
Why can't I just like let this go? Like what's
wrong with me? Am I a bad person? That's not
(23:25):
the right way to think about it. This is actually
a very valid and natural human response. It is a
signal that a boundary has been crossed, that an injustice
has occurred. It's this thing though that it's not your fault,
but now it has become your responsibility, and how you
deal with it from here on out actually has nothing
(23:47):
to do with the other person and everything to do
with you and how you want to continue living your life.
Of course, this is absolutely easier said than done, especially
if we haven't been taught how to do this, especially
if there's unprocessed pain, especially if you think there is
an ongoing threat. But we do have to learn how
(24:08):
to shift this narrative from a grudge being about another
person to being about ourselves, and we have to shift
our ability to deal with the grudge from being like
this person needs to take responsibility, this person needs to
feel pain to I need to allow myself to feel peace,
and I actually owe it to myself to move beyond
(24:31):
this in spite of them. We can start by firstly,
like we've spoken about before, letting ourselves be angry. Anger
and rage have been painted as such impolite and dirty
emotions like there are a sign you can't emotionally regulate. Regulate,
and they are a sign that you know you are
(24:53):
just unbridled and you're gonna go off at any given point.
Actually letting yourself feel angry is a sign of emotional regulation.
Letting yourself just be upset in a safe way is
how you stop an emotion from making its home inside
of you and staying for decades. I think, especially for women,
(25:15):
I wish we would just let ourselves get fucking pissed
every now and again and not try and silence what
that might mean, and not try and silence ourselves because
we think it makes us a bad or unhinged person.
There are plenty of ways to express anger in a
way that is very productive, very healthy, and very safe. Firstly,
(25:36):
you can just scream it out. I remember when I
was at university, there was this creek behind some of
the old dorm rooms, like at my college on my campus,
and at night, like I have this distinct memory of
me and my friends going down there, and I think
one of like some guy I had just broken up
with one of my friends, and we someone was dealing
(25:57):
with some terrible man and some terrible teacher, whatever it was.
We just all like screamed. We just like screamed. I
hope there was no one like walking around there who
thought that we were distressed, but we were, like we
just got to let it out. And it was definitely
like an angry scream, not a fearful screen, and it
was euphoric. It felt amazing, like it felt like we
were high boxing classes as well. Such a good outlet.
(26:18):
Manual labor. If your neighbor needs some yard work done,
that is your opportunity. Chopping wood, raking leaves just like
gives those feelings somewhere to go. Some therapists also recommend
like full body shaking, where you just let your body
go loose and you dance wildly. They say that's a
very effective strategy, belting out angry songs in your car,
(26:40):
ripping up cardboards, smashing ice, rage rooms. You gotta find
your outlet. You have to get over this hurdle of
not letting yourself feel the emotion before you can start
to consider more complex pursuits like forgiveness, like moving forward,
like forgetting, because you can never forgive if the emotion
isn't ready to be let go or hasn't been released.
(27:03):
Let's talk about forgiveness now. I feel like I've been
dancing around this topic because I know it's somewhat controversial.
I said this in our episode over on Mantra, but
there is still no consensus within our society about whether
it's better to hold on forever, forgive but not forget,
forgive and forget, like no one really knows which camp
(27:27):
is best. Personally, though I've talked about this before, I
think that forgiveness is a form of self care, even
if it's not for everyone. For me, I see it
as a way to address what is hurting me or
what is hurting you, without necessarily needing the other person
to be involved, not even needing to know that you
(27:47):
have forgiven them. Psychologically, you know forgiveness is a deliberate
decision to release resentment, to release anger, to release the
desire for retribution towards someone else for your own sake,
not for their sake, because you understand that the burden
I guess for not forgiving is going to be greater.
(28:08):
It's an internal shift from I think, an emotional state
that is dominated by punitive emotions like anger and hatred
and revenge, to one characterized by more positive or at
least neutral emotions like peace, the acceptance of reality, and
even in some cases like compassion. Now, let's get very
(28:29):
crystal clear that forgiveness is not condoning the offense. It
is not excusing the person's actions. It's not erasing the
memory of the discomfort that they caused. There is a
big difference between forgiveness and reconciliation. Right, forgiveness is internal,
reconciliation is external. You can totally forgive someone without ever
(28:52):
having to interact with them again. In the cases of abuse,
repeated betrayal, ongoing harm, forgiveness is perhaps a possible act.
Reconciliation will maybe never be a possible act. That's the
real difference here because your primary responsibility is always going
to be your own safety and your own well being
and establishing healthy boundaries. It doesn't mean that what happened
(29:15):
was okay, and it absolutely doesn't mean that you have
to be friends with this person. It just means that
you are allowing yourself to be okay with the fact
that it did happen, and you're releasing the burden of
the grudge. Forgiveness also cannot be forced if you're not ready,
or if the act of trying to forgive actually causes
(29:37):
more distress, It's okay to wait or to focus on
other things or other coping strategies. First, I think it's
irresponsible for someone to approach someone else's pain by saying
there is a timeline for forgiveness and you are behind
on that timeline. When that person has an experience what
you've been through. You may never forgive it all, and
(29:57):
that's okay. But it is a gift to yourself if
it's one that you feel you're capable of delivering, And
I hope you realize that if the time is ever
right for you, if you ever want to forgive the
other person, they're not going to benefit from that this
isn't a gift for them, like again, it's a gift
(30:19):
for you. There is this researcher, his name is Everett Worthington.
He's a leading expert in forgiveness, and he really emphasizes
that the essence of this is about finding peace from
the pain of the past, not forgetting that it didn't
happen or not pretending that it didn't happen. And research
(30:39):
findings will at least tell you it does improve how
you're feeling and it can lessen the emotional pain. For example,
a twenty twenty three study looking into the effectiveness of
an intervention to promote forgiveness randomly assigned four five hundred
participants to either engage in exercises of rewriting their own
(31:01):
story from their perspective, or just to all out try
and forgive someone else. And what they found was that
the easiest way towards forgiveness is recognizing the role that
you did not play in this happening and recognizing that
the story was written by someone else and rewriting it
or rewriting the ending in a way that feels better
(31:23):
for you. And research will constantly say, like when we
do it, this way when we focus on I don't
know whether there was a lesson in that, whether there
was meaning for us when we focus on the fact
that we had no responsibility in it. This is significantly
linked to lower levels of anger, lower depressive symptoms, lower
(31:44):
levels of anxiety, improvements to sleep, less stress, the sense
of feeling lighter, all things that I think that we
can advocate and that we want for ourselves. It also
just frees up so much mental space to focus on
other things, and it means that actually the other person
hasn't won. They haven't one by being able to sit
(32:05):
in your brain for longer than they deserve, and to
being able to make a home in your mind, you
have won because they have done this terrible thing. You
have accepted that you can never understand why they did that,
and yet you have still chosen to choose peace, and
that means you have one on a whole other dimension
(32:27):
at least. I guess that's kind of how I see it.
So I think to give you a quick guide to
how we actually do this, I think there will be
good days, there will be bad days. First, the most
foundational step isn't a force forgiveness. It's just to acknowledge
that something happened, and it's to acknowledge that it was
unfair and that you do have anger towards it, and
(32:50):
just consciously kind of respect that that anger needs somewhere
to go and that is completely valid. Next, be honest
with yourself when no one is watching, when no one
is around you. Do you feel like this emotion is
actually making you feel better? Or is it making you
feel worse? Do you feel like the energy you're pouring
into holding this grudge is worthwhile? Is it consuming you
(33:15):
or is there a part of you that does maybe
want to live without it. Maybe part of that is
also recognizing what the grudge has rubbed from you already.
Recognizing this personal cost can also really help motivate you
to find on an approach that works. When we then
start to ask ourselves, what does this grudge represent? Is
(33:37):
where we really have those breakthroughs? You know, I've noticed
that often a grudge isn't about the event itself, but
it's about what it symbolizes. Someone rejects you, you hold
a grudge against them, but it's not because they rejected you.
It's because perhaps it touches on a deeper story you're
telling yourself about your worth, whether you deserve love. Maybe
someone betrays you, and yes, that sucks, But the pain
(33:58):
really comes from the fact that you could see it coming.
And maybe that means that you're not able to protect
yourself and that you don't feel safe. Maybe someone bullied
you as a child and you couldn't let it go.
It's not really about them. It's about the fact that
maybe when you were younger, you didn't feel protected and
you didn't feel like you could help yourself. You know,
(34:18):
there's always something beneath the surface. What is the story
that this grudge is keeping alive about who you are,
who you are as a person, or who you have been.
And here's a layer of forgiveness we often overlook, but
this is where it's absolutely vital. We need to also
in some ways forgive ourselves. When we hold grudges against others,
(34:39):
we frequently, I think, also harbor a silent, corrosive grudge
against ourselves. We might replay our own I guess role
in the past hurt even though we don't have a role.
We might ask very agonizing questions like, oh, how did
I let myself get treated like that? Why didn't I
speak up? Why did I trust them when, in fact,
(34:59):
like this, self condemnation has no place here. Like you
were not weak, you were not foolish. This criticism towards
yourself is getting you stuck, not just within the grudge,
but it's getting you stuck in a place of self
blame that is not helpful. Forgiveness towards someone else requires
(35:20):
an act of kindness and understanding towards ourselves and recognizing
that you did the best you could with the knowledge
and the emotional resources that you had at the time. Finally,
and this might sound controversial, I know I'm probably gonna
get pushed back, but ask yourself if the roles were reversed,
if this was me, would I want forgiveness? Would I
(35:41):
want someone to understand the reasons or decisions or just
plain stupidity that drove someone to do this thing? If
I had done this, would I want someone to forgive me?
If the answer is yes, the easiest answer we can get,
then I think that acknowledgment can make it easier for
you to have compassion for that other person, but also
(36:02):
compassion for yourself. If the answer is no, that's sometimes
just as liberating because it reconfirms that you could never
be like them. You could never stoop that low because
you are moral and kind and responsible and good, and
because you possess those traits and they don't, you have one.
(36:23):
You are officially the better person, full stop. And so
you forgiving them and choosing to move on, that's something
that they are now indebted to you for. You're the
bigger person, the braver person. You are the winner. And
you know what, I get that that sounds kind of egotistical,
but who cares. I think, whatever it takes to release
the emotional burden, you must do it. Grudges, yes, they
(36:49):
cost us. They're also universal, and there's something that we
can't always control. There is some deep ancient psychology that
wants to keep you trapped in a bad thought, in
a boat memory, in a bad time. But you also
have agency, and you have power to rethink whether that
is beneficial to you. Rethink, Hey, is this actually helping
(37:11):
me or harming me? And making that decision. You know,
as much as I have given you advice and I
have opinions, maybe you don't want to forgive someone. Maybe
the anger fuels you, maybe it feels nice. Maybe you
aren't dealing with the consequences of this, like other people are,
and if that's the case, that's entirely okay. I think
this is such an intimate and personal kind of conversation
(37:32):
because it is going to differ for everyone. But if
a grudge is costing you anything, I think it's important
to reevaluate whether that's something you want to give up
and whether you're willing to pay your dues to the
grudge or it's time to let it go. So I
hope this has been a nice introduction into how you
can do that, into the psychology behind it. I feel you,
I get you. There are grudges that I am still
(37:55):
trying to work through. I don't know. I was thinking
about this the other day. Like when I was like seven,
there was like this group of girls who bullied me
as a kid, and I saw one of them the
other day and I was immediately angry, and I was like,
what the heck? Like that was two decades ago. This
person has changed a lot, But grudges are irrational. So
as much as I'm sitting here preaching, there is still
stuff I need to work on. And so hopefully you
(38:16):
understand that this advice is also coming from someone who
is imperfect and is struggling with this just as much
as you are, But I hope we were able to
kind of learn something together. You can also share this
episode with someone else if you feel like it's something
they may need to hear. Share it to your Instagram.
If you want to give someone a silent message, then
maybe you're not over something. Just kidding that's unhealthy. Maybe
(38:38):
you don't do that, and make sure you leave us
a five star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you're listening.
It really does help the show to grow to reach
new people. Hopefully this episode will reach more people who
need to hear it. Maybe not, maybe it just sticks
with us. But if you have made it this far,
leave a little emoji down below of what a grudge
(38:59):
kind of represents to you, what it feels like in
your body, what it feels like in your mind. What's
a visual way that you can kind of deliver that
or show that feeling. I also want to thank Elizabeth Colbert,
our researcher, for her assistance on this episode. And until
next time, stay safe, be kind, be gentle with yourself,
(39:19):
and we will talk very very soon,
Host
Jemma Sbeghen
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