How do you stop feeling so resentful?

[haarlandgoddard]

Boredom on a night shift has led me to sit and overthink. I can think myself into a rage when I think about a past situation with a certain family member. We get on fine now and it’s all very fake and civil but I have never forgiven them and never will. My life could have been so different.

How do you get past it?

Talk it through with someone neutral. Try to get a fresh perspective on it. I find this helpful.

Thanks Lineys I’ve been wanting to get counselling for a while now but just feel a bit silly really.

I'd give it a go. You know that nothing's going to leave that room!

It's fatal trying to confide in other family members or often even friends, because they gossip and 'let things slip' - or you always worry that they will.

My family is about as fucked up as they come, and I found a good counsellor and it has helped hugely to put various things into proportion. I was minimising some things I shouldn't have; and over-emphasising things it was ok to just let go of. Very helpful.

Having said that, I do have a couple of friends I do confide in, whom I trust. I hope you do, too.

I’m not sure. I think that to a certain extent this is character based. Some people are more prone to resentment than others (more stubborn?) Maybe the answer is to work on that. Not saying that what they did wasn’t shit, but you can’t control that. You can control your own reaction.

I was minimising some things I shouldn't have; and over-emphasising things it was ok to just let go of - this definitely applies to me, I don’t feel any anger towards someone who’s done worse. All my anger is directed at this one person, it makes perfect sense in my head though.

I do have a couple of good friends, but they are so open whereas I’m not. They’d just think if I wanted to talk about something I would, so I should probably do just that..

Lyanna I honestly don’t think I am a resentful person generally. I’ve moved on a lot, It’s just this one person I cannot get past, maybe it’s justified, maybe it’s not I don’t know.

The boredom on your shift caused you to ruminate. You need to identify when you are starting to ruminate and have some strategies to make your mind focus on something else - get up and walk about, do a physical task, try some mindfulness if that works for you, ration the time you will think about the past situation to say 5 minutes etc.

I would also go "no contact" with the person - avoid seeing them, hearing about them, looking them up on FB etc as much as you can. No good can come of it.

Change your story to one of you being a survivor - a strong person who has overcome rather than a victim of this person. You can't change the past or the scenario - stop thinking about the hope of a better past.

It's so tough.

Thanks Grunka that’s good advice I definitely need to stop overthinking. I don’t know why I do it to myself.

I couldn’t go NC without causing a massive fallout. It’s a parent’s spouse. They are also the parent of my little brothers (who I adore).

I am amazed how easily the idea of NC gets banded about on here. NC is more often than not extremely fraught, extremely painful and in most cases inappropriate. Running away from pain doesn't make it go away, it increases it.

Lower contact, yes. Much more manageable.

I agree that ruminating can cause problems and to develop skills around limiting that. Thinking things through, though, is very different to ruminating.

Imo we can't quash very real and painful experiences by employing strategies to cancel them out. It just doesn't work like that. The only way with pain is through.

Yy talk to a professional to get some perspective on what happened. Xx

in what way would your life have been different? Change your life to that different life you want and feel they deprived you of.

Allow yourself 5 mins a day to givle out in your head about them then stop. So time yourself and then say..thats in for today. You are giving them headspace. If you saw that this in no way punished them only you maybe you could let it go. They don't deserve that but you do.