We Read online

  At the height of my worst depression, my son started getting very angry. We sought professional help. “It’s very simple,” the therapist said. “He’s expressing your anger for you.” Once I began to own my anger and find safe ways of releasing it, his behavior returned to normal. Anger works similarly to personal power. If we don’t own and harness it ourselves, someone else close by will use it—often against us!

  —JN

  Connecting with and then releasing your anger can have a dramatic impact on depression, but supplement this process with professional help if you need it. It’s extraordinary how reluctant many of us are to allow ourselves to access the support that’s available. We’ll go to the gym for our bodies, but we resist doing the same for our minds.

  * * *

  CLINICAL DEPRESSION

  There’s a world of difference between the feeling of depression, which is a normal part of most people’s emotional range, and clinical depression, which is a medical illness.

  A prolonged period of stress, a major loss, a repressed childhood trauma, or a genetic predisposition can leave you vulnerable to clinical depression. If you’ve felt low for an extended period of time and can’t seem to shift out of a negative mind-set, check it out with a doctor. You wouldn’t battle through a serious physical ailment without seeking medical help, so treat your mental health with the same respect.

  Seeking help when we need it is an act of courage, not a sign of weakness. There aren’t any medals for trying to tough it out. We’re lucky to live in an age where there are excellent therapists and medications to treat clinical depression. Our grandmothers and even our mothers were not so fortunate, so make use of the help that is available for your sake and the sake of those around you.

  * * *

  After my first marriage ended, I buried my anger and tried to behave as if what had happened hadn’t affected me. I was proud, and I told myself I was taking the spiritual high road by not getting angry. To me, feeling angry couldn’t change what was happening, so it was pointless. Two years later, when I developed severe clinical depression, I discovered that all the anger I thought I’d avoided lay trapped inside me. My route out of depression involved both medication and a lot of work connecting with and releasing the anger I’d been too “spiritual” to feel at the time.

  —JN

  Releasing Resentment

  You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.

  —TONI MORRISON

  If we don’t process our anger properly at the time it arises, it churns and becomes the most toxic of all emotions: resentment. The word resent comes from the French ressentir—meaning literally to refeel. When we resent, we refeel events that have hurt and angered us again and again.

  We think it’s the events themselves that leave us feeling victimized, but, actually, our own attitude to events often causes us far more pain and, in particular, the resentments that we hold closely. Resentments leave us trapped in the past, and either depressed or simmering with rage, hurt, and bitterness. They can fuel self-pity and make us act mean as we think about or actively try to even scores. Like boulders obstructing a mountain trail, resentments block acceptance and letting go.

  Each person whom we believe has let us down or caused us anger stays with us. That makes the going heavy. When we work through our resentments, we are like weary travellers who stop to unload their baggage to rid themselves of what has been weighing them down.

  While real anger is felt in the body, resentment starts in the head. It begins with a “They shouldn’t have!” or an “It’s not fair!” or an “If only . . .” It justifies itself by listing wrongs and spiraling deeper and deeper into us until we’re totally consumed.

  Most of us are incredibly sensitive. We often hate admitting how much we’re hurt by tiny things. Big things we somehow often know how to handle, but the little hurts can burrow their way into our psyche and skew our whole perspective.

  Resentment is the most harmful form of the synthetic pain you read about in the previous chapter. It doesn’t matter whether your resentment is big or small, it can steal your peace of mind and leave you obsessing, weaving yet more stories in your head. Before long, those stories, too, can start dictating your reality.

  * * *

  HONESTY REQUIRED

  Each time you refeel a hurt from your past, you tell yourself the story of what happened to you. Each time you tell it, as with repeating any story, the version is likely to shift, particularly if it involves resentment. Each time you retell it, even if only to yourself, you’re likely to make what the other person did to you a little more wrong and how you behaved in response a little more right. So you have to really practice rigorous self-honesty.

  * * *

  There’ll be signs if you’re resentful. You might be passive-aggressive: an angry nice person who smiles and says yes while inside she’s screaming “No!” Someone who is nice to everyone else in the hope that they’ll be nice to her and carries within her a fury that people aren’t treating her as she deserves.

  You might be depressed, your life force blocked by layers of hurt and anger that have been compressed within you for so long that you can no longer “feel” beneath their weight.

  You might be volatile and emotionally super-reactive, bristling with real and imagined slights to the point where others walk on eggshells around you.

  Or you may be a combination—an exploding doormat—who yo-yos between being passive and easygoing one moment and suddenly erupting into rage the next.

  If you’re dismayed at how angry or hurt you can get over something that seems relatively small, it’s likely to be the back catalogue of incidents you’ve suppressed breaking through the surface of your “niceness.” When we’re resentful, our past hijacks our present.

  Being Right or Being Happy

  Hanging on to resentment is letting someone you despise live rent-free in your head.

  —ANN LANDERS (1918–2002), advice columnist

  The most damaging resentments of all are those that stem from events where your initial anger was justifiable. If you’ve been betrayed, assaulted, or misjudged, it takes extraordinary courage to let go of that resentment.

  Resentment creates the illusion that we can somehow right the wrong that has been done if we just hang onto it for long enough. But the reality is that it’s like drinking poison and then waiting for the other person to get sick. You may get a temporary high from your outrage and a relief from your hurt while you anticipate revenge, but as you wait, the poison starts to take effect and makes you, not the culprit, sicker and sicker.

  * * *

  THE MONKEY TRAP

  According to an ancient Indian fable, the easiest way to trap a monkey is to put a piece of fruit inside a container with a narrow hole in it. The monkey slides its hand into the container and grabs the fruit. But its fist is now too big to pull back through the hole. The monkey, reluctant to let go of its find, holds on to the fruit and so gets caught by the hunter. To survive, the monkey needed only to let go and move on.

  * * *

  You can’t change the past, but having courage makes it possible to change your attitude to it.

  You can’t live a fulfilling and happy life and keep your victim status. The two are incompatible.

  It’s really a simple choice: Do you want to be right? Or do you want to be happy?

  If you want to be happy, then it’s time to clear out all the resentments that may be backed up and festering inside you.

  Letting Go of Resentment

  Spiritual Surgery

  Releasing resentments is akin to spiritual surgery. It’s the most exacting of all WE’s processes. It involves having the courage to step back into your past—not to blame but to go on a fact-finding mission. The process which is outlined follows the exercise that is adapted from a highly effective system used in most 12-step fellowships. It involves listing anyone or anything in your past that causes you pain and releasing yourself from it. This proc
ess can be used again and again whenever you realize you’ve been resentful. It is an intense but very powerful and effective experience.

  As with physical surgery, you need to take really good care of yourself before, during, and after this work. So make sure you’re using the Essential Practices every day, as well as scheduling in some extra “you” time. (See the exercise “Befriend Yourself”)

  * * *

  Exercise 2: Releasing Toxicity

  * * *

  This exercise is set out in three parts and will help you release any toxic resentments you may still be holding. You will need to pace yourself, as you may not be able to deal with all your resentments in one sitting. However, it will be worth the effort. Once you’ve finished, you’ll have turned a huge corner and gained newfound energy and optimism.

  You can choose to work on a single, particular resentment to start with or on everything and anyone you have ever had negative feelings about. Just make sure you use a fresh page in your journal or notebook for each resentment. The more thorough and detailed you are in writing out the source of the resentment, the more paper you’ll get through, and the better it will work.

  Part 1: The Source

  Write the name of the person, organization, or event that you have negative feelings about. Beside it, write a few words what he, she, or it has done to hurt you.

  It doesn’t matter whether what happened is large or small. There doesn’t have to be any logic or reasonableness as to why you were hurt. All that matters is that you were. Nobody else will read this, so you are free to be completely honest. It could be someone not picking you to be on her team at school, or it could be a lover who was unfaithful.

  Write quickly and don’t dwell on or get stuck in the pain. Reliving the drama is a form of avoidance. Your task is not to re-experience the experiences but to list them. So, as the saying goes, glance back but don’t stare.

  If you find it particularly difficult not to get drawn into the past as you write, invite a friend—perhaps one who is also on the WE journey—to sit with you as you do the work. Alternatively, you can write in a café or public place so that you remain anchored in the present while making this excursion into the past.

  If you start feeling overwhelmed, treat yourself as you would anyone else you love and pause to do something nurturing for yourself. But don’t abandon the process altogether—just as you wouldn’t walk away from an operation once an incision has been made.

  When you’ve finished, congratulate yourself and, if you need to, take some time out. You’re about to start making the turnaround: to stop being the victim and to start reclaiming your life.

  Part 2: Your Role

  Now your focus is going to shift away from the other person, organization, or event and onto yourself, leaving behind the (sometimes exhilarating) surges of anger, to turn your focus inward.

  This is not about blame. It’s about identifying what you can change. If it helps, imagine that each resentment is like a thorn you’ve trodden on that needs removing. The flesh around it may be tender, but you’ll feel so much better once it’s out!

  So take each resentment and note down what part you may have played in the wrong that was “done” to you. It might be your actions, words, or attitude. Ask yourself: Did I rely on someone I knew to be unreliable and then end up distressed when he or she let me down? Was I expecting someone to give me something he or she was never able to give? Was I looking to hang on to something or someone that wasn’t really mine? Have I behaved in a way that might have courted retaliation—for example, by being arrogant or judgemental? Did I do something that might have hurt the person who hurt me? Was I dishonest in any way? Have I distorted the event so that I can look more blameless and someone else more culpable? Have I ever done to someone else what was done to me?”

  It may be that you were completely blameless because you were just a child. In this case, look only at your attitude now.

  Am I hanging on to this injustice and keeping it alive with my attitude? Have I allowed that event to become my defining story?

  What is making it impossible for me to move on? Am I unwilling to relinquish the fact that I’ve been wronged? Am I choosing to be right over being happy? Am I unwilling to accept that something unfair or unjust has happened to me?

  Am I keeping myself a victim in the hope that someone else will make it better or that the person who wronged me will suddenly realize this and make amends? And if so, why?

  Am I tormenting myself further by pointing out how much better other people’s lives seem to be?

  As you do this work, you will identify the ways in which you’ve stoked and fed your hurt and resentment; how you’ve compounded it through your thinking. You’ll see how when you can let go of having to be right, you can accept and move on.

  You didn’t choose the hand you were dealt, but thanks to the work you’re doing now, you’ll have the power to choose how you play it.

  When you have worked your way through every aspect of the resentment, you are nearly there. The spiritual surgery is complete, but your wound still needs to be stitched.

  Part 3: The Release

  The final part of this process provides the gateway to a new relationship with a part of your history and, through that, your life. You’ll be identifying what you need to feel and release so that you can move into acceptance.

  Ask yourself: “How do I wish it had been?”

  In just a few words, write down how you would have preferred things to turn out. Feel the feelings that come up and then release them. This takes courage. But as you allow yourself to release your sorrow, anger, and disappointment, you let go of the past and truly start to move into your present with meaning and purpose.

  Acknowledge the loss and say quietly and respectfully to yourself, “This is how it is.”

  If you want, you can add the page describing your resentment(s) that you wrote in part 2 of this exercise to your Acceptance Cup. Once it is there, it is over.

  Repeat this process with each resentment that you feel is holding you back. It may take awhile or even a few days or weeks. Don’t be afraid to pace yourself. Take breaks when you need them. Go for a walk or sit in a park. There is no rush, but the sooner you do the work, the sooner you’ll be free

  When you have completed part 3, congratulate yourself for having the courage to confront and liberate yourself from an aspect of the past that wasn’t serving you. You are now well on the road to freedom.

  * * *

  When we use spiritual surgery, extraordinary shifts occur.

  You will cease to see yourself as a victim. You will find that you’re able to pick yourself up and get on with your life. You’ll no longer carry the burden of others’ actions.

  Repeat this exercise whenever you feel hurt or angered. It allows you to have a centered emotional response to a situation and then move on. Use it regularly to prevent further pockets of resentment from building up. You can do it at any moment in the day when you notice a resentment starting to niggle away at you: on the bus, when dropping off or picking up your children from school, in a meeting, before bed. Once you’ve done it, write a mini gratitude list to wash away all traces of it.

  Like many of the tools you’re learning here, this one has a magic multiplying effect. The more rigorous you are at spotting and then releasing your resentments, the fewer you’ll start to have. It will change your outlook and your attitude. You’ll start to recognize how you fed your sense of woundedness and outrage and how disempowering that was. You’ll see how you took the unfairness that life inevitably entails and made it worse by hanging on to it.

  The longer I walk this path, the more essential it has become to get to the crux of what those building resentments are. The only thing I can control is how I react to situations. If I can look at my own behavior in this scenario, for instance, and see where I have impacted another human being, then I can choose to apologize. I have no control over whether that person accepts my apology, but I do hav
e control over how I choose to let go of any resentments I may harbor.

  —GA

  * * *

  EXPECTATIONS

  When we expect that someone will behave in a certain way, we set ourselves up to resent the person if he or she doesn’t. As the saying goes, expectations are the mother of disappointment and the father of resentment.

  They are like contracts that the other party hasn’t had a chance to read or sign, and yet we expect people to abide by them. Then when they don’t, we’re upset. It’s a setup. What’s more, people often sense the weight of our expectations and experience them as demands or attempts to control, which they naturally bridle against. Once we let go of expectations, we’re amazed at how others respond.

  * * *

  While you can’t change your history, when you change your attitude toward it, a whole new future opens up.

  You’ll find that as you let go of the hurts you’ve been carrying, your journey becomes a lot easier. You’ll have new responses to situations and feel hurt less often because what’s happening in the present is no longer being inflamed by resentment from your past.

  Having the courage to release yourself from the burden of your past frees you up. It creates internal space for your intuition and instinct to find solutions you couldn’t have imagined previously.

  You will also start feeling less alone. Resentment and false narratives distance us from others. They put a barrier between us and reality, which distorts what we see and blocks real connection.