Recently I again went through a bad patch. It left me broken and depressed like never before. I again went through a similar experience of uncontrolled anger and severe emotional turbulence. A bunch of friends helped a lot to pull me up, however I had a long way to travel back to inner peace.
As it is said "ask and you shall receive", I found answers at most unexpected place: Facebook. Here is the conversation:
The Objectivitist Observer Blog Posted:
What is the most important thing on your mind right now.
Me: Getting rid of my anger.
Angel: Make a list of your resentments (the people you resent). Then by each one write briefly why, then next to it write how it made you feel. Usually we play a bigger part in our resentments towards others than we think we do. Look at your part. That's the only part you can control.
Me: Thanks so much. I will definitely do this. <3 God Bless You
Angel: It's revealing to look at the word itself. "Resentment" is close to "re-sentiment" -- "sentiment" meaning "feeling" and "re" meaning "again." So, resentment is literally "feeling again." This gets to the heart of resentment: recycling old negative feelings, revisiting old wrongs done to us by others.
It's as if each of the offending incidents is captured on videotape in our minds. Resentment, in effect, is mentally replaying the scene countless times each day. As we do so, real wrongs grow worse, and wrongs that are merely imagined assume a life of their own.
This mental habit extracts tremendous costs. After all, resentment does nothing to change the person we resent. Nor does it resolve conflict. Instead of freeing us from the wrongs of others, resentment allows those people to dominate our thinking -- a kind of emotional bondage.
Fortunately the Twelve Steps of AA give us practical tools to defuse resentment, such as the following:
Describe resentments in writing. We can note the person we resent, the action that offends us, and how it has affected our lives. Resentments "seem huge and powerful when they're in your head," note the authors of A Program for You, a Hazelden study guide to the Big Book of "Alcoholics Anonymous." "But once they're down on paper they no longer seem so huge or powerful. In fact, on paper a lot of resentments look downright stupid. . . . These are the very same resentments that seemed completely reasonable and justified--and powerful--while they were in people's heads."
Look at your role in the resentment. The Big Book asks us to examine the original incident that fueled our resentment and ask: Did I do anything to cause this situation or make it worse? If we're honest, the answer will often be yes.
Me: Excellent... I accept that my reactions triggered the current situation. However, finding it difficult to forgive myself for trusting someone beyond myself. Please help.
Angel: It's a great step that you are able to recognize your role in the current situation but it's imperative to recognize your role in how you got there. Often times our expectations of others are set in our minds. Desperately Wanting things to be a certain way when in reality they are not. We convince ourselves we can make OUR reality become real.
Regarding trust. We tend to convince ourselves that certain people are worthy of trust when in fact their words, actions and behavior are not indicative of one we should trust. This is where we have to look at ourselves and realize that WE knew damn good and well that person wasn't trustworthy yet we irrationally convinced ourselves we could trust them. When this occurs we become an active participant in our own grief when the false expectation actually does become our reality.
Now to forgive yourself is to recognize your role, be determined not to have false expectations again and let it go.
Me: Oh my God.. you have no idea how much you are helping me... this is going to erase almost every hurt in me. I don't know how to thank you enough. God bless you.
