Why do people harbor resentment

Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Holding a grudge is when you harbor anger, bitterness, resentment, or other negative feelings long after someone has done something to hurt you.

Usually, it's in response to something that's already occurred, other times a grudge may develop after simply perceiving that someone is against you or means you harm—whether or not they actually do. While we don't often like to admit it, holding a grudge is a common way some people respond to feeling that they've been wronged.

If you're still mad well after a precipitating incident, you may be holding on to those negative feelings for too long, sometimes well after other people typically would have let them go. You may remember multiple past bad acts and relive those experiences every time you think about or interact with that person—either making your displeasure abundantly clear to them or keeping your true feelings to yourself.

You might be intentionally holding a grudge, but sometimes you aren't even aware of it. But whatever your intentions or the cause of your bitterness , holding a grudge can end up hurting you as much as the person who inspired it. Learn more about how clinging to anger can impact you, emotionally, physically, and socially, as well as how to begin to let go of your grudges and cope with anger in a healthier way.

From early childhood on, holding a grudge is one way people respond to negative feelings and events. This reaction is particularly common when you think someone has done something intentionally, callously , or thoughtlessly to hurt you, especially if they don't seem to care or make an attempt to apologize or make the situation right.

While we all may fall into holding an occasional grudge, some people may be more prone to hanging on to resentments or anger than other people. Sometimes, holding grudges—and blaming others —may be a form of self-protection.

In the same vein, some people may be more cognizant that they are stoking feelings of bitterness than others, who may be unaware of the role they play in keeping their anger alive. Lasting bitterness can grow from a variety of issues—large and small—as well.

For instance, holding a grudge may come about as a result of seemingly small slights, such as someone not picking you for a team, taking your preferred seat, not including you on a group text, not inviting you to an event, calling you by the wrong name, not noticing your new haircut, looking at you in a strange way, or even simply bumping into you. Of course, resentments and prolonged anger more often spring from larger missteps, such as someone forgetting your birthday, not helping you when you need them, making a thoughtless or rude comment, or letting you down in another hurtful way.

Grudges also naturally build from more egregious events like taking credit for your efforts at work, lying , false accusations, forgetting or ignoring something important, or making a pass at your significant other or the object of your crush.

Additionally, sometimes you and the person you feel wronged by may both be holding grudges against each other, further exacerbating the cycle of bitterness, anger, and blame. Holding grudges is sometimes related to people's automatic negative thoughts and cognitive distortions. Some grudges may be relatively short-lived, eventually getting resolved or simply fading away, while others can last a lifetime. However, while occasional anger, frustration , disappointment, disillusionment, feeling attacked, ignored, or let down, or other negative feelings towards others may be an unavoidable reality of life, coping with them in a positive way is imperative for healthy well-being—and holding grudges usually backfires on this front.

Essentially, holding a grudge isn't good for you. It ensnares you in anger and makes you prone to persistent rumination rather than moving forward with your life. You might think that harboring ill-will harms the person you're mad at, but ultimately you're the one who suffers from it.

Essentially, a grudge inhibits your ability to cope with or resolve your issue and keeps you stuck in the past—trapped in an unpleasant event or interaction that causes you distress.

The grudge doesn't solve your problem and is highly unlikely to make you feel any better. While it is certainly unhealthy to not feel or fully process and accept your feelings , research shows that fixating on negative emotions rather than resolving them is also harmful—and can even make for an unpleasant demeanor and substantially erode your well-being.

Consider that the phrase "holding a grudge," comes from the Old French word grouchier , which means "to grumble" and is related to the English word "grouch. Clearly, holding a grudge can be detrimental and painful for the person holding it—just like the hurt that inspired it. Grudge-holding can adversely impact your mental health in a variety of ways. Most importantly, harboring anger will, generally, just make you feel angrier. Instead of accepting and moving on from a negative experience or finding an acceptable resolution, holding on can trap you in a loop of resentment, bitterness, hopelessness, emptiness, or enragement.

Simply put, harboring negative feelings naturally makes you more exposed to these more unpleasant emotions and thoughts, which can skew your mindset toward negativity, either slowly or in a swift shift. And a focus on negativity can dampen your overall well-being. Reliving the negative incident and emotions over and over can be upsetting, draining, and frustrating, as nothing gets resolved or changes, except, perhaps, that you end up feeling more enraged or hurt.

In fact, studies show that ruminating about an unpleasant event makes it feel like the incident happened much more recently, despite the passage of time. Additionally, if you ultimately exaggerate the experience or issue in your mind, which is fairly common, the act of holding the grudge may even become more painful than the event itself.

And sadly, this is a self-inflicted wound that will likely just make you feel worse. Built-up resentment and uncensored internal fury create the potential for added stress, worry, defensiveness, aggression, and negativity, which can also increase your propensity for mental health concerns, such as:.

If you or a loved one is having suicidal thoughts, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at for support and assistance from a trained counselor.

If you or a loved one are in immediate danger, call For more mental health resources, see our National Helpline Database. Researchers have shown that unhealthy emotional regulation, blaming others, suppressing emotions , and holding on to these negative feelings all beget more negative feelings.

Additionally, holding on to anger makes you more likely to fixate on revenge, including acts of aggression. Headaches, insomnia, upset stomachs, heart disease, and asthma are all known to occur more commonly in those living under high levels of stress, particularly for those that don't respond well to change or difficult situations. Excess anger has also been shown to adversely impact cognition and executive function.

In fact, one study found decision-making skills to become impaired in those with high levels of anger. Memory and perception of reality may also be negatively associated with holding grudges as well. Holding grudges can have a big impact on your social life as well. Having a bitter reaction to hurtful situations can cause estrangement from family members, ruin friendships, or otherwise limit the number of people with whom you socialize.

However, it's important to note that minimizing or ending some relationships , particularly if you deem them to be toxic to your well-being, could be a good thing. Still, take time to assess if you may be overreacting or if another measure can be taken to heal the rift before you cut someone from your life.

Also, consider that the impact of harboring resentments may spill over into multiple relationships beyond the person you're mad at to include others who may disapprove of the fact that you won't let go of your angry feelings.

However, resentful behavior actually leads you to feel hurt and victimized again, disempowered. To let go of resentment would be to experience increased freedom and mental health.

Pursuit of a path to forgiveness may be very challenging in the face of cultural beliefs and traditions. Your family of origin may have trained you to see forgiveness as hard won or even unattainable. On the other hand, it can be risky to forgive too quickly and casually. Real forgiveness is hard work. It involves taking one experience at a time and really examining it, processing the emotion involved.

Done thoroughly and thoughtfully, true forgiveness can be a path to serenity that begins and ends with self-compassion and acceptance of your feelings. Forgiveness is never about restoring a relationship to a former state. The relationship must change as the result of the injury — otherwise, the forgiveness is just a form of denial. The person who was hurtful should not be entitled to the same privileges that used to exist before the offense. Boundaries between the person who was wronged and the wrong-doer need to be reassessed.

A return to intimacy may never be possible or appropriate, and forgiveness does not require this. I recognize that. A person who experienced traumatizing events such as abandonment or betrayal is very prone to feeling resentment. When we see the reason behind this feeling, we might understand it.

Resentment is like rust. It spreads and ends up debilitating an entire structure and identity. Resentful people keep a safe inside them. Inside that safe, they hide the pain they felt during a betrayal, the pain a lie caused, and the sadness of abandonment.

They pretty much turn this pain into anger. This anger then leads to hatred. All they want is the other person to get a taste of their own medicine and feel bad about what they did. Here are some common characteristics of resentful people:. All they do is feed their pain by replaying the triggering event over and over. By doing this, their feelings of despair and anguish intensify. In fact, the University of Pisa carried out a study that was published in the Frontiers in Human Neuroscience magazine that revealed that, while feeding resentment deepens the emotional wound, forgiving regulates a great number of neuronal structures, reduces stress, and activates areas in the prefrontal cortex related to problem-solving.