Overcoming resentment

[beckycmarie]

Split from another thread so as not to hijack it with my reply. . .

One thing I learned from working with someone who did not do their share was to overcome resentment. Resentment is a terrible sin that eats at a person.

Catholictrain, I thought I’d share that what you just said has been a huge wallop-upside-the head lesson I learned this week. During a talk on the Catechism, my parish priest mentioned that the opposite of patience is resentment, and then he went on to talk about bearing wrongs patiently.

Up until that moment, I had considered myself a very forgiving person. Yeah I’d be forgiving to their face, being friendly and smiling. What didn’t occur to me is how much resentment I’d harbored in my heart. I’d been confessing gossip for several months now, and couldn’t seem to overcome it. It suddenly occurred to me that every time I talk about someone behind their back, it is to reveal something I resent them for. No wonder I hadn’t overcome gossip; it was just a symptom of a much bigger problem: resentment and revenge.

Wow, was that a painful truth to confront about myself. But, it gives me something major to confess, and with God’s grace, overcoming resentment will remove a huge obstacle between God and me - an obstacle that I didn’t even realize existed.

I am learning that if you ask God to help you see your sins, He doesn’t waste anytime doing so. The lesson you get may be both hard and humbling.

 

[InLight247]

…………….my parish priest mentioned that the opposite of patience is resentment, and then he went on to talk about bearing wrongs patiently.

When I first read the above statement, I thought “the opposite of patience is impatience”.
But thinking about the reason of impatience, yes, it definitely includes resentment, or at least annoyance.

Many times we are annoyed by other’s carelessness, ignorance, incompetence, indifference, irresponsibility, thoughtlessness, self-centeredness, or any other irritating behaviors. And we react with our impatience or resentment.

This impatient reaction could actually result from our own self-centeredness or ego. The other person failed to meet *my *expectation, therefore, I am upset.

Here is a story you may or may not have heard before; it is from a book I am currently translating from English into Chinese:

Stephen Covey in “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” shares an experience that he once had while traveling on the New York subway. Imagine you are riding the subway early one morning, and everybody appears to be comfortable － people are drinking their coffee, reading their newspapers and magazines, working on their laptops, talking on their cell phones. Everything is normal and peaceful. At each station, a few people get off, a few people get on, everything is calm and sedate, until the train stops at a particular station and a man walks onto your train car with his little children. He finds seats for them and then sits down in a reflective mood. While he is in deep meditation, the children begin to run up and own the aisle, screaming and shouting, running all over the train car.

How do you feel? Are you mad at the man? Why are you mad? You are perhaps thinking, this man should take care of his children in public. If he does not know how to take care of children, why did he have them in the first place? Are you mad at the children for making so much noise? Spoiled kids! You might think. You notice there is no mother. Now you might be thinking, I bet the mother left his man with these undisciplined children. See yourself going up to this irresponsible father and confronting him, saying, “Excuse me, sir, would you mind tending to your children? They’re being so disruptive, and I think everybody is getting a little upset.” The man looks up at you and says, “Two hours ago these children lost their mother in the hospital. She just died, and ever since then I have been trying to explain to them the death of their mother, and their only reaction is this.”

Now how do you feel? The children are still jumping up and down, screaming and shouting. But now you feel terrible. You feel guilty. You feel sorry for the man, you feel sorry for the children, and you feel bad about their mother. You might even feel upset with yourself for feeling negatively about the father and his children.

In this story, the man was annoyed, got impatient, and expressed his resentment without knowing what that poor father was going through. The morale of the story taught us to be patient and understanding – do not judge.

When our hearts are more compassionate, it is easier to be tolerant and we may better refrain ourselves. Gossip is a further expression of our impatience, disagreement, disapproval or resentment. We all have areas to work on. Realization is a good first step. Thanks for bringing up the topic so we may all give some reflection on it.

 

[BarbaraTherese]

Two A+ insightful Posts…thank you both!

 

[DJgang]

Two A+ insightful Posts…thank you both!

For sure, for sure Barbara, I agree.

I tend to habor resentment in my businesses. Employees are a horror to deal with … patience, yes, I have alot…but ever heard of the give them an inch, they’ll take a mile…well, it is right…

I spend most of my time in confession about employees…

As my priest told me…they can send me to hell or send me to heaven…my choice.

God bless!

Dana

 

[BarbaraTherese]

For sure, for sure Barbara, I agree.

I tend to habor resentment in my businesses. Employees are a horror to deal with … patience, yes, I have alot…but ever heard of the give them an inch, they’ll take a mile…well, it is right…

I spend most of my time in confession about employees…

As my priest told me…they can send me to hell or send me to heaven…my choice.

God bless!

Dana

Hi Dana…the insights in these posts have been and will be I know of great help to me. I identified some time ago that I seemed to have such negative things to say about some people and decided I had to stop this. I almost had to bite off my tongue to do so…I found it extremely hard indeed with plenty of failures abounding. What I can now see from reading these posts is that I resent people that have upset me and hence in anger and indeed revenge born of resentment I want to blacken them. I think to focus on the resentment I feel will be the key to my tongue not being so sore most of the time, or worse, me falling into sins born of resentment that are also taking away the good reputation of others - and this is a dreadful state of affairs for them and for my own soul and can be most serious grave matter. I hope so and will pray so that focusing in future on resentment will grant some success (going straight to the heart of matters i.e. resentment) to me and to the good names of others…I am very grateful for the two opening posts in this thread.

Blessings and regards…Barb
Incidentally I once wrote a poem years ago that ran:

And damned are they who sever good reputation from another
once taken
gone forever.

 

[ncjohn]

Ouch…

This is one that hits waaaay too close too home.

There are really only a couple people who seem to have the ability to push my buttons, and when they do that resentment rears its ugly head like a tiger.

I have come to realize over the last couple years, after a lot of reflection, that those particular people are doing things that subconsciously take me back to hurtful incidents from my past–making my “now” into “then”–and that my reactions are just on “autopilot” as my “rational” mind has just checked out.

It does make it hard though when you are exposed to those people on a daily basis and they continue to do those same things that trigger irrational responses. The ironic part is that it ends up being ME that is hurt since they don’t have a clue what’s going on while I am the one losing my peace.

My poor little fragile ego needs lots of prayers in that area.