You didn’t give many details about what you’re resentful about or towards whom, and that’s OK, but it limits the specific suggestions any of us can give. Forgive me if the following questions and suggestions don’t apply to you…
I’d think and pray about it to figure out exactly what you’re resentful about; that may take some work, or you may know exactly what’s causing it. Maybe you have been allowing others to treat you badly, to take you for granted, to not take their share of the work around the house, etc. in which case, you must accept that you bear part of the blame, and you must do some work to improve the situation.
Maybe you need to set limits of behavior that is unacceptable to you, tell the “offender,” set and enforce consequences of “not following the rules.” For example, if a family-member is verbally abusing you, you have discussed it with them, and it happens again, then you must hang up the phone, walk away, leave the house to let everyone calm down, etc. If someone is taking advantage of you by asking you to do something you don’t want to do or more often than you want to help them out, you have be strong enough to say, “Sorry, no, I’m not available to do that, I have other plans,” and stick to it.
If you are feeling unappreciated, be humble and direct enough to just tell your loved ones, “I’m feeling taken-for-granted and unappreciated, could I please have some more frequent compliments, thanks, and expressions of appreciation, please?” Maybe they’ll need concrete examples of what it is that you’d like thanks for, maybe they’ll need concrete examples of what kinds of compliments you’d like to hear, maybe you’ll need to bowl them over with your own thanks and appreciation and positive reinforcement when they make the slightest effort to accommodate your wishes. It may feel frustrating to you that the thanks and compliments are not coming from them spontaneously, but you can’t expect people to be mind-readers. Just be honest about what you’re feeling and what your emotional needs are.
If the problem is that family-members are not taking their share of the work, just leaving you to do everything, then again, you can’t expect others to be mind-readers. You have to tell others how you’re feeling and what you want to change around the house. I am in this situation myself. I must do the hard work of setting a schedule of what must be done, when, and by whom, teach my kids how to do X chores because they’ve never done them before, and just insist that they are done or they get Y consequences. I’ve often thought that I should make a poster-board sized list of all the work around the house that must get accomplished and
how often to open the eyes of my loved ones to just how much work is required for the household to function well. I have the feeling they are not consciously choosing to leave all the work for me nor deliberately avoiding “doing their fair share,” it’s just that they are
completely oblivious to most of my labor, and hey, instructing the ignorant is a spiritual work of mercy on my part.
I don’t know if any of the above applies to you, but I’ll leave you with the Serenity Prayer:
“May God grant me the courage to change the things I can, the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
May God bless you,
Christine
