The craziness of anger and resentments toward others
By Fred Cavaiani
Have you ever felt hurt by someone close to you — friend, family member, relative, or someone in your life that you highly respected? This happens to everyone. But so often we can deal with this pain in ways that become more harmful to us than what actually happened. You may have been rejected or neglected by someone. This happens to everyone in life. But when we hang on to this hurt with anger or resentment and avoidance of the person, we do ourselves emotional and spiritual damage.
There is no happiness discovered when I hang on to a grudge or a resentment. In fact I limit my happiness because this resentment will keep surfacing. I then have to avoid looking deeper within myself because every time I look deeper this resentment will keep surfacing and my resentment and anger controls me. Other people do not have to change for me to be peaceful and happy. Only I need to change by taking the appropriate road through life of always being kind and loving and letting go of resentments and anger toward others.
Love heals. Love and forgiveness bring inner peace and happiness. When I am angry and resentful, I will not want to listen to other people share their inner feelings with me because my resentments will imprison me from being a good listener. I become a bit crazy in my attitudes when I am hanging on to a resentment or consistently stay angry at someone else for what they may have said to me or how they may have hurt me.
I am entitled to my perceptions but I am not entitled to treat other people in an unloving way. Over the years I have come to realize and accept that other people do not have to change for me to find happiness and peace. But I have to continually change into a more loving and kind person to have happiness and peace in my life. Part of this change is to also take quiet time with God each day so I discover more the meaning of love and kindness on the road through life.
The movement into a loving and kind person will always work when I make a choice to be kind and loving toward everyone no matter how I feel I have been treated by others. All of us will have misperceptions of other people. And we can easily go through life believing that how we see things and how we think and feel are the absolute truth about other people. This is not a good emotional or spiritual investment and is often inaccurate. It is much better to have people think of us as being a bit crazy for always being so loving and kind than being crazy for judging and condemning others and hanging on to anger and resentments.
There is such internal emotional and spiritual freedom when I embrace loving thoughts about others. I will put myself in a positive emotional state when I speak kindly and affirm others.
As I look over my life, I now see the futility and uselessness of resentments toward other people. It is a crazy and imprisoning way to live. And even if I don’t say anything negative, if I remain internally negative, people will experience this negativity and I will not experience love and internal freedom.
Every time I have held resentments and grudges toward others, I was investing in a crazy way to live. Every time I invested in loving words, thoughts and kind actions toward others, I was investing in a happy and peaceful manner of living.
Life can be so profoundly peaceful and loving if I choose to be always loving. I will then create within myself a deeper desire for a loving God and a profound realization of how to live life: always be loving and reflectively quiet with God. Each one enhances the others. I do not want to be resentfully crazy. I want to be lovingly forgiving and kind with a healthy, loving heart and mind. Only in love and in God will my soul be at rest.
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Fred Cavaiani is a licensed marriage counselor and psychologist with a private practice in Troy. He is the founder of Marriage Growth Center, a consultant for the Detroit Medical Center, and conducts numerous programs for groups throughout Southeast Michigan.
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