How to let go of resentment and forgive a person?

Everyone has heard that learning to forgive is very important and necessary. But it is one thing to talk about the necessity and benefits of forgiveness, and it is quite another to learn to forgive in reality. Anyone who has tried it at least once knows that forgiveness is very difficult, time consuming and does not always work out on the first try. You should be aware of the main difficulties of this process and own some useful techniques that will help you achieve the result.

Psychology has only one truthful answer to this question, which is beyond doubt. Deep, strong, bitter, shallow - absolutely any offense can and should be forgiven. Even what a person considers a betrayal, what at first seems incredible, breaking life into "before" and "after". Another question is whether a person wants to forgive? Unfortunately, many are completely useless to convince, persuade and frighten the dangers of long-standing grievances for life and health. They do not want to part with their grievances, they are not determined to forgive anyone. Years go by, grievances spread and multiply, a person diligently "feeds" them in his soul. Then he gets sick, fails, gets into trouble. Again, he does not draw conclusions and continues to “feed” the grievance. This will continue until it absorbs him entirely - oncology, death.

Forgiveness gives you the opportunity to free yourself, to free the other. Getting Rid of Resentment - How to get rid of a heavy load and move on easily. If you choose this path, you will have to try to master all the wisdom of forgiveness. Very often people are embarrassed to forgive, fearing to be seen as soft-bodied, toothless.There are certain social dogmas that say, for example, that it is impossible to forgive a wife who has betrayed, that once a betrayer will betray again, that enemies who have encroached on the most sacred are unworthy of forgiveness. Under the influence of dogmas, a person refuses even to admit the thought of forgiveness. But if you discard all conventions and dogmas, then you will easily understand that all the sins they talk about can also be forgiven.

It is not at all necessary to tell everyone and the offender that you have forgiven him, it is not at all necessary to demonstrate your generosity, it may look like posturing. In addition, such forgiveness for show is not always real, sincere. It is enough to forgive the other in your soul, to let go of the load inside yourself. This is what we need to learn. Resentment is one of the difficult feelings. It consists of anger, disappointment, insult and pity for oneself and is a response to some event, person, deed, words that contradict our expectations.

A person believes that he has been unjustly offended, feels sorry for himself, he is outraged and depressed. Irreversible circumstances, when nothing can be changed, cause the strongest, deepest resentment. These include the facts of betrayal, betrayal, children's grievances against parents. You cannot go back and replay these situations. But you can change your attitude towards them. No human is born with the ability to feel hurt. Newborns do not know how to be offended. Psychologists attribute only fear to innate emotions. Careless actions of the baby can be frightened, you can cause physical pain, but you cannot offend the baby.

Before learning to forgive, it is important to be able to identify the types of hurt. It can be demonstrative and hidden. The first is the reaction that a person needs to achieve something. It is also called manipulative. This is how children force their parents to buy a toy or give sweets. So often women and girls are offended. She's always on display. The second is very dangerous, because a person hides it, becomes isolated, worries heavily, not trying to change anything.

Grievances can be directed at a specific person (husband, wife, friend), at a group of people (at colleagues, ethnic groups, at all women or at all officials), at the whole world, at higher powers, destiny and at oneself himself. The most difficult in the process of comprehension and forgiveness are grievances against oneself, the world, higher powers and all kinds of hidden, carefully hidden grievances.

If you are offended, this means only one thing: it was not someone from the outside who came and offended you, but you yourself allowed yourself such a response. This means that you created the grudge yourself. You and to eliminate it. To understand why this happens, you need to know how resentment arises. The mechanism of a complex feeling is very simple, it does not depend on whether someone wanted to offend you or everything happened spontaneously. Resentment is always based on the actual discrepancy between your expectations and reality. Psychoanalysts distinguish four main actions that a person performs in his mind a fraction of a second before experiencing an offense:

• creating an illusion, expectation (how a person should act, what the world should give us, how everything should be, so that we are completely satisfied with it);
• observation of reality (how events actually develop);
• comparing expectations and reality, finding the differences between the first and the second;
• a deliberate decision to respond to the detected inconsistencies.

It makes no difference what type or type of resentment it develops.The described mechanism is equally fair and accurate for any situation: be it a family quarrel and resentment against a specific person or a social conflict and resentment against a whole group of people. At any of the four stages, a person can take control of the situation, and then the offense will not happen. The ability to break down any offensive situation into four stages is the right way to start working on your negative feelings. These four actions help you better understand how and why an offensive situation happened, why you are tormented by an unpleasant feeling.

Now, knowing that resentment is just your reaction, existing only in your mind and nowhere else, you can begin to take responsibility for this destructive feeling and try to let go of it. Is it the husband's fault that his wife is offended by him? No, because she made the decision to be offended herself. Is life unfair, giving one both money and a good job, and not giving it to the other? No, because the decision to take offense at life was made by the person himself. Anger, disappointment and other emotional nuances that accompany our experiences when we decide to be offended are also ours, personal, we should deal with them. Understanding this usually reduces the level of ambition. It comes to the understanding that it is not so necessary to wait until the offender matures to an apology: there is no need for them.

In addition to the avengers, who do not know how to forgive anyone and anything in principle, there are people who are classified by experts in the field of psychology as pseudo-forgiving. Although such people say “I forgive”, in fact, deep down in their hearts, they remember everything and are ready at any time to reproduce the offense and throw out anger at the offender. If you are determined to learn to forgive, get rid of negative feelings, then working on inner mistakes cannot be avoided. You can cope with resentment only after it has been lived through, accepted, analyzed with mathematical precision. After that, you can let go of the insult, get rid of it, remove from the soul that which is so burdensome.

Self-improvement will not be easy and enjoyable. You may have to learn something new and unpleasant about yourself. But the deliverance is worth it. Let's start by assessing the four mental processes that occur before experiencing resentment and answering a few questions honestly.

• What were my expectations? Why were they like this? Was there any reason to build such illusions?
• Why did the person act exactly as he did in reality? What were his motives? What did he want? Did he know about my expectations?
• Were the differences I found between expectations and reality so objective?
• Why do I need the offense I have created: I want the offender to change his actions, I want to get something, I want to end the relationship with the person completely, and the offense is needed as an excuse?

Think about what your demand is behind any offense. It can be ridiculous, unreasonable, dishonest, overpriced. No one in the world is obliged to live up to anyone's expectations. It will become much easier to cope with the unpleasant feeling literally poisoning your life now, if you give honest answers to these questions, it will become much easier to forgive the offender. Let's consider several common situations and ways to get out of an offended state.

Despite the fact that a spouse or loved one promised to make you happy, he is still a separate person. He has his own interests, plans, views and opinions. He promised you happiness, but he did not say that happiness is in your hands. Whether you maintain a relationship with a man after his actions that deceived your expectations and requirements, or choose to leave, does not affect forgiveness.

You need to forgive in any case: it is not him who needs it, but you, in order to live on with a light heart and normal health. Remember the good things inherent in this person: pleasant events and moments, situations in which the person revealed his best sides. Put yourself in his place mentally and try to identify his true motives. Having realized them, thank the person for all the wonderful things that happened, and let go of the insult. Exhale it. Forbid her to come back. It may not work the first time, but it will definitely work out.

Parental grievances against children are very common, and they tend to be incredibly strong and destructive. A grown-up child lives his own life, pays less attention to his mother or father than before, and this is not surprising. If you take a sheet of paper and a pencil and honestly write down the answers to all the proposed questions, then it will most likely turn out that it is not the daughter and not the son who are to blame for everything, but a higher desire to still hold the child by the hand, to control his life. The requirement is unreasonable, because the child has grown up and is now ready to hold his own children by the hand.

The motives of a son and daughter can be very constructive: work, study, creating their own family. Moreover, most children do not know what expectations their parents are building in their heads.

Tell your child that you would like to see him more often, that you need his help. Discard unrealistic and outdated attitudes and expectations-requirements. Remember the good: how your daughter took her first steps, and my son brought his first five. Bless the child in your mind, let go of the offense, let love into your heart. An excellent way of psychotherapy at home is a family photo album: it allows you to mentally return to a good past, visualize the positive.

Relationships with colleagues can be of varying degrees of tension. When working with such grievances, it is very important to immediately determine whether you are offended by someone specific or by your entire work collective. In any case, follow the diagram. Analyze: what, in fact, did you expect from your colleagues? How were they supposed to treat you? What should have been done for you? How to proceed? Did they know about your internal requirements? How reasonable are these requirements and do they infringe on the interests of others?

A simple example: you are offended that a colleague dumped all the work on you on the eve of the New Year holidays, and she herself asked for time off to buy gifts for the children. First, she does not know what requirements you have for her behavior. Secondly, she has strong motives: gifts to children. And finally, your colleague has helped you out more than once when you needed to leave work. Do you remember? Mentally thank your insult for a life lesson, wish your colleague to choose gifts successfully and let go of the insult.

Similarly, you need to sort out conflict situations in the team. Behind any conflict is a mismatch of expectations: the team expected one thing from you, but you acted differently, you expected something specific from your colleagues, but they did the opposite. After identifying the motives and positive traits of each coworker, it is important to let go of the resentment. And only after that, decide whether to work in a team further or just leave the place and find another job. Whatever the decision, it's important to forgive.

Important: in any situation, for any insult, remember that you cannot hide this feeling, leave it unworked, you cannot fight it and deny it. This will not bring relief and creates a threat of anger and self-pity build-up, which can lead to the development of physical illness. When working with each grievance, you need to:

• admit the fact of having a feeling;
• take responsibility for the offense solely on yourself;
• divide it into four components;
• replace all negativity in the analysis with positive feelings.

In psychotherapeutic practice, several methods of working with grievances are widely used.

This method was developed in 1993 by Professor Yuri Orlov. Wellness thinking is called sanogenic.The method describes how to achieve forgiveness by replacing pathogenic thoughts with healthy, positive ones. This method is used by teachers today, its theses are studied by students of medical universities, in order to use it later in medical practice, it is recommended to everyone who works with convicts, with the disabled. The method includes the following steps:

• self-observation (writing down daily thoughts in a notebook, describing feelings, the more details the better);
• determining the validity and nature of their claims and expectations;
• assessment of reality and assessment of the nature of the offense.

The task is to clearly show the difference between expectations and reality and learn how to replace negative with positive in reality.

This method was created back in the last century by Soviet psychiatrists to help people who have been abused and were in a traumatic situation for a long time in overcoming stress and resentment. Today, the method is widely used to establish the psychosomatic causes of cancer, excess weight, obesity, and cardiovascular diseases. The person is invited to draw their resentment. It makes no difference whether he can draw well or not at all. Drawing allows you to bring out from the inner world what a person usually suppresses and hides.

It is imperative that you write down or voice the answers to certain questions.

• Where has she settled (in the head, heart, kidneys, stomach or elsewhere)?
• What size is it (large or small)?
• What is its structure (liquid and iridescent, solid and stuck, like a cloud of gas and almost weightless)?
• Is it cold or hot?
• Does it have a color and a smell? What color is it, what does it smell like?
• How old is she (how long has she appeared)?
• Why is it aggravated, in what circumstances does it happen?
• Why does it exist? What is its purpose and task?
• What advantages does it give (maybe it protects you from communicating with someone unpleasant or dangerous)?
• What will be the farewell to the offense (holiday, feast, farewell on the platform)?
• What will settle in this place instead of her? Identify a positive feeling that should live where the hurt has been.

Let's pay special attention to the last point. Create a psychological anchor. For example, imagine a large and yellow fragrant orange that was given to you as a child for the New Year. Each time the resentment comes back, reproduce his smell and image in your memory. Gradually, the orange and the feeling of joy will replace the negative traces of resentment. Burn or tear the drawing with a portrait of the offense at the end of the work.

A popular and very effective technique that relies on being honest with the abuser. But instead, there will be an empty chair or stool in front of you. You can pour out anger and resentment on the chair in the literal sense of the word: yell at him, kick him, spit at him. Having lived through negative feelings, you can say goodbye to them.

Letting go of the past is much easier if all the details of the offense are worked out. Collect the trial. Act as a prosecutor: name all the crimes of the offender, accuse him. Act as a lawyer: defend the offender, acquit. Become the judge: weigh the arguments and decide to forget.

For information on how to let go of the resentment and forgive a person, see the next video.