Tatiana Khodakova
“One can feel hurt, but choose not to be offended”
Wittingly or unwittingly, to a greater or lesser extent, openly or secretly from ourselves, we take offense at people, most often at those who are close to us, those who are in some way important to us.
Offense is not a basic emotion, as anger or fear are. Offense is a whole spectrum of feelings: anger toward the offender, self-pity, and also positive feelings such as love and care. It is these feelings that prevent us from expressing aggression in full, open force. After all, who hurts us the most? Of course, the closest people, because it is their opinions, actions, and attitudes that are most emotionally meaningful to us.
We feel offended when we lose the sense of our value in our communication with other people. The feeling of offense arises from about 1.5 years of age, so it does not always lend itself to rational explanation — the origin of the wound goes back to a period when logical thinking was absent. Offense has a tint of anger, which could not be expressed openly.
Any emotion requires its expression in actions. Often the move to action does not happen because there are prohibitions on expressing anger, wrath, or dissatisfaction. The most explicit forms of prohibition are phrases like “immediately stop being angry”, “I don’t like looking at you like that”, or “you’re so ugly when angry”. In the first case the child hears a prohibition, and in the second, rejection. What conclusion will the child draw? Anger is a bad feeling; if I get angry, mom and dad will stop loving me. For a child, losing parental love is the scariest thing, so every time the child again feels anger, they will become afraid, suppress forbidden feelings, and translate them into offense.
In this case, the energy allocated to carrying out actions remains unreleased and is “stored2 in the body as muscular tension.
On the bodily level, offense/resentment is experienced as follows:
- teeth tightly clenched;
- jaw tension;
- facial muscles stiff;
- lips pressed together;
- sad facial expression because the corners of the mouth are downturned;
- shoulders dropped;
- lump in the throat;
- pain between the shoulder blades (here sits the knot of anger toward those closest to us);
- hands clenched in a closed position;
- sunken chest;
- crushing pains of unclear origin;
- little energy.
You could say that resentment is anger about my value not being recognized in relationships. There is a sense that “this is not how one should behave”, because by doing so I lose my value.
RESENTMENT, IN FACT, IS A REQUEST TO BE ACCEPTED WITH ALL OF MY FEELINGS AND EXPRESSIONS
When there is a prohibition on direct expression of anger, a person chooses a passive way to express it — through resentment. If there is no courage to say directly what is happening, then a behavioral strategy is used — to take offense and withdraw from the communication. And such behavior contradicts the inner desire that hides behind resentment — the desire to have good contact with the interlocutor.
Behind resentment lies the desire to express anger, but in a way that the other person accepts us and remains in the relationship. Therefore, one should distinguish between resentment as a feeling and resentment as an action.
Any person can experience the feeling of resentment — it’s a normal emotion. But the actions taken from this feeling will affect the quality of relationships with others and the health of the person who resents.
Resentment, in fact, is the need to be in contact. The one who resents leaves, but with an inner wish that they will be caught up with and brought back, pursued and brought closer again. As we can see, the behavior conflicts with the true need.
What to do? Be aware of your feelings and needs. Develop the skill of speaking about your feelings directly: I’m angry / I don’t like it when you say or do this or that; don’t do / don’t say that again”.
Many people fear expressing, for example, anger, because for some reason they think that to express it means shouting or fighting. This is not the case. Openly speaking about one’s feelings is a perfectly adequate way to express anger, so that the need for resentment disappears along with the bodily symptoms.
Photo by gaspar zaldo
Translated by Maria Zayats
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When success is more important than happiness
Татьяна Ходакова
Практический психолог
Интегративный подход
