Now that the excess of the holidays has given way to the austerity of January, many of us are doing a personal inventory. The first step is about two inches high, onto the bathroom scale to see how much tonnage we collected since winter began. Recently I heard an estimate that a seven pound weight gain is not unusual.
The culprit in that heavy, bogged down feeling is clear: the relationship we have with our family. I’m not talking about the calories inhaled from mom’s famous New York-style cheesecake or grandma’s plum pudding. I’m concerned about our emotional weight gain, specifically the emotion of anger and its crusty cousin, resentment.
There are various times during the year when an alien from outer space could learn the most about human beings and our preferred social grouping, the family: at holiday time and at rituals celebrating family passages, such as baptisms, weddings, and funerals.
This hypothetical space creature would scratch its antenna, puzzling over the paradox that, although we plan our major life events to include our families, we can also spend a lot of energy feuding with them. The space alien might well file a report to central command along the lines that there is no need to waste resources on an invasion when they can just sit back and watch the earthlings dismantle their social fabric themselves.
Family members who are bogged down with the excessive weight of resentment would love for you to join them. They provide you with a compelling and dramatic narrative, the point of which is always the same: they have been the victim of some cold, callous action by another family member that only a fool would fail to recognize. Won’t you please show that you’re on their side, by joining them in having nothing to do with that person indefinitely? This is called a perverse triangle – two family members bound together primarily by their resentment against a third.
However, you could surprise them by refusing to get pulled into their resentment trap. You might remind them that every insult is self-inflicted, a principle of Rational-Emotive therapy. Yes, it is true that others can and do treat us badly from time to time. It is also true that this bad behavior can sting. It is true that when directed at a child, it can cause long-term damage to self-esteem.
But when an adult is on the receiving end of an insult, it really is up to that adult whether the result is a passing hurt or whether it is allowed to freeze into the cold, lead weight of resentment.
Maybe you’re the one struggling with feelings of resentment. You’re still smarting from the unannounced visit of Aunt Ruth, who stopped over on Christmas Eve to drop off her famous fruitcake – which you have secretly used for years as a foundation for your backyard bird feeder.
She saw you sprawled on the floor wrapping a mountain of presents at the last minute, and remarked: “I had my Christmas shopping all done by Aug. 1. And I got fabulous gifts for 80 percent off at the Bargain Bin.” As she pulled out of the driveway, you wound up to hurl the fruitcake at her Lexus, but ended up throwing out your shoulder instead, as the full weight of the 20-pound fruitcake came crushing down on you.
This is exactly how resentment works. We think we are directing our self-righteous indignation at the other person, but in reality it is weighing us down. Nelson Mandela, the South African leader who ended apartheid, and who had more reason for feeling resentment than most of us will ever have, described resentment as an acid that corrodes the vessel that holds it.
Most resentment stems from feelings of inadequacy. It starts out with a feeling we have about ourselves that we ingeniously launder into a judgment about another person. Before Aunt Ruth stopped in, you were already feeling that you had bungled the holiday buying. You doubted you bought the right presents (What did your son mean by an iPod, anyway?), and you just learned that you could have gotten Susan’s gloves for 50 percent less if you had shopped at a different store. You were flagellating yourself with the self-recriminating mantra “I blew it again,” when the doorbell rang and in walked Aunt Ruth.
The reason people hang onto resentment is that it distracts them from the depressing loop of self-blame. It channels that negative energy outward, resulting in a deflection of hostility from self toward others. But it never really resolves the underlying problem of what to do about those feelings of inadequacy in the first place. People hang onto resentment because it feels so good to feel bad.
If you want a program for weight reduction in the new year, try this:
— Make an act of faith in yourself. Accept yourself as flawed but improvable.
— Realize that if you refuse to accept yourself until you’re perfect, you’re setting yourself up for a long wait.
— Recognize that when you decide to accept yourself, you won’t need to personalize the opinions of others. You will be free to accept the helpful, constructive part and let go of the rest.
— Try Aunt Ruth’s fruitcake. You will have room now that you’ve dropped that extra weight.
(Pankratz is a marriage and family therapist for Catholic Charities Milwaukee regional office.)
|
