Blogs

September 28, 2021

“I’ve been harboring some resentment.”

What would it take for you to release the resentment you’ve been carrying? Whether big or small, the emotions you refuse to feel, the ones you avoid, affect your whole life.

In this episode, Jamie and Heather explore ways to better name their emotions and release resentment. Check it out.

Have you ever been laying in bed, desperately trying to sleep, but your mind just won’t let you. It’s replaying old scenarios. “You should have said x.” “Why didn’t you do x instead.” “Ugh! I can’t believe they did that to you.” 

You’re not alone, that actually happens to a lot of people. So, what is that? And what are you going to do about it?

Two ways to begin releasing resentment:

Have you ever had an argument where you understand the other parties’ reasoning, but you’re not able to conform your emotions to their reasoning?   Yeah, us too. It’s easy to undercut your feelings so you never have to actually face them.

EMOTIONS LEFT UNFELT, CAN CONSUME YOU.

We often avoid our feelings by allowing anger, resentment, humor, or logical take over. But emotions left unfelt can consume you. Your unresolved emotions can even show up in your physical health. So, how do you begin to really feel your emotions? How do release resentment?

Here are two easy ways to begin releasing the negative feelings you’ve been harboring:

1. Name your emotions

You can’t move past what you refuse to face. When you feel hurt, threatened, discomfort, or disappointed what do you feel in addition to those feelings?

We often partner our feelings with a bigger reaction to protect ourselves. Psychologists call this reaction ego. Ego rises up to protect you from you from your deeper feelings. Read more about ego from last week’s episode. 

Anger? Resentment? Pride? Humor? What kicks up to protect you from your true emotions? When you feel ego kick up to protect you, stop and name your emotions.

Take some time to sit with those emotions. Don’t rush it. The point of naming your emotions is to better understand yourself and what you’re feeling. Not to beat yourself up or to name them and move on. Healing is the goal and that takes time. Don’t rush to the next step.

2. Do something different

After you’ve identified what your ego response is and you’ve taken time to identify your deeper emotions, you can begin to do something different. For a lot of us, our first “different” will be stopping and slowing down long enough to stop doing our ego response. But after we’ve practiced this several times, you might find that you want to do something positive in place of your typical negative ego response.

Do you usually avoid your feelings? Hide them away from the people in your life? You may want to try sharing your feelings.

How about getting angry and lashing out. You may want to take a few minutes to remind yourself of the good things about this individual before communicating how you really feel.

Do you carry a lot of resentment? Consider starting a gratitude journal.

Your goal here is to begin to create emotionally healthy habits that allow you to experience the depth of your emotions, share them with others, and move forward well.

Homework for releasing resentment:

Jamie and Heather are not just sharing their stories with you so you can know all their secrets. Their hope is that by sharing what they’re learning and changing, you can come along with them and grow too.

Your homework after listening to this episode is to put pen to paper. Grab your iPhone or a notepad and pen and begin labeling your emotions or start your gratitude journal.

Curious about the full body scan Jamie and Heather have had done? Learn more here.

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