Resentment can be a toxic emotion that hurts a client’s ability to connect with others and develop meaningful relationships.
But are there times when it can be considered “healthy?”
Well, in the video below, Thema Bryant, PhD shares how resentment can sometimes be an important step for clients healing from trauma.
She also walks us through how we can avoid pushing clients deeper into resentment.
Have a look.
Now, one of the challenges is the people who you interact with don’t usually have a lot of grace for a resentful person, right? Survivors show up in different ways, and some of the ways that we present can be off-putting to people.
From a clinician standpoint, it is so critical that we do not take it personally when people show up in resentment and irritability, even when that gets directed at us. It takes the wisdom and the compassion to step outside of yourself and to be able to hear the narrative, to know why someone may be showing up with arms crossed, legs crossed, smirking at you, or what we would say in my community, giving you a side eye. What is all of that armor about? It is about the fact that not only have I lost greatly – whether that is actually lost a loved one or emotionally lost out – but that no one is willing to acknowledge it. When we can see it from that perspective, you can have a lot more compassion for your clients who show up seemingly with a chip on their shoulders and be able to see the weight that they have been carrying and that others have ignored.
It pulls for us to show compassion even when people have on armor and even when some of that resentment gets directed at us, because what happens is those clients are anticipating a lack of care. They are anticipating a lack of compassion because that is what they have experienced. When we join in with that, it locks it deeply into their own programming.
According to Thema, feelings of resentment can be an important “awakening” for clients stuck in trauma-induced shame.
Now, we know that working with shame and resentment are two critical pieces of trauma therapy. That’s why for Cyber Monday . . .
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Now we’d like to hear from you. How do you work with clients with deep-seated resentment? What about clients trapped in shame? Let us know in the comments below.
If you found this helpful, here are a few more resources you might be interested in:
An Intervention to Help Put Aside Resentment
Thank you Thema for framing the presence of resentment so well and with such a depth of understanding of why it presents in the first place and what those of us who have experienced trauma are shouldering and being held within the resentment.
Thank you for articulating how providing accepting and understanding social support helps a trauma survivor move past the resentment of being mistreated into healing to feel joy again. Condemning attitudes hinder the trauma survivor’s healing, and the trauma survivor needs to know it is ok to leave environments that are toxic to find supportive ones.
I feel appreciation for counselors who are trained to recognize and accept the “prickly” unappealing behaviors as steps toward healing. In no way do I mean to be disrespectful toward or discount the importance of a trauma survivor’s existing family, church groups, employers, or social circles who offer as much support as they know how to do. A trauma survivor needs compassionate community support and needs to live in a healthy environment to facilitate recovery. Thank you for expressing the needs of trauma survivors so clearly.
Hello,
I have learned to embrace the resentment and be curious about it. It can open up a treasure chest of dynamics that can aide in the healing process. To look deep inside and sift through the reasons for resentment and understand the reasons may hold a great deal of stored and repressed energy that needs to be seen and heard possibly for the first time. To hold the memories with compassion and understanding in hopes to help a client heal. They may be stuck in an early developmental stage where creative energy was not safe to express.
This was one of the best parts of learning so far for me about the resentments I have a steward through my young and now old living. Very appreciative thank you for this part of your Excellent work LindaHavel
Very powerful, insightful, and affirming for many of us struggling with resentments from trauma. Thank you again, Dr. Bryant.
Thema is wonderfully articulate. I feel she is a comrade…I recognize myself as holding resentment in a healthy way, toward family members who would continue playing me were they given a chance.
Agreed. I have family like that.
Excellent!. Great approach in helping family members to understand that they may not be the target of aggression.
Thank you.
It is possible that resentment for a situation such as presented is a spontaneous step toward healing. Resentment for inaction, for a fault of omission if not of commission implies some complicity in the abuse. Probably resentment is helping mobilize and trigger the healing process, less formidable endeavor than dealing directly with the perpetrator behavior, more manageable for the sufferer, less overwhelming that the perpetrator action.
I appreciate Dr. Bryant-Davis’ ways of describing this stage of healing. I think I may be able to apply her wisdom outside the therapy room too.
I am both a clinician and a survivor of severe sexual abuse, at the hands of my biological father. As such, “resentment” has been my best pal and always by my side. The importance of acknowledging and verbalizing my resentment has been healing. It has also been important to understand that those I am resentful to, may not be ready to acknowledge their own roles or their own traumas. As a result I’ve had to be cautious; like Thema shared, not to take it personally so to avoid a re-trauma. Thank you for sharing this snippet. In my years of personal therapy this topic never came up. In my opinion, it should be the basis of all our interactions clinically and in our own lives.
Very helpful in trying to navigate between letting person feel the pain and moving on to changing.
This was an extremely helpful message from Thema. How important it is to “validate the pain from harms done”….before trying to just “get rid of resentment.” Yes, it’s unpleasant being around resentful people. Yet only when they sense that someone really gets the depth of what they’ve experienced….only THEN can a heart grieve, and there can be a softening. A willingness to move past the pain can arise. It is a multi level process
I think you raise a very important point of what needs to come first so healing and healthy release can then unfold. Too often do we (me included in my own healing journey from trauma) try and bypass essential steps in an effort to get it all ‘behind us’ and move on. Thanks Melissa
What a gracious and spacious frame for this often encountered emotion of resentment. The reminder to stay centered in compassion is a good one, along with not taking it personally. It is vital that helpers have done their own work in order to maintain this stance-
Thank you so much for shining a light on this point of the journey to wholeness.
It’s very helpful to see how resentment can be healthy and helpful and needs a witnessing to move on in the healing process. It makes sense to view it this way both in my personal and professional life. Then one doesn’t get stuck there because it’s viewed as a step, not a block. It helps bring a sense of compassion and understanding for the person who may come in with that chip on their shoulder so one doesn’t convey a sense of judging, only witnessing a step forward.
Grateful to hear that the resentment is purposeful !and a key 🔑 to unlocking /awakening healing of trauma
the listening is part that self seems to deny during the trauma as a way to survive it
and as healing comes the release of resentment comes with the hearing the real account of story of what really happened
Many don’t believe or see some traumas so the story is hidden to many people and so also hidden from self as protection
The witness of that self that knows the story and is safe to tell truth and feel is healing
Thank you
RuthTimberlake