Dad Attitude: Our Inner Worlds
Do you ever feel like a punching bag? Like a doormat? Or Public Enemy Number One? Does it ever make you so mad you want to punch an actual bag? This is cold and prickly resentment, and it can creep up on all of us. It’s different from red-hot anger because resentment involves a feeling of mistreatment, as though you’ve been dealt unfairly.
In families, fair treatment is a fickle thing. Often, one or two people—say, a fussing child or an ill parent—needs all the attention at a given moment. The rest of the pack is then left out. Or say you’ve just welcomed a new baby, and everyone’s happy, but you or your spouse are hating on something—or maybe someone. Or say you’re a child, and you feel spited, wronged somehow, but you don’t even have the words to explain what you’re feeling?
This complex emotion is a tough one to dismantle for anyone. Men, especially. Since we guys are so good at bottling things up, resentment can build up to the point of toxicity. Men feel resentment for things like rifts at work, shifts in the family dynamic, a loss of an opportunity, or even social and political change. I can attest to feeling resentment in my family being one of three males seeking the attention of one female. When I don’t get it, but see my young princes getting all of it, do I feel a little left out in the cold? You bet I do.
Unlike jealousy, which sometimes motivates us, either positively or negatively to do or be better (think: “success is the best revenge”), resentment often comes spiked with self-pity. You feel treated unfairly, then what? Pity Party! Usually no one’s invited though. The self-pity may temporarily soothe the unfairness, but it only feeds the feeling of despair. That “no-one-knows-what-I’m-going-through” feeling. When you might say to someone, if you ever had the courage to talk to someone, “You don’t even understand.”
So, how do we deal with an emotion as powerful as resentment?
Take it seriously, but not personally. Because resentment prompts us to seek a type of justice for ourselves, it’s helpful for us to better understand why we feel wronged in the first place. It’s important to look objectively and remove yourself a few degrees from the source of the unfairness. Is this because of something I have done? Or did someone else truly make me feel this way?
By stopping for a moment to consider the root cause of all emotions, major or minor, positive and negative, we can ask ourselves, “Why am I feeling this way?” then quickly follow up with “What can I do to change this feeling right now?” Maybe then we won’t feel so punchy.
◊♦◊
Photo by Volodymyr Melnyk on 123RF
The post #Daditude — Case File 6: Resentment appeared first on The Good Men Project.