What Is Your Resentment Giving You?

Hey there. If you are holding on to resentment, I want you to pause for a moment and ask yourself a hard question. What is that resentment giving you?

Resentment is not just pain. It always gives you something. It might give you anger to hold onto. It might protect you from feeling deeper sadness. It might help you avoid a conversation you are not ready to have.

There is no wrong answer here. There is only your honest answer.

I have held grudges in my life. I have replayed conversations in my head. I have imagined what I should have said. I have used resentment as fuel when I did not know what else to do with my feelings.

But here is what I learned. Resentment is heavy. It shows up in your body. It shows up in your energy. It shows up in how you treat yourself and other people.

I see this in fitness all the time. Someone misses a workout and gets mad at themselves. They carry that anger into the next day. Then into the next. They stop moving because the resentment toward themselves feels safer than trying again.

Resentment toward your body works the same way. You get mad at what you see in the mirror. You punish yourself with extreme plans. When those plans fall apart, you hold that against yourself too. The weight you feel is not just physical. It is emotional.

Resentment is not strength. It is armor. And armor gets heavy.

At some point, you have to ask yourself if you are ready to loosen your grip.

Not to forgive everything overnight. Not to pretend nothing happened. Just to loosen it enough to breathe again.

For me, what helped was remembering that most people are just trying to figure things out. Including me. Including you.

If someone is the villain in your story, there is a good chance you are the villain in someone else’s story. That does not mean anyone is evil. It means we are all messy humans trying to survive, love, protect ourselves, and make sense of what hurts.

Timing matters with all of this. You will not let go before you are ready. And you should not force it. But you can start by noticing.

What is your resentment giving you?

Is it giving you control? Is it giving you distance? Is it giving you a reason not to try again?

Once you see what it gives you, you can decide if you still want to pay the cost.

This is part of living an inside/out life. It starts with reconnecting with yourself. Sometimes it leads to reconnecting with others. But it always starts with honesty.

You do not have to be perfect. You do not have to be healed. You do not have to be done with the pain.

You just have to be willing to ask the question.

What is this giving me. And am I ready, even a little, to let some of it go?