Episode 98: How To Let Go of Anger and Resentment

Hello everyone; welcome to today’s episode. I am so excited you are here. The other day, I had some anger boiling up inside of me. And anytime I have certain emotions, I get really curious. And I sat with why I was so angry. And what I came to realize was I was resentful. Anger and resentment are like peanut butter and jelly. They just go well together. But what’s interesting about it is anger is usually a secondary emotion that is felt first or understood more often. Where if we actually look at what’s underneath the anger is the primary emotion. And for me, that was sadness.

A lot of times, when someone is angry, they could be ashamed or embarrassed, or sad, or even disgusted, there’s all sorts of different emotions that we can feel, but we often mistake those emotions as anger. And it’s really important for us to look at anger and resentment because it creates spiritual bondage. Let me explain what spiritual bondage is. When you are so angry and it turns into resentment, and you can consciously or unconsciously be aware that you are resentful, what you’re doing is you’re bonding yourself, basically shackling yourself to that personal experience of hurt that you are feeling.

And the only person that continues to hurt is you. And you deserve to release that. You deserve to let go of the anger, let go of the conscious or unconscious resentment. There’s a beautiful quote by Carrie Fisher and that is, “resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.” That’s a big one. I think that sums up what spiritual bondage is. It’s like you’re poisoning yourself, and when you poison yourself, you’re the person that hurts, you’re the person that suffers, and you don’t deserve that.

And so today, I’m going to talk about different steps that you can take to release and let go of anger and resentment. And the very first step is acknowledgment. When you stop and pause, like I did the other day, I stopped and paused, and I realized I was boiling over with anger. I stopped and paused and acknowledged my emotions. What was I truly feeling? I had the opportunity to start the healing path, and I had the opportunity to get very honest with myself that I was resentful. Which leads us into the second step, which is being honest with yourself. How are you truly feeling?

Once you acknowledge, you have to move into honesty. Honesty is what’s going to set you free. There’s many steps in here that are going to set you free, but if you’re not honest, it’s going to be really, really, really, really hard for you to release the emotions that are trapped. I find that it’s really helpful to uncensored journal your feelings, your emotions, and your thoughts about the experience so that you can get them out and you can start allowing the feelings to percolate into your awareness even more. And this will assist you in moving into the next step.

The next step is empathy. We have to move into empathy. Empathy for yourself and for the other person that may have hurt you, even if they’re a toxic person. Empathy for the organization that may have hurt you, even if they hurt you so bad and it was all their fault. If we can bring empathy in, we can bring compassion in, which then allows us to bring forgiveness in, which is one of the other steps.

So when you give yourself empathy, you give yourself the opportunity to look at the flip side of the situation. There are always two sides, if not more, to experience perspective around. We never have the full story, no matter how much we think we do, because we’re always viewing the experience through our lens of past experiences. And when we can have empathy for the other person that may have hurt you, or the experience, or the organization that hurt you, you can then allow your heart to soften.

You can bring in more compassion, which allows your light to shine and allows you to move into a different level of empathy for yourself and for the other person. It allows you to start letting go of the poison, the poison of anger, and the poison of resentment.

The next step is responsibility. The next step is responsibility. It’s so important, no matter what, to take responsibility for your shortcomings and your reactions or actions in the situation. Even if the other person was completely at fault, you can still take responsibility for your actions and reactions. By taking responsibility, you start to unshackle yourself in that empathy comes in even more.

Empathy for yourself, compassion for yourself, and compassion for the other person or experience as well. This does not mean, and I want to say this because this is really hard sometimes for certain situations. There are God-awful things that happen, God-awful things. Those things ripple into our experiences. The most important thing is letting go and giving yourself permission to take a different path in the anger and resentment role, even if you never, ever did anything wrong in the situation.

I want to emphasize that because even though I’m talking about taking responsibility, it can be really hard to be like, How can I take responsibility when this person hurt me so bad? I’ll give you an example. My stepfather hurt me so bad as a child. As an alcoholic, he was not in the right frame of mind, and I am not making excuses for this man. He was not in the right frame of mind, but I can have empathy that he had a dis-ease that caused his behavior to hurt a lot of people. And that behavior hurt me on so many different levels.

But where I can take responsibility is that I could have maybe asked for support from my family. I could have maybe talked to a counselor as an adult a little bit sooner about it. And then that could have allowed me to release the anger and the resentment earlier. And so it’s not about letting the other person necessarily off the hook on their actions because you still are hurt. But it is allowing a different level of forgiveness to come in, which is one of the next steps, and that’s forgiveness. Forgiveness is so important. If you don’t forgive the person or the experience, you’re only hurting yourself.

And that hurt ripples through all areas of your life if you like to see it or not see it. And forgiveness can be extremely difficult. That does not mean that person or that experience did not hurt you because we’re not denying that. Hurt is hurt, and it is so awful when you are hurt and when you’re hurting. But what hurts even more is when you harden your heart to the point where you can’t allow forgiveness to come in.

When you allow forgiveness to come in and you can forgive yourself, you can forgive the person; you can forgive the experience, and you start to release that spiritual bondage that I was talking about earlier in the episode. That bondage, you don’t want that. Trust me; you don’t want it. Because at the end of the day, you’re just shackling yourself to that person, and you don’t need that either. What you deserve is to be free from the experience, free from the resentment, free from the anger. And then the next step after forgiveness is to decide. And here’s what’s really important.

You get to decide if you want to continue in a relationship with that person or that experience or that organization or cut all ties with them. Whatever decision you make is an empowered decision that you came to from doing all of the other steps before that. And the more that you give yourself permission to decide, you are in the driver’s seat of your life then. You get to decide what that looks like. Now, if you decide that you’re going to cut ties with that person, awesome, cut ties.

Maybe you have to have a conversation with that person first to allow more forgiveness to come through, to allow yourself to have a clean break, or to feel that you’re heard or seen. Maybe you don’t need to do that. Or maybe you’re like, I do want that person in my life. I love that person. I’m just angry, I’m resentful, whatever it is. And then, you have a conversation with that person to decide what the relationship is going to look like now that you’ve done this work. And maybe you put some more boundaries up.

Maybe you talk about why you were hurt so that they can maybe share a different perspective with you, or maybe they can apologize. Whatever the case is, you get to decide what that looks like moving forward. I need to close my door. Sorry. The next step is to release. Now, I’m going to give two more steps after this, so know that this step can come after the other two steps or before it. And this is a powerful step because you’re releasing the resentment. You’re consciously saying, I’m letting go of this. I’m letting go of anger. I’m letting go of resentment. I’m choosing to be free from these bondages.

And then you can shake it out. You can walk it out. You can dance it out. You can journal it out. You need to move the energy out of your body, and you can visualize it moving out, moving through you. And by moving through you, I want you to imagine your heart opening up and expanding to new possibilities. I want you to feel your energy and joy for life returning to you because you’ve let this go. You’ve made a powerful decision to release it. The next step after that could come at any point in time, and any of these steps is to talk to someone. I think talking to someone is really important.

So maybe you get through step one, and you acknowledge you’re angry and you’re resentful, and underneath it, you’re sad or you’re embarrassed, whatever that is. But you can’t move to any of the other steps. Or maybe you get to all of the steps but forgiveness, and you can’t forgive. Well, guess what? It’s time to talk to someone. It’s time to talk to someone so that they can assist you in making sense of it all. You can talk to a counselor, a healer, a mentor, or a friend. We want someone that can support you in releasing the resentment and releasing the anger because when you do that, you’re truly setting yourself free.

And that’s called emotional freedom. You’re going to emotionally allow yourself to be free. Another step is to be very present. Live in the present moment. Once you release, it’s time to be present. Don’t let yourself go back to past thoughts. Don’t let yourself stew in resentment or anger. Once you release it, once you let it go, be present with yourself. Be present with joy. Be present in your life. Because the more present you are, the more that you will see the beauty and the amazing miracle that you have in front of you, which is you. You are a miracle. You are a gift to the world. You have many, many things to share.

Letting anger and resentment hold you back. So letting anger and resentment hold you back is not fair. It’s not worth it. You deserve to have an amazing life. You deserve to be free from the spiritual bondage that was created from resentment and anger. And the more present you get, the more you’ll see what an amazing miracle you are. So take the time to move through these steps from acknowledging to being honest, to empathy, to responsibility, forgiveness, releasing, talking to someone, and being present.

You deserve it. Let go, my friends, so more miracles can come to you. I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. Make sure you like and subscribe, and I will see you in the next one. Bye.