Resentment is the most useless emotion

The earliest time I can recall feeling truly resentful was sometime in my sophomore year of high school. I played sports, and I was trying to be good enough to maybe get a college scholarship. My mom was doing everything in her power to help me with this, and so she encouraged me to practice on my own, which I did. But then she started suggesting that I should exercise (as in run and lift weights) outside of practice.

Oh, how I hated hearing her tell me to work out. I wasn’t out of shape, per se, but I definitely was more on the coordinated side of athletic versus being fast or strong. And I could have benefited from putting some serious effort into further training my body and improving my strength, conditioning and stamina. It was good advice, given with the best of intentions. It was born from love, from a mother who wanted nothing more than to see me succeed.

But of course, I didn’t recognize any of that at the time. No, my bratty teenage self couldn’t get past the fact that my mom was the messenger. Who is *she* to tell me to work out? She should get *herself* in shape before telling me what to do. Besides, she doesn’t understand how hard I work in practice — I don’t really even need to do more than that.

Well over a decade later, it’s still easy for me to remember what I was thinking back then because that’s one of the chief charms of resentment: it stays with you.

Resentment, interestingly, is both a mature and childish emotion.

You don’t really see many children — I’m talking humans sub-13 — who are truly resentful. Kids don’t resent their parents for making them eat their vegetables or clean their room. They don’t resent their friend for not inviting them to their birthday party, or their teacher for giving them a bad grade.

They’re just upset for a little while, and then they move on.

And that’s largely because they haven’t developed the faculties yet — the emotional maturity, if you will. Resentment requires the ability to hold on to your anger for days, weeks, even years. And kids are still very much stuck in the present, in whatever is holding their attention that very minute.

Part of growing up is, of course, being able to pull your mind from your present desires and emotions and think about the long-term, about what’s best for your future self. But sadly, while your mind is expanding its ability to think about the future, it can’t help but also expand in the other direction and make you better at ruminating on the past.

This is why most people can’t really remember feeling genuinely resentful until about high school. But then watch out — because once we’ve finally grown into our ability to resent, it becomes, like, our new favorite thing.

As teenagers, we resent everything about our parents and authority figures and society and anything else that tries to limit us or box us in or tell us what to do. We’re new to this whole holding onto shit business, and it’s almost as if we feel like we need to make up for lost time, for all the years before when we weren’t properly mad about the things that happened to us, the things that prevented us from getting what we want.

And that is precisely why resentment is also childish. Only children blame others. Only children complain about unfairness. Only children cry when they don’t get their way.

Adults, on the other hand, own their problems, and they understand that life has no obligation to treat them kindly.

But resentment makes us act like a child because it traps our minds in the present-state, clouded by never-ending negative thoughts of how we’ve been wronged. We no longer have the ability to think objectively — to think about the future, about what’s best, about what’s helpful. We’re stuck in a selfish state of mind, dwelling on things we want to think are out of our control.

Despite the crummy behavior and trains-of-thought that resentment encourages, it still has its allures. In fact, unlike other negative emotions like fear or sadness, it actually actively feels good to be resentful.

Resentment feels good for a number of reasons, but what it comes down to is that it gives you a feeling of righteousness. You are the victim, the good guy who was wronged, who was treated unfathomably unfairly.

Here’s how it tends to work: 1) something doesn’t go our way → 2) we look for someone or something to blame → 3) we focus endlessly on their flaws, on their mistakes (while neglecting to acknowledge our own).

This formula exists because it’s really good at doing two things: protecting our egos, and absolving us of responsibility.

Resentment protects our egos in two ways — first, it preserves our self-esteem, our vision of ourselves as fundamentally good and capable and talented.

And second, it makes us feel important, because we paint ourselves as a victim.

Similarly, there are two parts to how resentment absolves us of responsibility. First, it separates us from blame. One can’t possibly feel resentful and responsible at the same time. And that, in turn, gives us the freedom from having to act. Since we have decided circumstances were out of our control, we get to choose the easy path of not doing anything about it. Other than, of course, complaining about the unfairness of it all.

As you can see by now, resentment only occurs when we, in some way, are not owning our problems.

And who do we blame for them instead? Usually the things or people closest to us. The ones we think have had the most influence on us as people.

Parents are an obvious first choice, because they’re the ones that brought us into this world. They started it. We could have had a perfectly lovely non-existence. But no, they went and made us. Bosses are another great one. Siblings, spouses, teachers, coaches. Sometimes friends, even.

Another popular choice is circumstance. People can resent being poor, being short, being ugly, being different. People can also resent systems, or societal biases, or people in power who make decisions that affect them negatively.

Regardless of who or what you blame, the most dangerous thing about resentment is that it can bind itself to you like a parasite and never leave. People cling to resentment like a security blanket, and indeed, it is one. It’s the friend who always agrees with you, who never makes you feel bad. It protects you from that painful thing called accountability. Accountability is hard. Resentment is easy; it’s comforting.

So how do you get rid of resentment? Well, depending on how long you’ve been feeling it, it could take various levels of effort for you to completely untangle yourself from those habitual resentful thoughts.

My suggestion is twofold: first, admit and acknowledge your role in your own life. There is always something you can do to change your circumstances. You may not see how now, but even trying to change your reaction to your issues is a form of you taking back control. This is the hardest part, especially if you’ve lived your whole life free of ownership and accountability.

Secondly, in order to truly let those clingy resentful feelings go, practice empathy. Try to understand the people or the things you have blamed.

Were they really acting maliciously, or in bad faith? Can you understand where they were coming from? Were they, or was it, really trying to hurt you? And even if they were intentionally being assholes, is you holding onto that blame helping you? Trying to understand both the people and the broader situation is a pretty powerful antidote to resentment.

It’s easy to want to feel resentful when things don’t go our way. But those feelings also happen to rob us of our agency, our belief that we can do something about it.

In this way, resentment is about the least helpful emotion we can feel. In fact, I’d say it’s utterly useless.

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