The purpose of the article is to help you to free yourself to some degree, from the poison of resentment. This is a significant challenge for many because resentment is a strong emotion that becomes addictive and for some, resentment may be part of a person’s depression.

By successfully reducing resentment you can experience some or all of the following benefits:

1) You can experience a wonderful increase in positive emotional energy. The more positive emotional energy you have available, the easier it is for you to make other changes in your life that may have previously seemed impossible.

2) Some people who experience resentment also experience a real sense of fatigue. As they begin to release themselves from the burden of resentment, you can begin to experience a noticeable reduction in feelings of fatigue.

3) By getting rid of some or all of your resentments, you will definitely notice an increase in self-esteem and self-respect. Your self-esteem is going up because you are less judgmental of others and therefore less judgmental of yourself.

Your self-respect is going up as you reduce resentment because just as you can begin to appreciate others in spite of their faults so, you are also beginning to appreciate yourself in spite of your faults.

4) Oftentimes, those who suffer from addictions of one sort or another begin to notice a spontaneous reduction in their addictive tendencies and behaviours as their levels of resentment are also decreasing.

5) As you begin to really notice a decrease in resentment levels, you will also notice in small and perhaps large ways, an increase in the quality of your relationships.

6) Another benefit to reducing resentment in your life is that you will definitely experience a greater sense of control in your life. A greater sense of control includes, but is not limited to, having greatly improved Life Problem Solving Abilities.

The first part of this article covers important information that every resentment sufferer needs to know and then the final part covers how hypnosis can help you to free yourself. Also covered is how you can save money by making your own hypnosis audio sessions.

Let’s cover a couple of questions you may be interested in answering. The first question is perhaps the most important of all: are you sure you want to give up your feelings of resentment?

If you are willing to give up even a small part of the resentment that is running and ruining your life, then please say to yourself right now: "Yes, I am willing to give up whatever resentment I can."

And this is question #2: how could resentment be keeping you safe from past or future pain? You know that it is not keeping you safe from present pain because resentment hurts now.

Let’s look at one idea as to where resentment may come from: the French word ‘sentir’ which means to feel or perceive. Re is from Old French and means back or again. So, when you realize that when a person is ‘resenting’ what they are actually doing is re-perceiving or sensing again, the pain that was previously caused by the ‘offending’ person or situation.

So, ask yourself, how could resentment be keeping you safe from past or future pain?

Before answering that, let’s take a deeper look at what resentment really is. It is anger at another for not living up to our inner image of what they should be or should have done. By the way, bear in mind when you see others being resentful that they may be using resentment to protect themselves from disappointment and other emotional pain.

By the way, this also applies to material stuff like cars and other ‘things’. Think of the time you saw someone throw a temper tantrum because some ‘thing’ didn’t live up to his or her expectation. In other words, they experienced disappointment. Ever seen a guy kick a car or throw a tool in his garage?

Now, speaking of disappointment, with the above definition in mind, can you see why so many children resent their parents? The answer is because in some way the parent(s) could not live up to the child’s expectations.

So, in order to avoid being disappointed and hurt again, the child develops a protective resentment shield. It is the anger that is keeping them from being vulnerable.

And so many of us have then learned to bring this habit into our adult life because it worked so well for us as children.

What we could not know as children but can realize now, as more experienced people, is that resentment is not caused by others actions but by our re-actions to their actions. After all, resentment is something we are doing, not them.

This is tough medicine because being angry with another makes us feel more in control. It gives us a sense of power; a sense of safety.

And let’s not forget how good it feels to be righteous. It is as though another person’s wrongs makes our wrongs go away so that we can feel good about ourselves. If this doesn’t apply to you, then please don’t take offense. If it does apply to you, then please don’t take offense.

Think of this quote: "Hating people is like burning your house down to get rid of a rat."

By the way, I found it in a great book called You Can’t Afford The Luxury of A Negative Thought by Peter McWilliams. I strongly suggest you enjoy this book. Peter McWilliams is an amazing author.

So, let’s focus again on the idea that resentment is anger at another person or thing for not living up to our inner image of what they should be or should have done.

So how do you change resentment? Well, you can’t change what a person has done, can you? Can you change what they are going to do in the future? Not likely though we like to think we can.

The only thing you really can change is your inner image of that person or thing in such a manner that you are feeling less disappointed, hurt, bitter, cheated, or wronged by them.

Here’s a key to life and to understanding the previous point deeper: pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. Let me repeat that: Pain is inevitable but! suffering is optional.

Pain happens but resentment is optional. You do have a choice.

The thing that helped me to really get that point is when I realized that life isn’t fair. Life is Life. The only thing that I could do is to treat myself fairly and that meant not penalizing myself by being resentful at others.

Remember Abraham Lincoln’s famous words: "People are about as happy (or unhappy) as they make up their minds to be."

So my next life changing question was how else could I feel less resentment? By somehow learning to be more okay with the idea that people are not perfect, only perfectly human. That realization also helped me to be less trapped by resentment.

So, if this makes sense in some way, then how can you apply this idea to your life? By saying to yourself

The idea to focus on is that you are gradually freeing yourself from a chronic, poisonous emotion that is robbing you of your ability to enjoy your life more.

Important Point To Remember: Resentment is that emotion that masquerades as a friend when, in fact, it is not.

Think of resentment as a thief who is stealing from you your peace of mind. Resentment is a thief that we invite in to steal our personal power.

Resentment is a thief because the more we resent, the more we feel victimized and powerless.

Eventually, resentment can kill because a loss of inner power can lead to habits that are used to mask the pain that resentment always leaves behind.

And, though in some ways it feels like it is doing something for us, resentment never, ever changes the problem situation for the better.

So how can hypnosis help you with releasing resentment? And, what can you do on your own?

First of all, let’s review two essential concepts: (1) All hypnosis is actually self-hypnosis and (2) Hypnosis is your ability to convince yourself of anything.

With the preceding ideas in mind it does seem to make sense then that we somehow hypnotized ourselves into feelings of resentment so we can therefore un-hypnotize ourselves from those harmful thoughts and feelings.

A crucial tool in combating resentment is to challenge its actual importance. You see, every time we assign emotional importance to an idea, it has much greater power over us and, when we repeat passionate affirmation of any idea, it becomes more strongly rooted in our minds, hearts and bodies.

So, referring to earlier points—are you willing to give up resentment and its pseudo-protective benefits?

If so, then whenever you feel resentment trying to harm you, challenge the resentment hypnotic suggestion(s) you used to give yourself. Most of the time the self-hypnotic suggestion usually comes in the form of angrily worded inner statement about someone or something. An example of a resentment self-hypnosis suggestion is: "How could he/she do that to me? That really makes me angry."

Then, the next time a similar situation appears, the harmful self-hypnotic suggestion becomes even more powerful. After a while, it becomes automatic. In fact, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Here’s an example: "I just know he/she’s going to treat me poorly. How can they do that? It’s so unfair of them."

A common example of this sort of thing is driving. Have you ever noticed that when you’re driving you can tell when someone is going to cut you off in traffic?

When we suspect that is about to happen we start firing off our anger/resentment self-hypnosis suggestions so that when they actually do what we expected, we then get righteously resentful.

Let me ask you something: how is this helping you and what does your response actually do to improve the situation? It’s not and it doesn’t.

The major element here is that the power point is the use of self-hypnosis to cause our emotions and bodies to respond in an angry, fight or flight manner. It is the adrenaline rush that a person can get addicted to over time.

So, to change this sort of unconscious programming, challenge the assumption that you have to get angry. The next time you’re in a typical resentment inducing situation, ask yourself: "Do I have to get upset? Must I? Will it change the situation? What good is it doing for me? Do I want to feel miserable even if I am right that they shouldn’t behave like that?"

Finally, remind yourself that every time you get resentful, it is stealing your personal power and stealing your ability to react in a better way.

Now, even though many people find it enormously helpful to listen to a hypnosis program created by someone else, it is not always affordable. So, here’s something inexpensive you can do: purchase a small tape recorder and a few 60-minute tapes. Play some soothing music in the background. Count from 25 down to one and after each number, repeat the following phrase: "I allow myself to release resentment by challenging its importance to me." 

Listen to this at least once per day for a minimum of 3 months. Some people will almost immediately notice a difference while others may not notice anything for a week or two.

Even though this is a simple anti-resentment approach, it is essentially the same approach used when we created the resentment hypnotic suggestions that eventually started running our minds and emotions.

So, start taking back your mind and heart. Free yourself from the killer quicksand of resentment. Refuse to give the thief any more of your personal power.

If you have any questions, I am happy to help. To reach me, please copy and paste the following email address: devin@mindbodyhypnosis.com. This is not an active link because a spam spider will find it and send me all kinds of stuff that I resent!

Thank you for becoming another person seeking to better their lives and in so doing, bettering life here on our home--planet earth.

C. Devin Hastings