Certain offenses or injustices leave us resentful or resentful, two feelings that can ruin our life. 

We tend to confuse these two words, but they have a different meaning. Resentment is a stubborn memory filled with bitterness and sadness that we keep following a disillusion, an injustice, something that we have lived. You feel resentment against someone or something. Resentment is a lasting memory marked by bitterness and aggression, which one keeps of an offense or a prejudice and which is accompanied by a desire for revenge. (1) Resentment is an installed anger. We imagine that in taking revenge there would be more balance between the one who offended us and us. 

(1) OQLF, Linguistic troubleshooting bank, Rancor et rancune [Online]

Grudge actually exposes you to even more suffering. Thus Christophe André, psychiatrist and psychotherapist writes “[…] resentment and the inability to forgive will represent suffering added to the initial injury” (1)

Being resentful or having resentment makes you lose energy and makes you less serene. This grueling emotional overload contributes to causing ailments linked to unexpressed anxiety: disturbed sleep, stress, headaches, depression, etc.

Only the fact of freeing yourself from a feeling of resentment or resentment, of freeing yourself from this anger can allow you to find a positive energy and an inner peace. How? ‘Or’ What ? By not keeping this feeling to yourself already and ideally by succeeding in forgiving. 

(1) Christophe André, States of mind, an apprenticeship in serenity Editions Odile Jacob, 2009

Grudge is an unpleasant feeling. To get rid of it, you can try expressing it directly and completely to the one or the one who wronged you. You can also forgive. 

You can write down your emotions: why do you hold a grudge, what do you feel? What could you do to improve the situation… Writing what you feel allows you to take a step back. 

If the grudge ruins your life and prevents you from moving forward, don’t hesitate to see a therapist. 

Having old grudges is never good. Being resentful can ruin your life, especially your life as a couple or your family life. The only solution is forgiveness. It is the only cure for the poison of resentment. And to forgive is not to forget, as Christophe André writes “To forgive is neither to forget nor to erase […] in forgiveness we do not deny the fault or the offense, but we decide not to want to ‘avenge it. […] Forgiveness is neither amnesia nor forgetting: we do not forget what happened ”(2)

(2) Christophe André, States of mind, an apprenticeship in serenity Editions Odile Jacob, 2009