I took offense. Resentment and feelings of resentment

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​In everyday life, the words resentment, offended, resentment are usually used as synonyms.

You can say “He was offended by you“, you can “He now has a grudge against you”, “He is worried, you offended him” — the meaning is about the same.

However, there are differences here. Resentment is an event that is assessed as an unfair violation of rights, damage to honor or status, a fact of an insulting attitude. And the feeling of resentment is the experience of this event, namely the alternation of protest, accusations, aggression and suffering, used to attract attention and pressure on a partner. Once again: resentment is not a feeling at all, it is an everyday situation, the same as “salary” or “late”.

If the children say: «Misha offends Vasya» — this is a very understandable everyday situation. This means that Misha pesters, calls names, mocks, Vasya can push or hit, take something away from him or lack something, deprive him.

And the feeling of resentment — yes, this is a feeling, emotion, state and experience, which is easy to recognize both from the inside, by the nature of the experience, and from the outside by the drawing of the face, the nature of intonations and behavior.

Feeling hurt is a difficult experience. Which? — The most different in different people, only united by a common cause (everyday trouble) and a common name («I was offended»). When a person says: “I am offended,” he has not yet said anything. What does it mean? Is he more angry than annoyed? More annoyed than angry? Does he protest? Is he sad? Is he in pure aggression? The word “resentment” is a label under which there can be very different content.

Watch the video «Resentment» from the film «Liquidation»: David Gotsman was angry with Fima, devalued his help and (as a revenge) offered him to work as a guard, which Fima assessed as humiliating his dignity. For this, Fima hit David with the accusation that he did not value friends, beat him with sick phrases and showed David how bad he was now (knowing that David was hurt and not indifferent). David, protesting against Fima’s already aggression, was indignant at Fima and ran into him, but Fima made a stupid face for himself (for the offended, it is always a little stupid) and did not hear David. normal kindergarten.

And to be offended is generally the third, it is an action. To be offended is to offend oneself and blame the other. To be offended is to begin to see what happened as an insult to oneself and begin to experience a feeling of resentment, it is to start behaving like an offended person: to be silent with an offended face, to remember that you were told offensive things and to say offensive things yourself. The author of your resentment is always you yourself, and being offended is a childish demonstrative behavior, which is characteristic primarily for Parasites.

Resentments are not innate emotions, but a social tool, the result of social learning. The feeling of resentment does not arise spontaneously, not naturally; society teaches resentment in the same way as language proficiency or the ability to cook. Children quickly learn to be offended where their environment (primarily parents and grandmothers) expect resentment from them, they are already seen in advance and interpret their most diverse emotions and their behavior as an insult. If parents look for reasons to sympathize with the child and feel sorry for the child, they will find these reasons, they will teach the child to be offended, and soon they will console the constantly offended child. For children, resentment is a natural means of pressure on loved ones — parents, friends, brothers and sisters. Growing up, people begin to understand that resentment is not a civilized way of resolving disagreements, and they learn to live without resentment. As a rule, among adults, being offended is stupid and ineffective. However, not everyone grows up, and many seemingly adult people continue to live with grievances, allow themselves grievances. This is an ongoing childhood, however, even wise, quite adult people can sometimes (rarely) be offended. They are no longer offended “because”, but “in order to”, most often with a pedagogical task: so that people understand how to behave and how not. It must be admitted that resentment (demonstration of resentment) can indeed be a very effective means of influence, at least in relation to close and dear people who love you or who are attached to you.

Unfortunately, there is always a shortage of wise people, and more often people are offended simply because they are so used to it and it is beneficial for them. The more often a person sees resentment around him, the easier he is offended, the more reason to talk about his resentment as a character trait. The touchiness of character for a human child works to attract attention, as a psychological defense and to obtain conditional and real benefits. From resentment, you need to wean yourself first of all. If you are a strong and wise person, you can also wean your loved ones from resentment. And to wean children offended is your direct parental responsibility. If you are offended by an adult, and most likely your loved one, your reaction can be very diverse. Much depends on the validity of the offense in your direction, the personality of the one who is offended and the history of your relationship, however, there are standard algorithms for how to behave in this situation. Nothing incredible, everything is familiar to you: ask for forgiveness, remove possible claims and make amends. However, there are no completely standard solutions here, since once you are indignant at someone else’s offense — the most effective way to stop someone else’s offense.

Dealing with resentment is a natural part of being a psychologist. People often turn to psychologists about grievances, most often about “How to survive an insult.” Grievances are small (very little touched the soul), serious (the soul was seriously hurt) and old (serious, stuck and entrenched in the soul) — working with these types of grievances is a little different. Even if there was no request for resentment, traces of resentment can be easily found in many problem families. The main areas of work are working with internal benefits from resentment, removing negative anchors and learning to communicate competently.