Over the past few weeks, I’ve been returning again and again to the Fourth of the Twelve Steps (“making a complete and fearless moral inventory”). A key part of this step is the resentment list. You write out the people and things you resent, why you resent them, the harm you think they’ve done you and how that has hurt your life. Then you move on to examine what part you played in this trouble. Then you consciously give your resentment to God. If you find you can’t let go of resenting somebody, then you start praying for them every day.
So I was relaying this to my therapist and we started talking and then we hit a wall. I couldn’t admit that I resented certain people. Well, I just can’t resent them, I said. They’ve done so much for me. They did the best they could. I don’t want to be a victim. I don’t want to heal the wounded inner child within. Blah, blah, blah.
I was raised a Seventh-Day Adventist. You weren’t supposed to resent in my upbringing. You weren’t supposed to have negative emotions. They showed that you hadn’t truly accepted what Jesus did for you on the cross. They showed you weren’t saved.
To this day, despite my conversion to Orthodox Judaism, I have certain blocks against admitting some of my resentment and jealousy and other unpretty emotions.
So my therapist explained that it might help me to bring my hidden resentment to the surface so that I could get a good look at it, truly experience it, and then move on beyond it. To deny this resentment, to put up a wall against it, does no good. The resentment just eats away at you, poisoning your life as long as you deny it exists. You can’t fix a problem you don’t admit you have.
For my first eight years of therapy, I did not want to talk about my childhood beyond a few well rehearsed details. I had a wall up against going there. Perhaps it was too painful? I wonder where I go from here?
