by Kerry Schafer
On a recent episode of the “One Happy Thing” podcast, my co-host and author friend Jennifer Moorman confessed to having trouble letting go of a grudge. She’d held it for almost a week, she said, until she was able to let it go. And she felt genuinely awful about it.
Jennifer is a good person.
A four-day grudge, for me, is a cute little baby resentment. It doesn’t qualify as a grudge unless it’s lasted for at least a couple of weeks. I have a few that I’ve held since I was five. There was the time my mother promised me I could stay up late to watch a movie and then changed her mind and made me go to bed at the usual, ridiculously early hour. The time my parents left my brother and me with our grandmother for the weekend, and she made us eat cold, leftover oatmeal for breakfast.
It’s not that I’m walking around seething about these horrible injustices more than 50 years after their commission, but they’re not buried all that deeply, either. When Jennifer got me thinking about grudges, those two examples popped right up and volunteered for service. And they are the small ones, the ones I can laugh about and share in public. There are others, deeper, darker, and uglier, lurking in the darkness.
The interesting part about all this grudge holding is that I don’t (or at least didn’t) think of myself as a grudge holder. If you’d asked me a month ago, I would have said that I’m pretty good at letting stuff go. Also, that I rarely get mad. It turns out that none of this is true. I get mad pretty frequently. What I am good at is holding it in, stuffing it down, pretending not to feel it.
And this, my friends, is what leads to a grudge, which is basically a pocket of anger left to its own devices and allowed to fester.
When Jennifer found herself unable to let go of her grudge – which she did wisely recognize as anger – she got mad at herself for being mad at her friend…which didn’t resolve anything but just amplified the grudge and made her miserable.
If you’re human, I’m certain that you too have fallen into this endless spiral at least once. And you very likely noticed, as Jennifer did, that getting mad at yourself for being mad at someone else is a practice that does not carry a high success rate in the ending anger department.
Have you ever wondered why we do this, since it obviously doesn’t work?
I’d like to blame my mother (oh, look, yet another grudge). Raise your hand if you also had a parent who sent you off to your room when you got mad about something and told you that you could come out when you were ready to be pleasant. Most of us weren’t taught how to effectively process or express anger. So, we’ve tried to ignore it, silence it, and deny it. Which doesn’t work very well, in case you hadn’t noticed.
But here’s the thing. All feelings are valid. I’ve believed this, and taught it, for years. But I’ve always kind of had my fingers crossed behind my back when it came to anger.
When somebody else is mad, even if it’s not at me, it sets my teeth on edge, ties my stomach up in knots, and makes me want to run for the hills. And if I’m angry? I want to shut it down, throttle it back. I don’t like feeling out of control. I don’t want to hurt anybody.
But anger ignored has a way of surfacing, willy-nilly, at unexpected places and times. If you’ve ever overreacted to a small thing, or unleashed anger on the wrong person, you know what I mean.
Anger suppressed can also turn into one of those pesky grudges.
Like every other emotion, anger occurs for a reason. It has something to tell us, if we’re willing to listen.
So, here’s the mission if you choose to accept it. Next time you feel anger rising, get yourself into a place where you can be alone with it. Instead of venting, eating ice cream, pouring yourself a drink, scrolling your phone, or whatever you usually do to feel better, and give the anger your full attention and just let it be.
Breathe.
Breathe again. Try to take breaths deep in your belly. Breathe in through your nose, and out through your mouth. I think this is why the old counting to 10 trick sort of works – because we breathe while we’re counting.
Tell your anger that you’re listening. Approach it with any amount of kindness and curiosity you can summon up. Tell yourself, “Huh. That’s interesting. What is up with that?” Act as if it has an important message for you and do your best to listen. Last time I tried this, I discovered that I was actually annoyed with myself because I’d agreed to do something that I didn’t want to do and was taking it out on the person who asked me to do the thing in the first place. Which was great intel but still left me in my friend Jennifer’s predicament of wanting to be mad at myself for being mad at somebody else.
You know what actually works for me? Channeling a little love towards my anger, like it’s a much-loved toddler in need of a lap, or my best friend venting after a really bad day. You might give it a try.
Take a breath. Conjure up a little love. Take another breath. Feel a little more love. If it’s hard to find the love, bring up a memory of holding a newborn baby, a kitten, or a puppy. Think about your favorite sunset ever, or your favorite place. Thank the anger for delivering the message. Get out of your head for a bit and just feel as much love as you possibly can.
I’m going to deliberately address a few grudges with this method and see how it goes.
Hey, maybe the Beatles were right all along, and all we really need is love.
Colville resident Kerry Schafer (who also writes as Kerry Anne King) is the bestselling author of 15 novels, the co-host of The One Happy Thing Podcast, and a licensed mental health counselor. Find out more at www.allthingskerry.com
