Anger, Bitterness & Resentment How They Really Affect You
Has something happened in your life that has made you angry?
Do you think about someone in your life, whether past or present, and you have bitterness towards them?
Do you resent someone for the way they treated you?
Do you resent yourself for past actions or words said?
Keeping these emotions within you is HOLDING YOU BACK from living your life.
When we are angry, bitter or resenting someone or something it causes us to tense up, hold onto stress and carry a cloud of negativity with us.
Have you been working at releasing and letting go of your past?
Have you been wanting to move forward and away from certain people or situations?
Holding onto these emotions will keep you tied to your past. Holding onto these emotions will stop you from fully releasing and moving forward.
Take a moment and think of an extremely difficult situation in your life. A hard time or a challenge you went through. Now think of the people involved in this situation.
What thoughts come forward? How do you feel?
When you see this person now in life how does it make you feel? Do you fear running into these people?
Holding onto these emotions creates more negativity within you. It causes fear and worry to come forward.
Holding onto these emotions takes your power away. You feel powerless because ego has taken over and controls you when you think of this situation or person.
When ego takes over you start to believe you aren’t worthy and jealousy and envy also come forward.
It’s time to break free!
It’s time to truly let go and connect back to peace & joy.
Stop allowing these past situations to hold power over you just because you are holding onto anger, resentment and bitterness.
It’s going to be a process to let these go fully. It’s going to take hard work and time to step away from anger, resentment and bitterness.
But I know you can do it.
You are better than those ego driven emotions.
You have a light within you that will help you to move forward.
Let go of the anger.
Let go of the bitterness.
Let go of the resentment.
Now you might be asking, but how?
How do I let it go?
This can take a lot of work, but know that you don’t have to do it alone. If you are ready and needing assistance then it might be time to consider connecting with a Mentor or even a Therapist. Not sure where to start looking for one, or how to know if you need one? Check out this blog, or read about my Mentoring program here.
Want to start off seeing what kind of work you can do on your own?
I am going to share a list of strategies and tools that you can use to start changing your mindset in order to release the anger, bitterness and resentment.
JOURNAL
Now in order to change a mindset about something we need to be willing to put the work in daily. Go out and buy yourself an empty notebook where you can journal out your thoughts and emotions in order to start the process.
Start off with daily check ins by asking yourself what emotions you experienced that day. Write out what caused you to feel that emotion. Explain where in your body you felt the emotion most and how you reacted in the moment. Now try and think of different ways where you can change to either not feel this emotion again by removing yourself from a situation beforehand, or how to change your mindset around the situation which will allow you to experience a different, more positive emotion.
Remember, this first tip is just about your daily check ins. It helps you start to understand how you experience certain emotions and what you can do to change your mindset around them. It also keeps you accountable for your emotions because nobody else can MAKE you feel a certain way. Your emotions are yours and you need to be willing to understand that you have the POWER to change how you react, or if you are going to let a certain emotion control you.
Our emotions are just trying to teach us about ourselves. So be open to listening and then take appropriate action where necessary.
There are other journaling techniques that can help you dive deeper into those feelings of anger, resentment and bitterness. But before you dive in head first you should get a little more comfortable with writing about your emotions and this new way of processing them.
MINDFULNESS
Often in life we allow the stress, chaos and frustrations that surround us take over our minds and it becomes extremely difficult to come back to peace.
Mindfulness is all about being in the present moment and grounding yourself so as not to let your stressors and emotions take over.
This is a great practice for learning to release what does not serve you, especially when learning to let go of anger, resentment & bitterness.
Next time a situation presents itself that brings forward a negative emotion, or stress starts to cause worry, fear and doubt creep in you need to take a few minutes to allow yourself to be more mindful.
First, wherever you may be in the moment, take a second to feel your feet planted firmly on the ground, this will connect you back to Mother Earth and help to ground you. Next, take 3 deep breaths. In order to focus on your breath count to 5 for your inhale and then again count to 5 for your exhale. This will help to calm you down and disconnect you from the immediate negative reaction. Now, for the next 3-7 minutes just take in your surroundings. See all that surrounds you, touch something and notice how it feels, smell the scents that are in your space, listen to any noises you may hear. Connecting back to your senses helps you to disconnect from the stress & the negative emotions because it brings you back to the present moment. Afterwards it becomes easier for you to move forward because you aren’t being held back by your own negative thoughts or limiting beliefs.
The moment you stop your mindfulness practice if those original fears & worries rush back in then you need to go back to grounding yourself & connecting to your breath again. If they still come back then pull out your journal and start to process where these emotions are coming from. Is there any logical behind these fears? Is it just your ego trying to sabotage you? Is the situation you are in, or the person you are around causing these fears and worries to come forward? What can you change in order to step away and connect back to peace?
Doing this type of work is self-healing. You are becoming more self-aware with how life influences the way you process, understand and react. By learning more about yourself you are better able to set yourself up for success by removing the negative influences from your life.
MEDITATION
Using guided meditations to release emotions & connect back to a positive mindset is a very powerful practice. When we are kids we have a vibrant imagination that comes with our innocence and as we get older we begin to lose this imagination because life happens and teaches us that we need to worry about the future and our fears tend to increase with time. This removes us from that innocence we once held so dearly.
Meditation allows us to strengthen our imagination and connects us back to our innocence.
When you dream of your future how do you do this? Are they just thoughts & ideas that float through your mind? Or do you actually take the time to picture what your dream life would look like? Can you see yourself in this visualization? Can you see the excitement and happiness on your face as your dreams come true? This is your imagination. Being able to visualize something in your mind is your imagination working behind the scenes.
Now let’s connect this idea to guided meditations. Typically when beginners start practicing meditating I hear “but I can’t see anything” or “how does my third eye work?”. I even hear “I can’t mediate” and “meditating doesn’t work for me”.
It’s important to note that meditating is a practice and for most of us we are not perfect at something the first time we try it. It takes a lot of practice to become good at something, so this applies to meditating as well.
So in terms of learning to letting go of anger, resentment and bitterness when you listen to a guided meditation it will help you to release the negative energy spiritually, mentally and physically. You may feel lighter at the end of a meditation and this is because it has helped to lift the weight you were holding onto. It helps to shift your mindset by connecting you to positive thoughts & emotions instead. Meditating helps spiritually because these negative emotions tend to come from a wound deep in our soul and just by being open to healing you are beginning the release process.
TIME
The last tool or strategy that I have to share when it comes to letting go of resentment, anger and bitterness is time. This does not mean just sit around and wait for time to pass and you’ll be better. It does mean that all the practices I’ve shared will not release the negative emotions instantly. Self-healing takes time, sometimes this may mean a month of constant work, sometimes it means years of working through the release process.
The most important part though, is that you WANT to let it go. You WANT to heal. You WANT to grow. The desire of wanting to become better will help you through the entire process. At times it may seem extremely difficult, and other times you may really notice the progress, but what I have found is most important is that you honour yourself through the entire cycle.
Yung Puelbo shared this quote and it rings true for honouring yourself through each and every process you move through, “Next time you feel agitated because you are falling back into past patterns, remember that simply being aware that you have fallen back into repeating the past is a sign of progress. Self-awareness comes before the great leap forward in your personal transformation.”
Are you ready to get started on this journey? I have some free tools for you to download and start using now as you work on self-healing.
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