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What’s wrong with holding a grudge?
Grudges are all too easy to hold, and feel nearly impossible to let go of. Holding a grudge is a natural human reaction to processing pain. We formulate grudges in response to anger and hurt feelings, and in a way we use grudges as a means of labeling others who have hurt us and are no longer deemed trustworthy with our feelings.
So if grudges are an innate human behavior, what’s so wrong with holding a grudge against someone?
Grudges can vastly affect your overall health and well being, and we’re not just talking about the stress that comes with holding a grudge. Holding a grudge can lead to:
- Compromised relationships with others (and not just those you hold a grudge against)
- Long-term feelings of resentment, anger and bitterness
- An inability to fully live and enjoy your life
And the worst part? These effects significantly worsen the longer you hold a grudge.
We know holding a grudge is unhealthy and detrimental to our overall quality of life. So why do we hold grudges and continue to hold them for so long?
You’re probably not going to like this answer, but chances are that you already knew this deep down. The reason why we hold grudges for so long towards others is because we are more concerned with being right than doing the right thing.
It’s hard to do the right thing by others when they didn’t do the right thing by us and caused us offense. After all, why should we reach out to them when they’ve hurt us? Shouldn’t they reach out to us first?
I’ve gone through the same internal dialogue as this and asked myself the same questions when I’ve held a grudge towards someone. The problem with this rationale though is that by never confronting the person that hurt me, I contributed to the grudge, as well.
When it comes to holding a grudge, we let the anger and resentment build and build over time, making it more and more difficult to confront the issue. We place all the blame on the other person, though we are, in part, responsible for letting our emotions build up. We become entitled to the feeling of being right, rather than being the bigger person and doing the right thing.
So how do we begin to break down the walls that grudges build between us and others? Whether you’ve been holding a grudge towards a friend, towards a family member, or even in your marriage, follow these 6 steps to finally let go of your grudge.
6 steps to get over a grudge
1. Acknowledge your feelings. Stop denying what happened and accept the facts as they are. Outline the grudge in your mind and identify what exactly triggers you to feel negatively about the issue. I find that journaling about a larger problem helps me to pare away the unnecessary details to really get to the root of the problem. Once you’ve fully identified what exactly has caused the grudge, you’ll be able to more accurately address it.
2. Confront the issue. Grudges often form as a result of avoiding the issue and/or not confronting it. Once you have acknowledged your feelings and identified what’s bothering you about the issue, reassess your feelings. Is this something you can absolve within your own heart and mind? Or do you need to connect with the person that you hold the grudge against? If you feel that you need to confront the person in order to move on, meet with them and tell them what has been going on. Whether you can absolve the issue by yourself or by talking with the other person, you’ll instantly feel more relieved and able to move forward.
3. Put yourself in the other’s shoes. When we hold a grudge against someone else, we tend to think little beyond our own feelings as we become consumed by the details of how someone else hurt us. Instead, try to put yourself in the other’s shoes. Have they had a lot on their plate lately? Are they under a large amount of stress? Are they going through a tough chapter right now? The truth of the matter is that you don’t really know the other side of the story. While this still doesn’t justify their behaviors, being able to understand the larger situation, including their side of the story, will help you to more effectively comprehend the grudge itself, making it easier to ultimately let go of it.
4. Forgive them. Forgiving someone else is never easy, but do you really want to continue living your life carrying this heavy grudge around? Holding a grudge is a natural and human response to those that hurt us. But the longer we hold a grudge, the more and more difficult it becomes to forgive and move on. You don’t need an apology from them to move on (though it would be nice). Heal your own emotions by choosing to let go of the grudge and forgiving the other person.
5. Let go of the toxic emotions. Once you choose to forgive them, erase all the negative feelings you associate with them by looking ahead instead of to the past. When you hear your inner dialogue chattering negative thoughts about the person or the grudge you once held, stop the chatter and replace it with positive affirmations, like “I forgave them and I chose to move on,” or, “I will waste no more time or energy on something that is not good for me.” You cannot change the past and what happened, but you can choose to change your outlook and your future.
6. Choose kindness over your need to be “right.” We’re all prone to holding grudges, but once you learn to let go of a grudge, it becomes a lot easier to let go of other grudges as they arise. When someone does something offensive to you again, rather than look for reasons to resent them, depersonalize the situation. Chances are, it’s not just you that they treat poorly. Respond with kindness and show sympathy towards them. More than likely, they’re living in a world of hurt and taking out their feelings on others, and not just you. When you choose to respond with kindness rather than anger, you practice forgiveness and instantly break the habit of holding a grudge.
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