How to stop being so spiteful

We can define resentment as an unpleasant feeling, started by a dispute or a disagreement with someone. When a person has hurt us, we can come to think that they deserve revenge or, if not, we feel hatred and resentment towards them. This is a protection mechanism to avoid feeling the pain that this injury has caused us. If we convert that unpleasant feeling and project it onto another person, we avoid feeling bad, but we channel dislike and turn it into resentment.

This strategy is not considered the most effective in healing a wound. This is because it prevents us from living free by continuing to maintain that bond of revenge and resentment. If you want to know how to stop being so spiteful, in Psychology-Online, we offer you this article with the best keys to lead a calmer life.

Index

1. What is resentment according to psychology?
2. Is it bad to be spiteful?
3. How to stop being vindictive and spiteful
4. Keys and strategies to avoid resentment

It is likely that, at times, we are not able to correctly identify this feeling. It is important know how to define resentment to be able to find it and eliminate it.

According to psychology, we can describe resentment as a set of unpleasant feelings, thoughts, and ideas, persistent over time and directed towards a specific person (or group of people). These ideas may contain plans for revenge, irrational hatred, anguish about relating to the person for whom you have a grudge, and even aggressive intentions.

The causes of resentment are multiple, but are usually related to some fact or comment that has made us feel bad and that it comes from someone else. We channel all that discomfort into her and we are forming a great resentment. It may be that, if we do not communicate it correctly, the person involved is not even aware that he has done or said something wrong. What for us is something unforgivable, for the other person perhaps it is silly and he did not do it with bad intentions.

Although it is true that all of us have experienced feelings of resentment, there are people whose traits and attitudes have tendency to resentment. They tend to be insecure individuals, easily hurt and with little ability to manage emotions. A spiteful person can forgive, but does not forget.

Projecting resentment towards the partner, the family or at work, is not something pleasant, neither for us nor for those around us. Despite its initial purpose of protecting our self-esteem, resentment is of no use to us, it imprisons us and does not allow us to think clearly. Sometimes we don't even know why we keep that feeling. It is important to get the right tools to know how to stop being so spiteful, so we can live free from unpleasant and unnecessary thoughts.

Can you avoid being spiteful?

Despite the fact that, as we have commented previously, there are personality traits with a tendency to resentment, we can all avoid that emotion. It is enough to identify the feeling, rationalize it and use a series of keys and strategies to, little by little, remove the grudge.

The first step to know how to stop being so spiteful and to avoid this feeling is to identify it. It is not that simple, since, many times, we believe that the people towards whom we feel resentment deserve it. So, to correctly identify the grudge, we will have to ask ourselves "Why do I hate this person?" "What has he done to me?"

Once the feeling is detected, we can channel it away from the other individual. We must remember that the origin of resentment is a bad emotional management strategy. Therefore, work our emotions through positive thoughts to ward off resentment is a good tool. If we see it necessary, we can talk to the other individual involved to explain what has hurt or offended us. In this way, we will prevent you from doing it again or, at least, we will have taken responsibility in the matter.

Finally, to eliminate the grudge, we can use some keys of cognitive therapy. It is useful to ask ourselves questions to guide the feeling and question the origin of the resentment. If we can see the futility of continuing to be vindictive, we will end up letting resentment drift from our thoughts.

An example of questioning negative thoughts is the following:

• What's the use of continuing to hate this person?
• What can I fix in my life with this feeling?
• Does this grudge allow me to move on?

• Learn to forgive: If we continue to think that the person who hurt us did it on purpose, it is time to learn to forgive. If it turns out that this individual has a need to hurt other people, perhaps it is because he is unable to deal with his own personal problems. In that case, we must avoid conflicts with that person and get away from them.
• Let it go: it is important to avoid unnecessary problems in our life. It is true that conflicts can be valuable learning, but resentment usually involves dragging an unpleasant feeling. For this reason, a smart decision is to let it go and continue our lives in search of the personal happiness.
• Turn guilt into responsibilities: Guilt is a feeling related to the load, we can do nothing with it except drag it. Instead, the responsibility is worked. If instead of blaming someone for her actions, we hold them accountable and talk to that person, we will be giving someone an opportunity to improve and, in this way, we will avoid resentment.
• Practice assertive communication: In the event that we decide to speak to the person for whom we feel resentment, we must do so in the best possible way. Although there are many communication styles, the best strategy will be learn to be assertive.
• Surrogate positive thinking: This strategy is based on replacing a negative thought with a positive version of it. For example, we can change the "this person is bad, he has hurt me and deserves the worst" for "this person maybe didn't mean to hurt me, anyway, it's been a long time and I don't have to care".

After a learning process, and with proper practice of these tips, we will be able to develop our temperament to stop being so spiteful. All of us have the opportunity to evolve. Eliminating such unpleasant feelings should be the process of anyone who wants to improve their way of relating to others and to themselves.

This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

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