Anatomy of a Grievance Collector

(Inspired by the article Are you a grievance collector?, published by Selecciones magazine in 1960).

“Who has not made everyday events unbearable and trivial events inordinate? Embittering life is very easy. But developing the art of making life bitter in a systematic and consistent way demands a certain amount of learning, often unconscious and, most of the time, consciously ”. Paul Watzlawick.

Are you a collector of grievances? Do you tend to extract a grievance from all relationships or contact with others? These questions may seem strange or threatening to you, and even alien to you. But maybe the people around you can answer yes to those questions about you. In any case, the information contained in this PsicologíaOnline article can help you clarify your doubts.

Index

1. What is a grievance?
2. The Grievance Collector: A Case More Common Than It Appears
3. The Grievance Collector: A Fertile Imagination for Conceiving Grievances
4. The Grievance Collector: A "Victim" in the Relationship
5. The Grudge Collector is a very tenacious mistrust
6. The Grievance Collector is a pessimist by trade
7. The Grudge Collector is an expert in the art of embittering
8. How can we identify a grievance collector?
9. Test to identify a grievance collector
10. Facing the mania of feeling aggrieved

A grievance is, according to the dictionary of the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language, a "Offense or damage done to someone in her rights and interests." At the level of interpersonal relationships, the offense occurs when a person does to another, some slight, contempt, discourtesy, disparagement or offense.

The Grudge Collector feels the target of offenses and slights of the people around you. This way of being and conducting life is not typical of any particular culture, or specific social stratum. Grievance collectors abound in all contexts: work, school, neighborhood, etc. Grievances are a mania as widespread as it is harmful, acting as heavy burdens that prevent people from getting rich in dealing with other people and rob them of moments of happiness. The attitude of collecting grievances is a by-product of the pseudoculture of intolerance and the depersonalization of human relationships.

For this type of people, offenses or damages, in most cases, do not obey is a situation real or malicious attitude, with premeditation and treachery of the alleged offender, but to a projection of his what see "grievances" where there are none.

This type of person, given his hypersensitivity, has the tendency to see (imagine) in the circumstances of life, and in the attitudes and gestures of people, the confirmation of "Injustice and mistreatment" that it is supposed to be the object of. His extremely suspicious mind is capable of associating any opinion, sign or expression of other people as a contempt or offense. He also has a great ability to perceive so-called "bad faces", "snub gestures", "frowns", or "long faces" towards him or her.

The Grievance Collector is a professional offense finder, very diligent and persevering in the office of collecting grievances. As Guillar Gaylin puts it: "They are the seekers of sadness who in each offense find another treasure for their collection." To this type of character, the saying “who seeks finds” could well be applied. As he tenaciously searches for grievances, he ends up finding them; he also ends up hurt more times and suffers more, reinforcing his “victim mentality”.

The role that the grievance collector performs best is that of victim, and from that position she establishes relationships with the other, even when he (she) does not perceive it that way.

Grievance collectors never acknowledge that they are getting what their attitudes, abilities, and efforts deserve. This people they tend to think that life is unfair to them. They are advanced students in the "art of victimization." They constantly blame other people, the state, the economy, the stars, or life itself, for their mistakes and failures, so they are unable to learn from their mistakes, condemning themselves to repeat them cyclically.

They constantly need a scapegoat. When it is not her boss who is unfair, it is her in-laws who are bad, or her friends who take advantage of him (her); and they still have as a wild card his parents who did not love him enough, or the state that is not competent, or the stars whose influence they cannot avoid. The whole is living in a negative experience.

The grievance collector also has a great memory to store all kinds of "insults", disappointments, negative experiences or "offenses", which place him in the position of victim, which he accumulates as pending accounts, bitterness, sorrows and resentments, which feed his neurosis, and which at the same time allow him certain "gains", by using all that baggage to manipulate and emotionally blackmail those who surround.

People who collect grievances are overly suspicious. Distrust in your work clothes and his baggage when establishing relationships with others. They live suspecting alleged "bad intentions" and conspiracies of others.

As a result of being so super-forewarned, they find it difficult to establish deep and meaningful relationships, so they pushing people away. They risk little in relationships. They think that people are constantly trying to take advantage of them, so they tend to be extremely cautious when interacting with others. By acting with such mistrust they provoke the rejection of others, which makes them more distrustful.

On the other hand, this type of person has a hard time receiving compliments, acknowledgments or tokens of appreciation. They see in every gesture of courtesy and kindness a "trap", some double intention, some conspiracy.

Being so distrustful makes them live on the defensive, so your management style is more reactive than proactive. They live in a state of tension since they need to be constantly on the alert to avoid being taken advantage of. The grievance collector is on a constant "witch hunt", distrusting the intentions of others.

Grievance collectors, on the other hand, have a negative attitude and they are from pessimistic character - Skeptics by trade. They do not realize that their own negative attitude is what gains them the dislike and relegation - lack of sympathy - from other people. In most cases, it is your own attitude that generates the segregation and indifference of other people.

As prophets of their own disaster, they tend to magnify problems and situations in your life, and to harbor catastrophic expectations about your future. They are also very good at finding the negative side of circumstances. Their tendency to expect the worst keeps them in fear.

Anyone can be bitter about an adverse outcome; but systematically embittering one's life is a trade that is learned, a skill that needs to be worked, a competence that must be installed. In this matter of suffering offenses, slights and damages, the collector of grievances has become an expert; he has perfected threatening to the point of turning it into an art. The Grievance Collector is a chronic bitter. For this person, living bitterly, with resentment, bearing grievances, has become a way of being and being in the world, characterized by constant bad humor, resentment, intolerance and bitterness of spirit. They live with resentment as a mechanism to not forget the hurts and fall into the temptation to trust again. Rancor feeds the roots of bitterness, incapacitating you to forgive.

Some have been able to take the company of bitterness too far, to unsuspected limits and levels difficult to believe, imagine, or emulate; they are the champions of bitterness. These are people who are experts in the art of becoming bitter; skilled teachers, as Paul Watzlawick puts it, in make the everyday unbearable and the trivial into disproportionate. Even the most trivial events can seem of epic dimensions, as long as it ends up making life miserable.

Some grievance collectors have achieved exceptional performances, worthy of Guinness record book recognition. They have so perfected the technique of becoming bitter that they are capable of generating misery and failure in the total withdrawal of their own head, without the mediation of any third party.

Bitterness is a disease of the soul that leads to unhappiness. In addition, it robs people of the joy and joie de vivre, deprives them of falling in love and the joy of life. It takes away their enthusiasm for endeavors in life. Bitterness impoverishes spiritually; it prevents people from growing through nurturing contact with others.

Let's see some of their behavioral manifestations:

• You constantly feel like a victim of some person or situation.
• You often view life pessimistically.
• Many times you feel excluded from a group.
• It is difficult for you to take responsibility for the negative that happens in your life; Or worse, it is difficult for you to recognize the positive that is happening in your life.
• You often feel misunderstood and disregarded.
• You tend to magnify and personalize disagreements and arguments with other people.
• You commonly feel overwhelmed and burdened by circumstances.
• They rarely or rarely ask for feedback on other people's perceptions.

At this point there is an obligatory question that I would like to ask you again: Are you a collector of grievances? I invite you to reflect on the following questions, which may give you some clue as to whether you may be behaving like a grievance collector.

• Do you constantly feel slighted, misunderstood, belittled, or wronged by life or the people around you?
• Do you think people treat you unfairly?
• Do you jump to conclusions, forming your own judgments, without validating with people, perceptions and facts?
• Do you tend to take things on the tragic side?
• Do you have a negative style of reacting to events and circumstances that happen to you? Maybe fatalistic?
• Do you live with general discontent?
• Do you constantly blame other people for your mistakes and failures?
• Do you believe in bad luck?
• Do you hold resentment in your heart?
• Do you think that nobody takes it into account?
• Do you constantly feel like a victim of circumstances or other people?
• Do you think you are constantly attacked by other people?
• Do you think your problems are bigger than other people's?

If your answer is yes to most of the questions, then you are a grievance collector. Finding out that you are a grievance collector may come as an unpleasant surprise. Some people are not aware that they have this mania.

This craft of going through life collecting and collecting grievances creates a kind of difficult individual to cope with for the rest of the people; a company that nobody wants to be with, an unwanted guest; a non-guest with whom most people do not want to share, work or study. This type of person creates a lot of static (conflict, ambiguity and uncertainty) in relationships with others, because it is so difficult to decipher and to cope with.

If you are a grievance collector you need to force yourself to look at "grievances" face to face. People are not normally harsh and unfair, or indifferent and insensitive, nor are circumstances permanently conspiring against them. It takes a lot of strength of spirit to face grievances, confronting and validating their perceptions with people. The apparent disdain or slights are almost always due to inadvertent, concern or simple ignorance, rather than to incorrect motivations or bad desires.

Offenses and grievances are heavy baggage difficult to carry. Carrying that backpack of "shame and injustice" for a long time wears and burdens the soul. If you are a grievance collector, you need take a break, give yourself a truce. You need to get rid of that baggage. Now, leaving that luggage can be difficult to achieve, because you have carried it for so long that it is already part of you; defines you. However, living collecting grievances in a distorted and dysfunctional way of being and being in the world. You may realize that this way of being and relating to others has damaged your relationships, It has made you unhappy, it has impeded your personal growth, it has made you a person dysfunctional. Therefore, you need to face the grievances, and drop that heavy backpack, in order to regain a healthy balance.

If you are a grievance collector, I invite you to just appreciate the wrong and then throw it out the window. Do not keep it in an urn and later enjoy contemplating it. The grievance is a heavy burden. Don't let it sink into your mind to proliferate like poisonous bacteria in your emotional circulatory system, turning your heart into a flower garden of negativity, pessimism and hopelessness whose roots of bitterness dry up your spirit and inject negativity and pessimism into others people.

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.

If you want to read more articles similar to Anatomy of a grievance collector - characteristics and tests, we recommend that you enter our category of Personality.

• Watzlawick Paul, The Art of Bitterness, Herder Publishing, 1988.
• Selections Magazine, 1960.
• Sills Judith, Excess Baggage, Editorial Norma, 1993.