Resentment is a multi layer complex emotion, which takes time to develop and complex enough because it has many layers and domains of our life collectively working to either build it up or the outcome which often is negative as a result of a built up toxic emotion .
We all go through many resentful episodes in our life ,while some we let go and move on, some are too bitter to do so ,and precisely why we build it and hold on .
Arshley was reaching his 50’s and will soon have to dwell on his retirement plans ,he was still not married ,and stayed with his parents. Considering the culture and the societal make up he came from, he was way too far behind in terms of marriage prospects let alone start a family.
His shifts in jobs ,never gave him a steady career, he also took to drinking ,but one day ,he was found at a local police station,because his parents filed a complain about him ,and his abusive behavior ,in which he had hit his mother badly ,injured the old lady to the extent that the house owner had to call the police to intervene and get him in control.
No, he never took drugs ,and also never had harm anyone before , even when he was totally drunk .
When I first met him for the coaching session, he only cried ,for hours and hours , he had no proper reason to validate his act ,he found himself way too lost ,trying hard to make sense of everything , though he was completely sane and in a stable frame of mind.
Later on many sessions followed ,including few deep dive sessions,which explained ,how as an an innocent child, ignored and deserted by his very own parents ,siblings had to fight the wicked world, how he was left all by himself with no support and guidance ,especially at times when he went through some rough patches in his personal life , and how he was unfairly treated by his parents in comparison to his other siblings .
Most of what Arshley went through on the face of it will never appear as ill treatment or unfair practice,because the people ,situation and the way he was treated is subtle,and complex. It is all hidden behind in the garb of reprimands, concerns and genuine advice’s as claimed by his family members.
This is where it begins , resentment , a multi layered emotion , and this was the point when he started building it up , it took many years of such treatment by his own family members ,siblings,partner and friends which made him toxic and bitter .
Resentment in most cases first impact the self worth because in often cases it is a combination of anger,humiliation and dejection ,most of these emotions are repressed and bolted up inside but eventually this is what made Arshley into a bad tempered individual ,who would want to regain his lost worth by first hitting those who he consider were the key people responsible for his current state and situation.
Result : he injured his parents,more so his mother ,and had no trace of remorse for doing so. Instead he felt peaceful as if he settled something long due upon him.
The coach program I enrolled him ,went for 9 months ,and it took lot of time and effort to cleanse a toxic inner self ,filled with resentment ,the outcomes were fruitful though ,besides the cleaning of his inner self , it made Arshley much more self aware of his own thought pattern, the meanings he attached to his experiences and the power of perceptions which shaped his new positive belief system.
As a Coach this case made me work on something I never did before ,
- It help me get much better at my own craft (Coaching on Self Concepts)
- Helped me design another layer of evaluation,especially in the discovery process ,to understand if the cause lies in built up resentment .
- It helped me understand that not everything that appears on the face value of it is usually true ,in short appearances are usually deceptive.
Conclusion : Next time , when you come across people who may suddenly tend to behave in a completely new way, pause and think,of those many reasons and piled up resentments they carry within themselves which apparently make them behave the way they do,and remember it has been building up for a long time ,we perhaps just stand spectator to the outburst ,drawing all wrong conclusions from the face value of it.
Mehnaz Amjad
