Is Holding a Grudge Holding You Back?

Harboring bitterness. Holding a grudge. Clinging to resentment. These are common feelings when you’re struggling to forgive someone, but have you found that living with these emotions increases your happiness? Improves your health? Provides inspiration? Probably not. Holding on and refusing to forgive is more likely dragging you down and absorbing much of your mental, emotional, and physical energy.

Not the natural reaction

Forgiving when you’ve been hurt isn’t usually the default setting in relationships. When you feel angry at a person or situation, is your immediate reaction to forgive? Probably not. You’re more likely to withdraw, hide behind your anger, or even obsess over what’s been done to you.

These feelings, which can manifest as grudges, disguise themselves as protection, a way to prevent further damage. That hard shell can keep out the bad, but you may also miss out on a lot of good. Holding a grudge can stop you from fully engaging in relationships and life.

Forgiving others for yourself

Forgiveness is the answer—an active choice to let go of hurt so you can immerse yourself in the relationships that matter and the life happening around you. In the 2017 documentary Heal, medical professionals and spiritual healers offer their insights into the connection between emotions and physical health. A conversation about these relationships would be incomplete without addressing forgiveness.

The documentary looks at how holding on to feelings of anger, resentment, bitterness, and regret can heighten your body’s chemical response to harmful stimuli, placing you in a near-constant state of stress. Considering stress is linked to the six leading causes of death in the US, this kind of energy is clearly detrimental to your body.

Forgiveness is an active choice

Disputing the obvious benefits of forgiveness is difficult, but following through on actually letting go can be challenging. Forgiveness is an active choice, and you have to get comfortable with forgiving yourself and others. In the Heal documentary, author Michael Beckwith beautifully states, “All forgiveness is ultimately self-forgiveness.”

The need to forgive yourself for holding on to resentment is an integral ingredient to resolution. Whether the bitterness is the result of what you’ve done or what was done to you, the implications are the same. The negativity is directed inward, which hurts only you.

You continue to live in pain with little hope for escape. 

In this case, you may find you’re harder on yourself than you are on others. Extending forgiveness to others before yourself can be easier because you might feel the other person is more worthy. You might not think you deserve absolution, making self-forgiveness impossible.

When you hold on to anger, hopelessness and despair can grow in your soul, eventually infecting your heart, mind, and body. Without forgiveness, your trauma may have no natural resolution. In the end, forgiveness is for you more than anyone else. 

Forgetting isn’t a given

Letting go may be the only way forward, but this does not mean erasing what happened. When you forgive, you don’t have to forget. Forgiveness and trust are very different. You’re not required to believe or accept back into your life someone who’s betrayed you. Depending on the circumstance, trusting them again or continuing a relationship would be just plain foolish.

Hopefully, you’d forgive someone who stole from you, but you wouldn’t allow them to handle your belongings in the future, right? Trust is fragile and can be permanently damaged.

Freedom in forgiveness

You’ll need time, and possibly even outside help, to process a bad situation before you can let your negative feelings go. But, ultimately, the choice of whether you want to fill your life with love and positivity or hate and negativity is yours.

The winding road to forgiveness isn’t perfectly paved, but leaving your anger behind is so valuable that the journey is worth it. When you arrive at a place of peace, you will feel a profound sense of liberation from the weight you’ve been carrying.

This newfound lightness empowers you to move on, freeing your mind, soul, and body. It creates space for love, acceptance, joy, and openness, dissolving the destructive emotions that once caused so much pain.