Men struggle with guilt, too — it’s a human emotion — but this post isn’t about men. It’s also not about guilt in a universal sense, as it relates to original sin. It’s about women and our habit of feeling guilty for pretty much everything.

What I see in my office day in and day out is this: women believe that everything that’s “wrong” has ever been “wrong” and will ever go “wrong” is their fault. If something or someone else isn’t okay, we’ve done something to cause it and are thereby responsible for fixing it. At the same time, women feel guilty for needing anything for themselves. The truth is women feel guilty most of the time, for most everything. Guilty is just our normal state.  

In trying to understand why this is, let’s take a step back. From a neurological standpoint, females tend to be more relationally wired than males. This isn’t always the case of course, but in general, the studies support that females are biologically designed to be attuned to other people’s experiences, to feel their pain, perhaps to be able to care for their offspring. If we look to science to understand women’s propensity for guilt, we might consider that females come into this world with neurochemicals that stimulate nurturing, bonding, and empathy.  But our empathic wiring isn’t the problem. Rather, the porblem is that we turn this beautiful quality of empathy, with which we’re gifted, into the self-destructive habit called guilt.  In essence, our natural attunement to other people’s experiences becomes something we use against ourselves; we’re bad if we fail to protect everyone else from suffering, or put another way, fail to keep everyone else happy.  Our capacity for kindness and connection transmutes into an unkindness we harness against ourselves.

At the same time, through our cultural conditioning, we’ve learned we can best achieve emotional safety and belonging by being likable. And so, we spend a lot of energy trying to be pleasing, which, if you’re female, means keeping other people happy.

When other people aren’t happy, when others perceive something as “wrong,” it means that we have failed. We’re then in danger of being rejected and criticized, thereby losing our place of belonging. Taking the blame for other people’s experiences becomes an emotional survival strategy. It keeps us likable.

So too, we assume everything is our fault to maintain control. If we’re to blame for everything and we’re who broke whatever’s broken, then we can also fix it. We can do better, be better—and we will, which will make everything okay.

But what if we can’t make everything okay by fixing ourselves What if things can go wrong for reasons we can’t know? What if everything isn’t our fault?  That would mean that life isn’t entirely in our control.  It would mean that life happens on life’s terms, not ours.  It would mean that we’re not the (negative) center of the universe.

For many, this is a scary idea. We avoid recognizing that things just happen for infinite reasons–even if it means living in constant guilt and self-judgment–rather than face the fact that much of life isn’t in our control or even about us.

Paradoxically, guilt is also a way of keeping us from having to feel what we feel. When something isn’t working in our lives, focusing on all the reasons we’re to blame–and what’s wrong with us–keeps us from experiencing the feelings related to what’s happening. While feeling responsible and guilty is painful, it successfully avoids the pain that might be properly associated with the situation. And so, we stay stuck in the rumination and negative looping about our brokenness, but we don’t process the feelings that would help us move forward.

But perhaps most importantly, when we get caught in guilt and self-attack, ruminating on our guilt, we abandon the possibility of purposefully addressing what isn’t working.  We get waylaid in the familiar and comfortably uncomfortable narrative of our failings.  We’re then distracted from the most important question: how to improve what isn’t working. We surrender the chance to chart a course forward.  We’re stuck in the old guilt and shame muck, and we end up with the same old question we always end up with: “What’s wrong with me?” It’s a question we know all too well.

So, how do you break the cycle and change your inner narrative?

First, you didn’t learn to be guilty overnight and you won’t break the habit overnight either. But as with everything, freedom begins with awareness. You start by noticing, in small ways, your propensity to blame yourself, the ways you personally dive into the guilty rabbit hole. And, when you notice yourself falling, you start catching yourself in mid-dive or may even pre-dive. 

If your 11-year-old tells you she’s sad because she has no friends, maybe you notice that you immediately start figuring out how you’re a bad mother, and haven’t modeled good enough social skills, and all the reasons why you’re to blame for turning her into a social outcast.

As soon as you notice that you’re turning against yourself and diving into the self-blame hole, stop and do something different: Offer yourself kindness instead of criticism. Try a new path. Instead of going down into the old, stagnant, guilty rabbit hole, treat yourself differently.

How to Make Different Choices

If any of this sounds a little too familiar, you can try this two-part process:

Step 1: Feel how the situation feels. Feel the situation, not how it feels to be the cause of it. For example, how do you feel knowing your daughter is sad because she lacks friends? Simultaneously, notice if your feelings toward your daughter (or whatever situation) change when you aren’t guilty of having caused it.

Step 2: Turn your attention to now. What can you do to improve the situation that’s not working? In this example, how can you improve your daughter’s relationship with other kids? Turn your focus from what’s wrong with you to the present moment and how you can create positive change.

When guilt becomes a habit, it causes suffering and stagnation. But guilt is a habit we can break; we don’t have to feel guilty all the time. We don’t have to throw ourselves under the bus when something is wrong. Things can be wrong without our being to blame, or responsible for having caused it, or having to fix it.  As revolutionary as it might sound, things can just be “wrong” without us being wrong.  But for the guilt habit to change, we must choose to create a different internal dialogue and attitude towards ourselves. So, make that choice; make that change, and pay attention to who you are and who you become when you stop telling yourself that you’re broken!

The post The Guilt That Women Suffer appeared first on Nancy Colier.

The problem for Bill was that when he empathized with his wife’s problems, and she always had problems wherever she went. He felt like he was supporting a part of her he really didn’t like, and the very part that he believed was responsible for her being so unhappy and unsatisfied all the time.  When he validated her version of the truth, it felt like he was validating exactly the character issue in his wife that made her life stuck and their marriage difficult.  The same part of her that blamed everyone else also blamed Bill and refused to look at herself when problems arose in the relationship.

On a recent morning, Bill had asked his wife how she liked the people at her new job.  She then launched into a diatribe about how everyone at her office was so overly sensitive and that she couldn’t say anything that they wouldn’t find offensive.  She couldn’t relax and be herself because she had to be hyper-vigilant about not offending anyone about their race, gender, sexuality, color, and everything else identity-related.  If she spoke naturally, she would be offending someone and there would be consequences.  The office wasn’t safe to make friends.  Identity politics were in the way.

As Bill explained it, she went on and on about the external problem that made it impossible for her to connect to anyone.  She didn’t talk about feeling lonely or awkward or disappointed, she just talked about the reasons friendship was impossible, and what was to blame for her not making friends and enjoying the new environment.

Bill’s wife had in fact rarely been able to make friends and had always felt isolated.  She’d been in many work situations and other environments, and there was always something wrong with the people or the conditions that made it impossible for her to be part of the community.  According to Bill, she was also very critical of others and awkward in her social skills.  She frequently said things that offended people or that she felt people took the wrong way.  For her whole life, she had felt misunderstood and misjudged.

After listening for a while and nodding supportively, Bill had asked if there might be a way to connect with her co-workers at a human level, around something everyone could relate to that didn’t have to do with their race, gender or identity.  Her answer was no, everything led back to identity issues in that office.  Trying to move the topic away from the blaming, he asked if it was lonely or frustrating to be in such an office.  There was no response on that either.  He also poked in a question about whether it was true that if she complimented a man on what he was wearing, she would be accused of being inappropriate.  But at that point, smelling the rat, Bill’s wife erupted and told him that she wasn’t looking for instructions on how to correct it, she was just looking for support.  Bill explained that he was trying to be helpful and suggest a way that she might create a community since she had said she wanted that.  She angrily responded that his help was always directed at changing who she was, correcting her in some way, and never aimed at validating that the situation was in fact difficult.  Bill then did what he often does, namely, go back to nodding empathically and listening to his wife’s newest target for blame, playing the docile part he’s supposed to play.  Meanwhile, on the inside, he was, as he always is, enraged and feeling utterly helpless, with no way to express his truth and also not be attacked and accused of being the enemy.

When he came in that morning, Bill was fed up and tired of feeling controlled, frustrated by not knowing how to deal with this particular situation.  How could he be empathic with his wife’s experience when he was sure the problems she was encountering were caused by her own behavior?  How could he validate the very part of her that made it nearly impossible to be in a relationship with her?

This is a tremendously challenging situation that many of us confront.  We have a strong theory about why someone is suffering or encountering a particular problem; we’re convinced that it’s their own behavior that’s causing it, and yet they want and need us to empathize with and validate their conviction that something or someone else is to blame, which we don’t believe is true.  They don’t want to and are not willing to look at their part in the situation or how they are contributing to their problem, but need us to confirm a reality that maintains them as the victim and repeating the same pattern.

Although Bill felt he had failed at the situation, in fact the strategies he came up with were incredibly wise, which I pointed out to him.  He did some empathizing and validating, nodding his head and responding supportively.  He also inserted some reality checks, as in his question about commenting on someone’s outfit as inappropriate.  And finally, he tried to move the conversation to her experience of loneliness, which could have been a place to join her and feel some real empathy.  His instincts were spot on, but unfortunately, none of his attempts succeeded at giving him a new role in the situation or changing his wife’s behavior for that matter.  He was either the un-supportive spouse or stuck validating his wife in an ignorant and unattractive behavior that he found abhorrent.

So, what’s left to do after all the strategies lead nowhere?  That is, after we  1. Legitimately empathize, because after all, the person is suffering even if we think they’re the cause of their own pain.  2. Reality check: Ask benign questions about the facts and assumptions the other is using to defend their argument.  3. Shift the topic from the object of blame to the other’s experience of the problem. What’s it like to work in a place that feels so unsafe?  (We do this so as to create a place we can connect and empathize authentically.)  What’s left, after all this has been tried, is a strategy of an entirely different sort.  We move our attention from the other into ourselves.

Depending on the kind of situation, the intensity of the other’s pain and our own inner state, we may try to express a bit of what we’re living through as well.  As in, “I want to support you and I feel how hard this is for you, and I really care about that—AND (not but)—I also have some thoughts about what might make the situation better that include you.  Are you interested in hearing that “take” from me or do you just want me to listen and support you that this is the way it is?”

When we can say something that implies or suggests we think the other may have a part in creating their own unhappiness, even if it’s not the actual contents of what we think the other is doing that’s causing their problem, it often feels much better than just behaving by listening or validating.  By asking if the other is open to our thoughts about alternative solutions, we feel less controlled and invisible, and more authentic and present in the conversation.  By acknowledging out loud that we will agree to tuck away our truth and do what they need us to do at that moment (even if we think something different), we’re actually, in a very clever way, giving our truth a place at the table, making ourselves heard and not allowing our truth, even if not named, to be bullied out of the conversation.

Furthermore, as the other is going on about who and what’s to blame for their problem, and asking us to empathize, we turn our attention inside.  We acknowledge, silently, that this situation is really hard—for us.  We remind ourselves, with kindness, that this is the place, the moment, the exact spot where there’s no right way to do it, no strategy to handle this person, this situation, this roadblock, that will make it comfortable or right.  We offer ourselves permission to not know how to do it.  We do the best we can without demanding that it feel okay or that we be able to make it okay.

The post When It’s Always Someone Else’s Fault appeared first on Nancy Colier.

How does this happen?

Some people are raised in homes where they are perpetually blamed for whatever goes wrong, whether or not they had a part in it.  Usually, for a time, they fight back and continue to know themselves as innocent.  They feel the injustice of the wrongful accusations.  But as time goes on and the blaming continues, but the knowing of their innocence remains irrelevant or worse, an exacerbating factor, two things happen.  First, these people learn to accept the blame for what they haven’t done, even when they know they’re innocent—because it actually feels helpful to take the blame and it often pleases those they need to keep happy, even if at the cost of their own rightness.  But eventually, sadly, they come to experience themselves as guilty; the knowing of their innocence actually gets buried and the blame projected onto them becomes their truth.  They become the bad one on the inside as well as the outside.

In other situations, when a child is neglected, abused, or abandoned, her way of explaining this mistreatment to herself is to blame herself for what happened.  Mommy left because I was wrong and there is something fundamentally wrong about me.  Mommy isn’t guilty, I am.  I am to blame for daddy’s anger, even if I can’t know what I did to make it happen.  Daddy isn’t guilty, I am.  When we take the blame for mistreatment, we do what we most need to do, which is keep and hold mommy and daddy, internally, as the good ones.  As painful and destructive as the system is, it has a wise purpose.

As young ones, it is less painful to make ourselves the bad one rather than to allow our parent (whom we desperately need) to be bad.  More even than our own goodness, we rely on the belief in our parent’s goodness.  So too, we rely on the world making sense.  And so, heartbreakingly, we join our caretakers in believing our guilt, which then, ironically, puts the world back in order and sensibly explains their treatment of us.  The cognitive dissonance that would arise from knowing our own goodness and at the same time being mistreated by those who are supposed to love and care for us, is too overwhelming to bear.  And so we become internally wrong, which, paradoxically, makes the world understandable once again.

There are many varieties of early experiences that can create an instinct to assume blame, but in the interests of space, I will elaborate on only one other.  Some of us grew up in families in which apologies or ownership for bad behavior never happened.  When we expressed our upset, we were either informed of our crime, in other words, what we did that caused them to do what they did to us, thereby legitimizing their behavior and turning empathy for us into a moot point.  Or, we were told how we had done or were wrong, in a more global sense, which then made us undeserving of any kind of treatment other than the kind we received.

For those of us raised in this environment, empathy for our experience was simply not available; we did not know the experience of someone hearing our upset and simply caring about it, taking responsibility for and validating it, without blaming us for it.  We did not have the safety of knowing that our experience mattered no matter what it contained.  All expressions of upset were met with a lesson in our own culpability in our suffering.  The mantra in families like this is “Look at your own behavior…that’s what you never do!”  As the recipient of this kind of blame we then come to believe the mantra, to think that we are somehow responsible, not just for the situation and our own suffering, but also for not being willing to take responsibility for our deserved guilt.

How to Heal?

So, how do we stop the cycle and heal the core belief that we are to blame?  Can we free ourselves from the deep sense of fundamental guilt?  How do we remove the Velcro inside ourselves to which any wrongness seeking a home will stick?

In my experience as a therapist and also as someone who has struggled with guilt, and who was trained early to look to myself for the cause of my own or another’s suffering, I can offer a few thoughts, which I hope are helpful.

To begin with, we have to unpack the original source and conditions for our assumption of blame, to navigate through the who, what, where, how, and why (carefully) of our being blamed, and also see what that created in us.  Secondly, we need to bring compassion to our own experience, to open our heart to the suffering that comes with feeling always to blame, with having to play the role, and worse, believe the role of the bad one.  So too, we need to notice where we started to agree with our accusers, and understand and forgivewhy we needed to do that to be okay, how the system of blame worked. This involves spending time unraveling our relationship with blame and guilt, and looking deep into our conditioning, and the making of our identity as the one who’s wrong.  We do this with another human being: a therapist, counselor, spiritual teacher, friend, or anyone else who is fundamentally on our side, and can keep our eyes and heart open when we’re inclined to slip back into the darkness and pain of self-blame.

We also, in this process, need to separate outcome from intention.  That is, we need to look through our lives and notice where we blamed ourselves or were blamed by others for an unwanted result, but without considering what we were trying to make happen—our intentions.  Most of the time we’re doing our very best to make something good happen, but it doesn’t always work out that way.  We can’t control outcomes, only intentions.  Most of the time, blame is about having created a wrong outcome and yet it utterly ignores the intention that was mother to the process. In turning the light from results to our intentions, we re-train ourselves to connect with our goodness (which lives in intention).  We befriend the part of ourselves that’s ignored when we’re being blamed or self-blaming.

As we go through this process, it’s also profoundly important that we examine our life now and identify the areas where we ourselves are adding to and creating our sense of blame and shame.  Often, we engage in behaviors that initially alleviate our sense of guilt, but then end up fueling and justifying that guilt.  For example, I recently worked with a woman who started drinking casually, in part to ease her sense of unshakeable (although non-specific) guilt.  But over time, her drinking had become more secretive and frequent, which then gave her ever more reason to feel guilty and bad.  The coping mechanism for our guilt becomes its cause.  We need to be fierce and rigorous in our self-inventory, and most importantly, to terminate all those behaviors that in any way strengthen our underlying sense of being blame-worthy, or in any way contribute to a sense of self that forms a handshake with our earliest blamers.

And finally, and perhaps most importantly, breaking free from the assumption of blame relies upon having a different experience of ourselves in the world.  When we put ourselves in the company of people who are kind and reliably on our side, who start (and end) from the belief that we’re good and our intentions are positive, who are willing to listen and care about how we are, even when it might not be what they want to hear… then, we learn to see ourselves through the lens of kindness and support we see in their eyes when they look at us.  Miraculously, we come to know ourselves as innocent.  When we consistently put ourselves in an environment of acceptance and love—the opposite of blame— surround ourselves with people who are fundamentally for and not against us, we then awaken to our truth, the one we knew a very long time ago, before it had to go away.  We awaken and discover that our acceptance of guilt, of badness, is inherently unkind and unfair—to ourselves.  We see ourselves, at last, as good.

The post When Feeling Guilty is Your Natural State appeared first on Nancy Colier.

The questions I raised included:

• How do we proceed when someone that matters to us assigns us negative intentions that are not ours?
• How much energy do we put into trying to correct their ideas so as to be seen and known correctly?
• How do we stay open, non-defensive, and emotionally intact when someone uses us as a place to unload their anger, guilt, and shame, and to successfully split off from their own negative feelings?
• How can we avoid internalizing their negativity and experiencing ourselves as the bad object that they need us to be—so that their internal system can function smoothly, their identity can remain intact?

The first thing to do when someone we care about blames or criticizes us is to examine our own behavior. Is there truth in what they are telling us about ourselves? What was your intention in this situation? If we find that there is validity in what they are telling us, we can take a good look at what they are pointing to, and try to use their words as a lesson and opportunity to grow.

To honestly investigate our own behavior takes courage. To acknowledge that we could have acted with more awareness in a situation, or could have done better, is not the same as blaming or judging ourselves. We are all works in progress and all in the process of becoming more aware.

But when we are in relationship with a chronic blamer, most of us have already done this kind of self-examination. We have found that the blamer frequently accuses us of intentions and actions that do not belong to us, and often belong to themselves. Part of what makes being in a relationship with a blamer so challenging is that our intentions and behavior seem unrelated to how they view and treat us. We may show the blamer who we are, and painstakingly explain, again and again, our truth—that we are not what they have decided. But the blamer needs us to remain the bad one, and needs us to see what he or she sees. However, if we pay attention and take some distance from the accusations, we realize that we have been assigned a role in the other’s internal narrative and are playing a (negative) character for them in their storyline—all of which is about them and not us. Even when our behavior demonstrates a different reality than what the blamer claims, the blamer is likely to remain more committed to keeping his or her narrative intact than to seeing the truth.

The great danger that projection presents when it comes from those close to us is it makes us feel like the bad person that the other person is relating to. Particularly when someone projects onto and blames us from a young age, we tend to take on the core-belief that we are bad—in whatever form our blamer framed it (I am the selfish one, I am the angry one, etc.). When we are young, we experience ourselves through the eyes of those close to us. We have not yet developed a private experience of ourselves that can refute the character they need us to be. We don’t yet have the capacity to separate who we are, in our own heart and gut, from the guilty person they see. Their delight or disapproval teaches us who we are. Until we understand and heal from projection, and discover a different experience of ourselves, we believe and/or fear ourselves to be their story of us.

The most critical practice to undertake when in a relationship with a blamer is to get irrefutably clear on who we are in our own heart—which only we can know. What is my truth?: This is the question in which we must marinate. The core of protecting ourselves from a blamer is establishing and continually supporting an impenetrable boundary between what we know about ourselves and what this other person needs to believe about us. This boundary requires that we be willing to dive deeply into our own heart, to discover our real truths—without distortion—with a fierce and unwavering intention to meet ourselves as we actually are. Our practice is to create a tether into our heart, and build a place inside ourselves where the blamer’s words cannot reach—where we know (and know we know) who we are. Rather than harming us, then, the other’s blame can then be used as a red flag, to remind us to return to our heart to discover what is actually so for us—separate from the other and their story. Their blame becomes the catalyst to direct our energy away from their narrative and toward our own inarguable truth.

It is heartbreaking when someone we love sees us in a way that doesn’t feel true or positive, but just because another person (no matter how much we love them) relates to us as bad or guilty does not mean that we are those things. We can mourn this person not knowing us, or not seeing us correctly—without having to become the object of their blame. Further, we do not need to convince the other of who we are to be who we are. We need not convince them of our innocence to be innocent. We can simply choose to reject their projections, to return them to sender, if you will. Their projections belong to them; we can let them pass through us. While we feel and grieve the gap between who we are and who they see, it is not a gap that must be, or in some cases, can be bridged.

While we can’t control what another person thinks about us or how they may distort our truth, we can most definitely control what we do with their thoughts. We can’t control whether another person will listen to or be interested in our truth, but we can control for how long and with how much energy we will attempt to correct their version of our truth. We can also control how and if we want to continue in a relationship with someone who chooses not to relate to who we actually are.

In relating with a blamer, some important questions to contemplate are:

1. When I search my own heart, is my intention in line with what the blamer is accusing me of? (Am I responsible in some way for what they are claiming and can I look at that part of myself?)
2. What is my heart’s intention in this relationship?
3. Have I tried to express my experience or my truth to this person?
4. Do I experience this person as interested in or open to my truth?
5. Am I allowing myself to experience the feelings that arise as a result of being unfairly blamed and/or not heard?
6. Can I honor and grieve the gap between who they are relating to and who I am?
7. Can I know myself as who I am even in the face of their need to relate to me as someone else?
8. Can I allow their negative projections to remain with them, and not take them in as my own?
9. Can I let myself be who I am and know myself as who I am, even with this person believing that I am responsible for how they feel?
10. Can I honor myself as innocent even in the face of the guilt they are assigning me?
11. Do I want to remain in relationship with someone who sees me in a way that is out of alignment with who I know myself to be? If so, why?

A longing for others to see and know us as we know ourselves—and, of course, regard us positively—is integral to being human. And yet, we can’t always change the way another person relates to us, or who they need us to be for them. Fortunately, we can always change the way we relate to ourselves. No matter the narrative tsunami we face, we can always be that kind and curious presence—for ourselves—which wants to know what is actually true inside our heart, and thus to know us as we really are.

The post What to Do About the People Who Blame You for Everything appeared first on Nancy Colier.

These people are not isolated examples or peculiar in any way. Many people hold grudges, deep ones, that can last a lifetime. Many are unable to let go of the anger they feel towards those who “wronged” them in the past, even though they may have a strong desire and put in a concerted effort to do so.

Often we hold onto our grudges unwillingly, while wishing we could drop them and live freshly in the present, without the injustices of the past occupying so much psychic space.

Why do we hold grudges when they are in fact quite painful to maintain, and often seem to work against what we really want? Why do we keep wounds open and active, living in past experiences of pain which prevent new experiences from being able to happen? What keeps us stuck when we want to move on and let go? Most important, how can we let go?

To begin with, grudges come with an identity. With our grudge intact, we know who we are—a person who was “wronged.”  As much as we don’t like it, there also exists a kind of rightness and strength in this identity. We have something that defines us—our anger and victimhood—which gives us a sense of solidness and purpose. We have definition and a grievance that carries weight. To let go of our grudge, we have to be willing to let go of our identity as the “wronged” one, and whatever strength, solidity, or possible sympathy and understanding we receive through that “wronged” identity. We have to be willing to drop the “I” who was mistreated and step into a new version of ourselves, one we don’t know yet, that allows the present moment to determine who we are, not past injustice.

But what are we really trying to get at, get to, or just get by holding onto a grudge and strengthening our identity as the one who was “wronged”? In truth, our grudge, and the identity that accompanies it, is an attempt to get the comfort and compassion we didn’t get in the past, the empathy for what happened to us at the hands of this “other,” the experience that our suffering matters  As a somebody who was victimized, we are announcing that we are deserving of extra kindness and special treatment. Our indignation and anger is a cry to be cared about and treated differently—because of what we have endured.

The problem with grudges, besides the fact that they are a drag to carry around (like a bag of sedimentized toxic waste that keeps us stuck in anger) is that they don’t serve the purpose that they are there to serve. They don’t make us feel better or heal our hurt. At the end of the day, we end up as proud owners of our grudges but still without the experience of comfort that we ultimately crave, that we have craved since the original wounding. We turn our grudge into an object and hold it out at arm’s length—proof of what we have suffered, a badge of honor, a way to remind others and ourselves of our pain and deserving-ness. But in fact our grudge is disconnected from our own heart; while born out of our pain, it becomes a construction of the mind, a story of what happened to us. Our grudge morphs into a boulder that blocks the light of kindness from reaching our heart, and thus is an obstacle to true healing. Sadly, in its effort to garner us empathy, our grudge ends up depriving us of the very empathy that we need to release it.

The path to freedom from a grudge is not so much through forgiveness of the “other” (although this can be helpful), but rather through loving our own self. To bring our own loving presence to the suffering that crystallized into the grudge, the pain that was caused by this “other,” is what ultimately heals the suffering and allows the grudge to melt. If it feels like too much to go directly into the pain of a grudge, we can move toward it with the help of someone we trust, or bring a loving presence to our wound, but from a safe place inside. The idea is not to re-traumatize ourselves by diving into the original pain but rather to attend to it with the compassion that we didn’t receive, that our grudge is screaming for, and bring it directly into the center of the storm. Our heart contains both our pain and the elixir for our pain.

To let go of a grudge we need to move the focus off of the one who “wronged” us, off of the story of our suffering, and into the felt experience of what we actually lived. When we move our attention inside, into our heart, our pain shifts from being a “something” that happened to us, another part of our narrative, to a sensation that we know intimately, a felt sense that we are one with from the inside.

In re-focusing our attention, we find the soothing kindness and compassion that the grudge itself desires. In addition, we take responsibility for caring about our own suffering, and for knowing that our suffering matters, which can never be achieved through our grudge, no matter how fiercely we believe in it. We can then let go of the identity of the one who was “wronged,” because it no longer serves us and because our own presence is now righting that wrong. Without the need for our grudge, it often simply drops away without our knowing how. What becomes clear is that we are where we need to be, in our own heart’s company.

Copyright 2015 Nancy Colier

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