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First, I want to apologize to basketball Coach Ken Ricker, who coached the Dunkirk High School Lady Marauders to a sectional basketball championship in 2020. This was one of the more exciting and well-coached teams in the history of girls' basketball. Prior to this championship, the last girls' sectional basketball championship was in 1990, coached by Bob Uszacki.
Again, this was also one of the best coached girls or boys teams in the history of the school that lasted for 30 years. Prior to Coach Ricker, I lost sight of them winning the sectionals because the States were canceled due to COVID, and I feel as an ex-coach both teams could have made a run to the State finals. Good job, Coach Ricker, and it goes without saying what I thought of Bob, who was my best friend, outstanding coach (won sectionals in both boys and girls basketball) and the best friend a guy could have.
Miss ya every day, coach.
Secondly, what two things do the following people have in common: Julie Garownski Tickle, Lewis Mack, Kathy Farrell, Frank Jagoda, Al Stuhlmiller, Dave Graf, Bob Patterson, Bob Barlette, Mike Tramuta, Bob Wisniewski, Dave Criscione, Pete Criscione?! If you don't know the answer, call me or I'll publish it in next month's article.
OK, now we will move on to the topic of "resentments."
The definition of resentments is "a repeatedly experienced discomfort stemming from an insult to one's dignity." The only insult that is normally capable of triggering off a resentment is that insult produced by someone of significance in your life.
As I move around Western New York on my sales job, it's sad to say that there are many unhappy people holding onto resentments for one thing or another, regardless of their status in life or how much money they have or don't have. Many have taken childhood experiences and brought them into adulthood unresolved.
Families separated for whatever reasons form resentments. The Albert Ellis Institute talked about a person "in the grip of an old distress, says things that are not pertinent, does things that don't work, fails to cope with the situation and endures terrible feelings that have nothing to do with the present."
Thus, only an insult from a significant other can stimulate a resentment and make you hang on to it for the purpose of final judgments (God already knows what you are thinking and feeling) and making it part of one's dignity. It can be family, close friends, business associates, friends trusted and so on and so on. So where do we learn these types of thinking and feeling behaviors that lead to resentments?
From contamination disorders: co-dependence, offender behaviors, narcissistic disorders, trust issues, acting out behaviors, magical beliefs, intimacy disorders, non-discipline disorders, addictive/compulsive, thought distortions, emptiness, apathy, depression ...
As you can see by the word "contamination," every child needs to be loved "unconditionally" in the beginning. Without the eyes of a non-judgmental parent, a child has no way of knowing who he or she is. We needed to know we mattered and that every part of us was lovable. Also, we needed to know our caretakers' love could be depended upon. These were our healthy narcissistic needs. If we did not get them, our sense of "who I am" was damaged.
From working with boys and girls, men and women for more than 30 years in chemical dependency, I will keep the attention on what happened to them when they were a child and how that continues to contaminate their thinking and behavior in attempting to live an alcohol and drug-free life.
First, there is a big difference between discipline and abuse. The narcissistically deprived adult child cannot get his or her needs met because they are actually a child's needs. Children as children need their parents all the time, and if they do not get what they need then they are needy by nature, not by choice. The idea in REBT is "no pain – no gain." Until grieving the loss of childhood is done, the insatiable child will voraciously seek the love and esteem they did not get as a child. The needs of narcissistic deprived adult children take various forms, especially in resentments.
Chemically dependent men and women are disappointed in one relationship after another, and usually hold resentments toward the opposite person for things said and behaviors done. They are always looking for the perfect lover for their needs. They become sex and love addicts to fill the hole in their psyche. They seek material things and money to give them a sense of worth. They tend to dominate both physically and mentally the other person and blame them for all their health problems and problems in general. A kind of control madness emerges because of a lack of trust.
A client of mine was distraught because her husband had filed for divorce and his "last straw" came when she changed the brand of phone he had installed in her car. The husband stated no matter what he tried to do for her, it was never right. She always changes what he had done to stay comfortable by controlling the outcome. She then told him she resented him and would never forgive him.
Thus, as one can see, resentments occur early in life. We call these in "REBT – life traps." We will get into these in other articles. Things such as mental, physical or sexual abuse play into forming irrational beliefs about people, places and things. Offender behavior, the major source of human destruction, is the result of childhood violence and the suffering of unresolved grief of the abuse. The once powerless wounded child becomes the offender. A mother's gruesome details of her experiences to her daughter in Nazi concentration camps, was that her mother treated her as the Nazi guards had treated her, by spitting on her and calling her a Jewish pig as early as three years old.
More disturbing is the sexual offenders who were more often abused themselves. When they abuse children, they are re-enacting the abuse they experienced as children.
While most offender behavior is rooted in childhood, it is not always the result of abuse. Some offenders were "spoiled" by their parents through overindulgence and over submission, so that they learned to feel they were "superior" to others. Such pampered children come to believe that they can do no wrong. They lose all sense of responsibility, believing that their problems are someone else's fault.
As one can see, resentments are deep rooted and have a flow through a person's life. If anxiety and depression are prevalent often, therapy is advised. Unfortunately, many people will not seek it and will continue to lead their lives doing irrational things and thinking irrationally much of the time.
Next: How to resolve resentments.
Mike Tramuta is a Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy counselor. He can be reached at 716-983-2592.