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Stress gets a bad press in this country. Blame for stress-related health problems is everywhere: time pressures, insecure jobs, congested commutes, information overload, fragmented social schedules, complex financial worries, and so on. It's certainly a tough world out there. Yet much of what is labeled "stress" is actually resentment for not getting entitlement needs met.
Resentment enhances stress by breaking down concentration and draining off energy that would otherwise serve the task at hand. The report you need to write will take longer and have more errors if you feel that it should have been assigned to someone else. It might have been an interesting task, if you didn't regard the production quotas placed on you as unfair. You might enjoy driving your kids to the soccer game, if you didn't ruminate about your spouse expecting you to do it. Traffic congestion would be easier to bear if you enjoyed the music or audio book you're hearing.
Here's a little test to see if your stress is inflated by resentment. Write down the five main things that cause stress in your life. On a scale of 1-10, rate your average ability to cope with each item on your stress list.
Now take a moment to imagine that all traces of resentment have been removed from your stressors - there is no unfairness or injustice involved. Everyone pulls his or her weight; all live up to their responsibilities. You have all the help, understanding, appreciation, consideration, praise, and reward you deem appropriate.
Now reevaluate your capacity to cope with the stressors you listed. On a scale of 1-10, rate your average capacity to cope with each item on your resentment-free stress list.
Once resentment is removed from the mix, most people notice a significant increase in their capacity to cope with their stressors. Resentment increases stress by lowering the capacity to cope with it. Chains of resentment, not stress, overwhelm and ultimately dispirit us.
Bad Health: It Isn't the Anger
You've read headlines about the studies showing dangerous ill-health effects of anger; some call it the heart attack emotion. What the stories usually don't tell you is that the harmful effects of anger come not from frequency or intensity - how often you get angry or how angry you get. They come from duration: how long it lasts. Unhealthy levels of anger are those that last longer than a few minutes. In other words, the real culprit is the engine of chronic resentment, which quiets now and then but never stops.
As part of the fight or flight response common to all mammals, anger is meant for short bursts of intense energy. It's an emergency response, not equipped to meet the daily challenges of modern, ego-centric lifestyles, fraught with emotional demands and ego offenses.
For a model of how anger is supposed to function, look no further than common house cats. When your cat gets angry, he'll arch his back, hiss, slash at the drapes, run through the house, jump off the walls, etc. Within five minutes, he's licking himself like it never happened; if he was angry at you, he'll rub your legs and purr. The animal responds to his perception of a noxious stimulus in the environment. Following his natural instincts about anger, he either corrects his perception (there's not really a threat) or adapts to it - the dog has to live here, too. As quickly as it came over him, the anger is completely gone.
But we don't do anger that way. We think about it afterwards. We think of how things should be and how unfair they are, and how we were disregarded, devalued, disrespected, or wrongly rejected. We'll fantasize about things didn't happen: "When she said that, I should have said this. Then she would have said that, and I would have said this! She would have replied with...and I would have...." Such imaginary dialogue can recur, off and on, for days.
Long-lasting resentment can cause depression and lower immune system efficiency - if you're resentful a lot you probably have lots of little aches and pains - headaches, stomachaches, muscle pain, difficulty sleeping, etc. You may get frequent colds and bouts of flu. Chronic resentment puts you at higher risk of hypertension, stroke, heart disease, and cancer.
Resentment Supports Addiction
The resentment-laden consciousness cries out to be altered by something - a drink, drug, large doeses of caffeine or nicotine, or some compulsive behavior that will ease the tension, dissipate the sour feeling, energize the tiredness, or relieve the leaden mood. Drinking and drugging create an illusion of power that mitigates the powerlessness of resentment. It is this illusion of power that twelve-step programs target as the primary barrier to recovery - the first "Step" is admitting to powerlessness over the drug.
Speaking of recovery, it is scarcely possible to sustain sobriety without breaking the chain of resentment. As long as resentment produces so much bad feeling, the immediate relief of alcohol and drugs will remain compelling.
