I heard somebody say this in a meeting:
“Resentments are a holding pattern for hurt.”
Wow. Talk about a great flight analogy. We were flying high while drinking and drugging, not thinking about anything but escape. At our bottoms, we either crashed the plane, or landed it rather bumpily and jumped out of the plane thankfully, wondering where we were and how to get to safety.
Drinking and drugging are but a symptom. Once we got off that horrendous flight and we stopped that destructive behavior, we realized we are hanging onto underlying feelings, upsets and hurts that were keeping us stuck. When we take the confusion of the alcohol out of the mix, we see there is a whole flight schedule of skewed thoughts lined up that we didn’t notice before—the list is long. Our upsets, resentments and hurts soaring around in a holding pattern up there in our heads flying around.
Well, the good news is that there is a way out! So, how do we deal with those resentments? For me, it was a spiritual awakening as the result of the 12 steps. We specifically deal with our resentments in Step Four which helps us discover our part in the resentment so we can see it, then release it and eventually forgive the person we are resenting. We can’t keep ruminating on “what we THINK they have done to us.” That only poisons us! We are waiting for an apology that may never come.
After completing all of the steps, I discovered that I could STILL carry resentments for certain people. It’s not the drinking, it’s the thinking.
My sponsor pointed me to a reading in the Big Book of AA that I included below. This is a good practice and, in my experience, works.
Page 552 in the Big Book of AA
"If you have resentment you want to be free of, if you will pray for the person or thing that you resent, you will be free. If you will ask in prayer for everything you want for yourself to be given to them, you will be free. Ask for their health, their prosperity, their happiness, and you will be free. Even when you don't really want it for them and your prayers are only words and you don't mean it, go ahead and do it anyway. Do it everyday for two weeks, and you will find you have come to mean it and to want it for them, and you will realize that where you used to feel bitterness and resentment and hatred, you now feel compassionate, understanding and love."
It worked for me then, and it has worked for me many times since, and it will work for me every time I am willing to work it. Sometimes I have to ask first for the willingness, but it always comes. And because it works for me, it will work for all of us. As another great man says, 'The only real freedom a human being can ever know is doing what you ought to do because you want to do it.”
The spiritual awakening part of the 12 Steps—It’s not about me. I become an instrument. I show up sober and willing and God does the rest.
I am free to soar again.
Try it.
“For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
Matthew 23:12
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