We begin by examining our lives through the lens of our resentments and long-standing anger. Why? Bill Wilson, the founder of AA, says,“ Resentment is the‘ number one’ offender. It destroys more alcoholics [ addicts ] than anything else.” 1 A person mired in resentment has little chance of recovering from their addictions. But what is a resentment? It is a feeling of“ bitter indignation at having been treated unfairly.” 2 It is emotionally reliving a past injury as if it were repeatedly happening in the present moment. Human beings are Velcro for resentments. We start picking them up from the moment we pop out of the womb, and, tragically, most people take truckloads with them to the grave.
Let’ s be frank, shall we? Most of us are unaware of how many grievances we’ re harboring and the role that unresolved anger plays in our lives. We’ re mostly out of touch with how furious and resentful we feel toward ourselves for not being able to live up to our ideals and toward our difficult life circumstances over which we seem to have scant control— the anger we feel toward the people, places, things, and institutions that regularly hurt or disappoint( ed) us, and yes, even toward the God who invited us to this party. Most of us worry that if we were to go into that room in our hearts marked“ Anger,” we’ d burn up and disintegrate the same way a satellite does when it reenters earth’ s atmosphere.
Resentment and brushed-aside anger will corrode your life, which is why Jesus addresses it directly:“ This is how I want you to conduct yourself in these matters. If you enter your place of worship and, about to make an offering, you suddenly remember a grudge a friend has against you, abandon your offering, leave immediately, go to this friend and make things right. Then and only then, come back and work things out with God”( Matthew 5:23 – 24 MSG).
So as I began Step Four, Sponsor Steve instructed me to think back over the whole of my life and catalog the names of every person, place, object, institution, situation, or principle that had ever wounded or offended me. Then he told me to create a four-column diagram and put the names of the offenders with whom I had a resentment in the first column on the left and what they did to cause my resentment next to their name in the second column.( You can find the template for your Resentment Inventory in the workbook for my book, The Fix.)
Lots of interesting people and things made my resentment list. My second-grade teacher, Sister Mary Aquinas, excoriated me in front of my classmates for not knowing how to spell the word colander( why it was so urgent for a first grader to know how to spell the name of a common kitchen utensil still confounds me). I set down the name of my seventhgrade girlfriend Amy, who hooked up with my best friend Keenan, who, as a consequence of his hormone-driven betrayal, also made it into the Top Twenty on my grudge list.
As uncomfortable as it may feel, looking at our part in things is essential. You see, the
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