Many of my clients are stuck in justifiable resentment over past injuries, abuse, or unfair treatment. The negativity they inadvertently exude causes problems in all their relationships. No matter how much I validate their hurt, they feel betrayed when I try to get them to overcome the resentment that keeps them stuck in their pain.

Unlike most forms of anger, which are triggered by specific incidents, thoughts, or memories, chronic resentment is a generalized ego defense. No one resents just one thing. Most resentful people drag a long chain of resentment through life. Past injuries, abuse, or maltreatment may have initially forged the chain, but dozens of links have been added to it since. Some of the links on the chain of resentment are forged by profound betrayal. Most are not. (A general guideline for the chronically resentful is: Nothing is too petty to resent.) It doesn’t seem that way to them because picking up a chain by one link carries the weight of the entire chain. That’s why resentful people tend to........

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