Please freeze frame this point: Resentment is the root cause of all the suffering in your life, bad decisions, even many diseases. Being upset makes us suggestible, gullible, and submissive to cruel authority.

We grow up as permanent victims, and tyrants and manipulators see to it that their quarry never outgrow their secret hostilities by piling on cruelty upon cruelty, terror upon terror, and confusion upon confusion. 

Incredibly, very often the victim of secret, suppressed rage feels love and warmth towards his violator, and truly believes that his slavery is a loving service. This is because the hate he feels automatically produces guilt, which automatically creates a powerful need for him to “make up” for that guilt—with false love.

An entire nation can be controlled by this hate-love phenomenon. Consider the nation of Iran. Do you really believe that the late Ayatollah Khomeni’s followers truly loved him? Of course not; they hated him. They had religion forced upon them when they were children, in a society that has no tolerance for a different view.

The result is rage and conformity—and a strange loyalty to serve the violator, even to the death. Resentment is the establishing cause of all past traumas, and a reinforcing cause of them in the present. That is why so many of us never get well. At the same time, however, it gives great hope for a cure to those willing to engage in a little introspection.

There is no need to look into the past to find the cause of our problems; we can gauge our pasts by carefully observing how we relate to people, places, and things in the present. You see objects which were present in the scene of any cruel, traumatic event become associated with the person who hurt us, and can have the same effect upon us as the person did.

"Resentment is the root cause of all the suffering in your life, bad decisions, even many diseases"

Example: You may not like the color red; for some unknown reason red irritates you. Or you could like it too much. But there’s no need to look deeper (although there is a deeper root cause) because the reactions you are now experiencing are, for all practical purposes, the root. Just notice the irritation, and see if you can locate the resentment that underlies it.

As you observe it, it disappears. Sometime later, the memory of the originating incident will surface all by itself, and you will have a flash of understanding about it—and then it is gone, along with your problem. 

One man I counseled felt irritable in the presence of balloons, especially red ones. One of the few times his father played with him, it turns out, he gave his son some red balloons.

However, his father played with him in a cold, indifferent, hypocritical way; he was impatient and didn’t really want to play with his son, but did so out of obligation. Sensing his father’s hypocrisy and coldness, the boy resented this, knowing it wasn’t real love. That trauma affected him throughout his life and was associated in his mind with balloons.

Of course, that was only one of hundreds of traumas that can make up a person’s life. The key to overcoming resentment is very basic: We must learn to observe everything objectively, including personal conflicts, without becoming upset and thereby refueling the problem.

This ability to confront problems without becoming upset or emotionally caught up with them is an essential and time-honored discipline, necessary for our mental, emotional, and even physical health and well-being.