Healing From Chronic Resentment, Anger, and Emotional Abuse
These are the wounds that time doesn’t heal.
Posted June 20, 2025 | Reviewed by Monica Vilhauer Ph.D.
A tragic mistake we’re prone to make after suffering hurt is confusing empowerment to heal with blame for causing the injury.
Blame vs. Empowerment
Blame devalues your experience and lowers self-value. Empowerment increases the value of your present and future. Blame is about how you got into a hole. Empowerment is acquiring the ability to climb out of the hole by using your strengths, resilience , and ability to create value and meaning in your life.
Self-compassion is sympathy for your hardship or suffering, with motivation to heal and improve. The motivation to heal and improve separates self-compassion from feeling sorry for yourself. Self-compassion is linked to health, well-being, and better relationships.
Compassion for others and self-compassion are intertwined. Without self-compassion, compassion for others can seem overwhelming. Without compassion for others, self-compassion hardens into self-obsession.
The engines of resentment, anger , and emotional abuse toward others are habits of coping with painful or vulnerable emotions with blame , denial , and avoidance.
I call these the toddler coping mechanisms because children begin using them around age two and a half.
Adult coping tactics are to improve, appreciate, connect, and protect.
The Look and Feel of Resentment
Resentment feels different from the way it looks . You may feel hurt or mistreated, but look mean and unfriendly, in facial expressions, body tension, and tone of voice. Try standing in front of a mirror while thinking of something you resent.
Other people respond to how you look, not how you feel. If confused or offended by responses you get from other people, your resentment is the probable cause. It works like ice on a wound, numbing pain but preventing healing. It erodes the sense of self, including self-awareness. It turns us into someone we’re not.
Resentment fades when we try to improve situations and experiences. We cannot heal and resent at the same time.
How to Prevent Anger Escalation
The most frequent question I get from new clients is: “What do I do when things get out of control?”
That’s the wrong question. The right question is: “How do I prevent things from getting out of control?”
Left on their own, angry exchanges can easily get out of control because anger has built-in escalation features. For one thing, it’s the most contagious emotion . It’s very hard not to get angry when someone is angry at you.
What’s more, anger is for winning , not for ties. When we're angry, we don’t want to hurt the saber-tooth tiger just as much as it hurts us. We want to destroy its capacity to hurt us.
Escalation occurs whether we express anger or try to suppress it. The effort it takes to suppress anger is visible in facial expressions, body tension, and tone of voice.
Escalation stops when we regulate anger and resentment by changing perceptions and judgments, that is, when we look at ourselves and our partners more compassionately.
The primary defenses against hurt are resentment, anger, and aggressive behavior. These are the most rigid and least effective defenses against hurt. They keep out the good but let in the bad.
Compassion is the most flexible and effective defense against hurt. It lets in the good but keeps out the bad. When we’re compassionate, people cannot hurt our feelings because we understand that their rude or devaluing behavior reflects how they feel about themselves, and we don’t internalize it.
What gets you the angriest (most hurt) in love relationships? It’s not money, sex , parenting , division of labor, or in-laws — the things that couples tell researchers they fight about. In the privacy of our homes, we fight about the sense that our partners don’t care how we feel.
We form emotional bonds when prospective partners show compassion and interest in how we feel. When living together, failure of compassion and withdrawal of interest feel like betrayal, feel like abuse.
Compassion is a gut-level response to your partner's pain, discomfort, or anxiety . It includes sympathy, protectiveness, willingness to help but not control. It recognizes that your partner is different from you, with a different temperament, metabolism, hormonal levels, family history, life experiences, sensitivities, vulnerabilities, and habits, all of which influence the meaning we give to events and behaviors.
Compassion is not about behavior; it’s about the vulnerability that leads us to behave badly. We can condemn immoral behavior, demand that it stop, and still experience compassion for the perpetrator.
Trust is a function of compassion. Your brain won’t let you trust someone who has hurt you, without an extended period of sustained compassion whenever needed. Trust eventually follows compassion, not the other way around.
Compassionate Assertiveness
Compassionate assertiveness is standing up for your rights, preferences, desires, and feelings, while respecting your partner’s equal rights, preferences, desires, and feelings.
It is never compassionate to tolerate abuse. Not only is abusive behavior damaging to you and your children, it’s also self-destructive to the abuser.
Having said that, I urge clients not to label behaviors or call them abusive . Arguing about the label — whether the behavior is abusive or not — obscures the crucial fact that it hurts and must be changed.
When falling in love or taking your marriage vows, did you promise that if you didn’t like your partner’s behavior, you would yell, devalue, demean, call names, shame , or frighten? If not, where did you acquire the right?
You don’t have the right, no matter how upset you get. There’s no such thing as uncontrollable anger. Disagreements and arguments are not on a continuum with abuse! One doesn’t naturally lead to the other, any more than disagreement with a merchant about the price of an item leads to armed robbery.
You have a right to assert your preferences and opinions, but not to devalue, demean, intimidate, or evoke fear or shame.
The acceptable standard for relationships is not that they're merely abuse-free. The standard must be compassion and kindness .
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Steven Stosny, Ph.D., treats people for anger and relationship problems. His recent books include How to Improve your Marriage without Talking about It and Love Without Hurt .
This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.