The Resentment PTSD Connection

   Almost always, our most troublesome compulsions, obsessions, aversions, fears, and phobias have to do with some emotional scene where we became resentful over what someone said or suggested. 

   So now, let’s go over the ground one more time. We are upset and emotionalized because of our ego weakness: an inherited responding to authority and believing more in what other’s say than in what we know deep down is true. These combine to make us very vulnerable to the word-based manipulations of authorities. 

   We react and become excited or upset. Soon we can’t stop reacting, and then that person, someone like them or objects that we transferred our reaction to, become a pressure by their mere presence. 

   It’s bad enough that we are naturally self doubters (and people prey upon this weakness by making us doubt ourselves and then also offering substitutes to support a belief in ourselves so they can control us). 

   It’s bad enough that we are authority prone by nature, but then people step in to with words to emotionalize us, knowing they will become our authority. 

   We compound our natural weakness with the emotion of resentment. Resentment is the quick fix, the emotion of last resort and then later the tragic emotion of first resort when our ego is threatened. 

    Respond with emotion to someone who puts you down, and you’ll quickly find yourself resentful.  

   Now your body will react with emotion to similar circumstances or scenes with a similar meaning to your ego. Seeing your weakness, you redouble your resentment. But when you do this, you put the outside factors not only in charge of your body but also your mind. Remember, we were not originally meant to be subject to the world. 

   We were meant to be the observer in life: sometimes puzzled, sometimes concerned, but never upset. But once your love/hate mechanism is activated by an external stimulus, resentment becomes more and more all you have left, as your destabilized body responds more and more to the outside. You react, get upset, feel out of control, and then reach for resentment.

   And when you are resentful, you are even more prone be sensitive and out of control because, in a very real sense, the soul that permits resentment is disobedient to reason and also separated from faith and love. The soul which becomes resentful is operating on an egoistical basis. By its very nature, egotism interferes with real faith and love because the ego acts as if it were on its own, or if it literally rejects Reality, then it is operating on its own. 

   Whenever the body becomes ill, it becomes more sensitive. When under stress, it becomes more sensitive. Certain drugs also make us more sensitive. 

   The person who is not resentful takes things with aplomb. He is not overly affected by setbacks. He has confidence. But the person who is resentful is used to losing or being victimized, expects it, and lacks confidence. He feels like he must overcome a cosmic or karma force, or other people, who have it in for him. 

   He also starts to believe that he himself is a loser and even if he had the opportunity, he would still lose anyway.

   Obviously, such a person has lost or been a victim before. The resentment proves that the person’s ego was involved in a big way. In other words, he has been sensitized to loss.  

   When we are resentful, we become more sensitive to slights, words, glances, and imagined slights. We tend to have a dark cloud hanging over our head and we look for the bad. 

   The resentful person feels isolated and alone. He feels like anything negative is directed at him personally. He takes everything personally.  It is my opinion that many people who suddenly do a terrible thing like randomly shooting people, for example, are deeply resentful. 

   People who hurt themselves are resentful. 

   Depressed people are often resentful underneath. The quiet ones who are seething volcanoes underneath are resentful. 

   Although some people become morbid and resentful over everything, most people are set off by certain types of events which remind them of some long ago trauma. 

   There was a first time for these types of events: a first time one was criticized, a first time the ball missed the hoop and let the team down, a first time a date didn’t show up, a first time another kid got the award, a first time something we cherished was lost, broken or stolen. Sometimes we consciously remember it and sometimes we don’t. Sometimes it comes to mind when a new trauma is about to occur. Other times, it remains buried to our conscious memory but the encoded negative suggestions and emotions arise.

   The new resentment is actually a type of post traumatic stress disorder. Just as a person might have a battle field memory triggered by some sight or sound in the present and then begin to relieve the trauma again, so a person relives a bad memory when triggered by something in the present. 

   In the original scene, something happened that triggered resentment. The resentment makes the subconscious sensitive to the scene, the suggestions or implications, and even any wickedness that might be behind the scene. 

   Resentment means that we have moved from closeness to our inner Ground of Good and become separated. In our separated state of mind, we tend to try to deal with what we are confronted with on our own. 

   We react emotionally and excitedly. We photograph the scene. We form a memory of the scene and we become subject to that environment: sights, sounds, substances, smells, people present, their words, and their suggestions. 

   Because we are dealing with it egotistically, we are incapable of standing back neutrally and calling upon the Light. Instead we react with compensation. 

   We try some egoistical method and then withdraw or run. And the very fact that we have lost, and are withdrawing or running is another shame that our ego deals with resentfully and by suppression.

   The hypnotic state of mind is one of reacting, compensating, and withdrawing. We form a memory and we can’t cope. So we withdraw. Seeing our inability to cope we become resentful.

   Later we go over the scene in our mind. We experience the same emotions, and we may try to imagine some way of overcoming our inferiority and loss. We think of studying to outsmart the stressful environment, trying to change it, pleading, bargaining, or threat. Finally we even think of destroying ourselves, so as not to face another humiliating loss. 

   Some people do successfully compensate—i.e., through anger, work, study, or other means they appear to prevail in their struggle. But even this type of victory remains a post traumatic reaction and compensation. Each time the new situation arises, it is a new challenge to overcome again, involving another struggle, loss of life force, and obsession. 

   The person is not free—he or she is compelled to prevail egotistically. He or she may appear to be a winner: but the compensated life is one built upon an original trauma.

  The other type of person keeps losing. Each new challenge or look alike situation brings back the old emotions and resentments and the old failure mechanism. 

   In this case, the programming is to lose. It is what the person feels comfortable with and what the environment seems to be demanding. When we fall away from freedom through a loss of faith and patience, we come under the authority of the environment and what is appears to be demanding of us. 

   We cannot refuse because it is the ground of our new externalized being. It is our environmental god. We give into it and do what it wants, because that way it will give us peace. It gets its reward (our life) and we get the "reward" of peace through appeasement and  escape. 

   Come now and learn of a way of living the life of joy, where success is success and where even a loss results in character growth. Learn to win without losing character. And through living life properly you will grow in character, and one day inherit the ultimate success: eternal life.