Praying for the Rat

Our blog this week has come from Donna Ferber, whose words we have been graced with in the past.  Thank you, Donna, for continuing to share your insight with us:

In Anne Lamott’s novel Crooked Little Heart, Charles remarks that “holding onto resentment is like eating rat poison and waiting for the rat to die.”( Lamott, pg. 187) 

Many of us, as we get older, have accumulated quite a list of resentments. This list may include people who harmed us in some way: maybe by betrayal, deception, abandonment or cruelty. Our resentments do not just spring up unprovoked. No, they are often a response to being deeply hurt and usually by someone we love and trust. We don’t hold resentments regarding the stranger who screamed at us when we accidentally cut him off on the highway. These momentary blips of discomfort just fade away.

It is the hurtful things from the people who matter the most that seem to take up residence in our heart. The amount of resentment is often proportional to how badly the infraction, but mostly it is correlated to how important the person was in our lives. Simply put, the more we care, the more it hurts.

The problem with resentment is that by holding onto it, we hurt ourselves. The emotional pain and constant negative thoughts only sour us, making us moody, cynical and sometimes bitter. These traits do not encourage other people to move toward us. In fact, healthy people distance themselves from that kind of bitterness. Certainly, if you were hurt, your friends want to be there for you, but after a while, even they begin to tire of your tirade and will long to see you let it go.

In Twelve Step Programs, such as Alcoholics Anonymous, it is suggested one should “pray for their enemies”, for the very people who wronged and hurt you. When I first heard that, I admit, my jaw dropped. Letting go of resentment is one thing, but praying for someone who hurt me seemed to be carrying all this nice stuff too far. I still wanted the rat to suffer! Then I imagined how it would feel to let go of that resentment. I would feel better. The rat–well, I can’t do anything about the rat, but why waste another precious day suffering and feeling badly? Suddenly, there seemed to be some merit in the praying thing. In praying for the other, I would feel better!

I can almost hear some of you objecting to the idea of “prayer”. You may see yourself as non-religious or as an atheist and you may be thinking, “Nope. Not doing that. This prayer business isn’t for me.” Ok. I get it. Then think of it differently-think of this an as an exercise in practicing compassion for the rat.

Filling our heart with compassion helps us. It makes us feel calmer, more accepting and less tortured. Praying for the rat grounds us in compassion not bitterness. It fills us with gentle thoughts. The tension and pain begin to fade…maybe not completely, but the edges become a little less jagged and punishing. Just the act of changing your thought process will help you feel better. This isn’t just mumbo jumbo; resentment creates stress in our body. Thoughts of Compassion reduce cortisol and adrenalin output.

Of course, this does not mean you accept or condone what was done to you. Finding a way to diminish your pain does not exonerate the other person. It simply says, “My life is too important to spend any more time letting you hurt me.”

When you let your resentment go, you are truly free to move onto the next chapter of your life.

Donna F. Ferber, LPC, LADC, is a licensed psychotherapist in Connecticut and the author of From Ex-Wife to Exceptional Life: A Woman’s Journey through Divorce, which won an Honorable Mention Award by the Independent Publishers Association. To read more about the author and her work, please visit www.donnaferber.com