People who hold grudges

I've borne grudges in the past but TG have got over most of them.
One way to do it is try to get to know the other person better and try to find something good about them - there always is.
Even Hitler loved his daughter.

I never knew Hitler had a daughter?

I hate confrontation and specially hate to have "cross words" with a member of the family. This is usually a good thing but sometimes results in a kind of simmering resentment which is awful.

Wasn't it his niece( Hitler) and there was a whiff of scandal about their relationship.

I don't bear grudges, would rather say something and then move on.

My Mother, my middle son, and an ex friend who has so many grudges she has no friends at all, she is holding a grudge against a neighbour who didn't come home from work to take in her washing when it started raining
It's the huffy ones i really dislike.

I don't waste time and energy holding grudges on my own behalf, but I do hold a grudge against someone who wronged my GD in a big way, though she has come to terms with it herself.

Alea - you're right! it was a fiction book .
But anyway he loved Eva Braun.
Still a thoroughly wicked man though.

He loved his Alsation, Blondie, as well, even evil men love their nearest and dearest.

Think you're right sunseeker. By re-visiting past negative happenings, we bring back anger, humiliation, resentment and for what? We've just done to ourselves.

Heard on radio 4 long ago about the nasties we create when feeling any of the above emotions. It takes many minutes for our bodies to sort a couple of minutes anger. I cannot remember the name

I do remember the good ones are endomorphines or a word similar
e.g. the emotion one gains when singing, especially in a group.

I have always thought that holding on to negative happenings must affect us in some way.
If you find out the name LuckyDucky, I would be interested in knowing what it is.

I don't hold grudges. I might forgive but I will never forget. DSD had an argument with DH a few years back and plastered it all over Facebook for sympathy and attention. Although things have gone back to normal,sort of,I have never really forgiven her for starting a witch hunt against her father for something he hadn't even done. If people really betray me over and over,then I just cut them out of my life.

I don't go on about it though. Can't abide people who whinge but are not willing to change things.

I think there are grudges over silly trivial matters and it is silly, trivial and may even be pathological to hang on to them and go over and over them.

I think there are also deeply painful and distressing wounds that linger and, possibly, continue but are described in a kind of shorthand by a single anecdote of some hurtful moment. I wonder, for example, if the wetting the baby's head mentioned, I think, by Ana could be shorthand for a long-standing feeling of being disregarded and dismissed by the baby's father.

Ana It was just a good example to use as I know of a long-standing problem where a similar story is the exemplar for the greater issue.

I don't hold on to any for very long. Even if I am very annoyed at the time. (Such is my personality that I would be starting to think it was probably my fault.)

It could be seen like that absent but in fact knowing the pair involved in the 'wetting the baby's head' incident very well, the father is very attentive. Indeed he's wouldn't dare be anything else as the mother demands she be the centre of attention all the time. The baby is 40 next month!

Sorry Anya if I got the wrong poster. I was clearly wrong about the personal anecdote, but, nevertheless, the principle is valid.

It is indeed absent

Not much point in 'forgiving' if you aren't prepared to forget either. Better, I suppose! than those who say they'll never forgive something, and then expect to have a healthy relationship with the person they're not prepared to forgive.

Weird

Yes, got the 'baby's' age wrong in the secone post. It was her first born she was chuddering on about.

Grudges can be so damaging, my father has just decided he won't speak to me because I still, will not 'side' with him over his divorce from my mother in 1976. 1976?? He was angry I continued the relationship with my step mother when they divorced, (bit of a pattern here!). Always two sides to a story - but I love Jane10's Shakespearean quote and that's how he is, never his fault, always nurturing the perceived 'injustice' which seems to keep him fired up and going. A very sad bitter man and I have lost my father as a result.

Forgive and forget - I really believe bearing grudges is unhealthy, regardless of how wronged one has been. So yes, forgive because it's unhealthy to bear grudges. But forget and you don't learn from the experience. I have learnt through (no longer bitter) experience not to get involved in other people's dramas and to avoid sociopaths like the plague!

Wikihow.com has great page on "how to forgive" - very useful if you need help in this area or know someone who does. ??

I don't hold grudges but if I have been hurt by someone I feel it very hard to forget that hurt. I would never deliberately hurt someone myself although I might have done unknowingly, in which case if it was pointed out I would be devestated, so I could never understand why someone would do that to me.

sunseeker - I like your posts.
Nonnie - I like your distinction.

I have found that bearing a grudge eventually goes away with time (sometimes a lot of time) and being busy. I used to moan (a lot!) about how badly I was treated in a particular workplace, for years afterwards. Thank goodness it has gradually receded so I no longer (I hope) bore people with my petty resentments or have those incidents ready to recount!!

Don't think this is a Shakespearean quote (he gets credit for an awful lot that were not his) but comes from Robert Burns' 'Tam o' Shanter' referring to Tam's wife, at home while Tam is getting drunk at the pub, she was 'nursing her wrath to keep it warm'.

Lovely description, Granny23!