Why do resentments lead us to relapse?

If you use a 12 step program for your recovery you have heard about the dangers of resentment. It's the topic of many meetings. I remember early in my recovery hearing about resentments and it seemed like at every other meeting we would talk about them. At that time I didn't really think I had a lot of resentments and I certainly doubted that they could ever lead me to pick up a drink. What I failed to recognize in my haze of early sobriety was that I was so cut off from my feelings that I could hardly tell the difference of one emotion compared to another. As time went on and feelings came back I began to understand the term "emotional sobriety" and "emotional maturity". Both of which I had very little of.

As those emotional switches got turned back on I started to struggle with feelings. I think every alcoholic struggles with feelings and accepting them. It's one of the main reasons we drink, so we don't have to feel. One of the feelings that has been most challenging to me is anger. I hadn't had much experience with anger. It was an emotion I had shut down almost completely many years ago. It was a feeling that didn't serve me well, it sometimes was even dangerous to express. I simply decided not to feel it at all. When you are drinking you can do that. However, in sobriety it's not nearly so easy. Anger can be downright explosive for me now. And that will be a topic for another day. The anger that I want to talk about today is resentment. Particularly resentment towards people.

I had been harboring resentment against a few particular people. I was venomous when speaking about them and have to admit I had fantasies of horrible things happening to these people. They had hurt me very deeply and not just once. Repeated offenses which bred in me the perfect type of victimization that leads to justified anger. The more they hurt me, the more I hated them. Then they stopped hurting me. They were out of my life and had nothing to do with me anymore. The problem is I kept on hating them. I kept on reliving the hurts. I would get so angry and upset with them as if they were hurting me all over again. But they weren't. The hurts existed only in my head. My emotional sobriety would dip according to how often I allowed myself to get caught up in the feeling of hatred. What does an alcoholic want to do when their emotional sobriety sucks? Drink. It goes with the alcoholic motto of "I am mad at you, so I am going to hurt myself." It makes no real sense but in an alcoholics emotional bottom it is almost an unconscious thought.

During one of these terrible emotional lows I reached out to my pastor. He told me something that shocked me. I was harboring unforgiveness. Maybe to someone reading this it's obvious that I was holding unforgiveness towards these people. But when you are caught up in hurt and justified anger you don't realize that it has become YOUR issue. You stay so focused on the hurt and anger, your eyes stay fixed on the person who hurt you. My pastor held a mirror up and I saw myself. The truth was, I was hurting myself over and over. I had become ugly and vengeful and stuck in a very awful emotional low.Those people who hurt me didn't create that emotional low for me. I created it by my hatred.  I had to forgive. My pastors words were "I am glad Jesus doesn't think like you do." That rocked me hard. Jesus said in Matthew 5:44 "But I say to you, love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you". Does that only apply to others and not to me? Addicts are famous for thinking rules don't apply to them. However, I am far enough along in my recovery to know that's crap. The rules do apply, especially to me.

According to The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous alcoholism is a spiritual malady. We absolutely need to rely on the power of something greater than ourselves to stay sober. I realized I was cutting myself off from the "sunlight of the spirit" by my refusal to forgive. No wonder I wanted to drink or commit suicide. That's another thing alcoholics do, if we can't drink we would like to just die."What we have is a daily reprieve contingent upon the maintenance of our spiritual condition." Big Book page 85. I decided to get busy getting spiritually fit. I choose to forgive. I followed the directions given to me by the Bible and the Big Book. 1. I admitted my anger and unforgiveness. (my sin, step 6)  2. I asked Jesus to take this shortcoming from me (step 7). 3. I prayed for my enemies to have everything in life that I wanted for myself. This is a process I repeat every time I start feeling that emotional low creeping back. It is not a one time event, at least not for me.

My spiritual condition is improving and so is my relationship with my higher power. Love really is the answer.