Eszter Noble is an RTT® practitioner, Clinical Hypnotherapist, and Coach, specializing in anxiety, fears, and depression. Her method utilizes the most effective techniques from CBT, NLP, psychotherapy, and hypnotherapy, with the ability to provide freedom from any issues and deliver permanent, lasting solutions.
Before we start talking about grudges, holding them or letting go, allow me to bring up the F word: forgiveness. Many people claim that it’s crucial for happiness and overall well-being, but I disagree. For me, it’s in the nice-to-have category rather than a must-have. People argue that forgiving is for you and not the other person, but what happens when your sense of justice is stronger than the desire to forgive? Allow me to explain why I believe that holding a grudge can actually be healthy.
Boundaries: Ever heard of them?
Boundaries are truly essential for maintaining mental and emotional well-being, fostering healthy relationships, and promoting overall quality of life. It can be difficult to set them if you’ve never done it before. However, they help prevent burnout by protecting against excessive emotional and physical demands from others. They allow you to maintain your mental health and mood by setting limits on what you are willing to tolerate.
Sometimes, people may be under the impression that if they just do what others want, they can avoid conflict, and everyone will be happy. This is rarely the case, unfortunately, and the ‘people pleaser’ ends up suffering more by neglecting their own wants and needs. Having the courage to be disliked at times is a skill I would urge everyone to master!
Establishing boundaries in relationships helps prevent resentment and promotes a healthy balance between independence and interdependence. This clarity ensures that both parties understand what is acceptable and what is not, leading to more fulfilling connections. If someone is unaccepting of such conditions, perhaps it’s not the right friendship or connection to keep.
Boundaries aren’t just about others. There’s an aspect that is often overlooked. Boundaries allow you to maintain a strong sense of identity by separating your thoughts, feelings, and needs from those of others. This separation is crucial for personal growth and self-awareness.
Another aspect that is important to remember is that we all have the same number of hours in a day; no one gets special treatment. By setting boundaries, you can protect your valuable time and energy, ensuring you have enough for your own needs and priorities. Boundaries strengthen independence by allowing you to assert your needs and desires without compromising your well-being for others. I always like to use the ’jug of water’ analogy. Imagine for a moment that you are a jug of water. How are you supposed to give to others if you are empty? Self-care is never selfish. Clear boundaries can prevent future conflicts by establishing clear expectations and reducing misunderstandings. They provide a framework for expressing needs and limits in a respectful manner, which is essential for living a balanced and fulfilling life.
Holding a grudge means having standards
When I talk about holding a grudge, I don’t mean that you wake up every morning spewing hatred, buying voodoo dolls, and whatever else; I simply mean that you keep a mental note of what happened and how you never want to be treated that way again. When the memory of the event that upset you comes up, it can serve as a great reminder that you refuse to be treated like that in the future. You’ve learned from the event, grown, and set certain standards for yourself.
Remember: The higher your standards, the lower your blood pressure!
Standards help align behaviour with your personal values and goals, promoting self-discipline and a strong sense of identity. I am a huge advocate of having a great self-image and the importance of it. By clearly defining your standards for yourself, you can ensure that you easily adhere to them. This can serve as a guiding compass in your life, no matter the circumstances.
High personal standards can also enhance motivation and self-efficacy, leading to increased productivity and achievement. Some wait for motivation to come knocking before starting a task; the reality is, though, that you must get started, and motivation will follow. To me, having high standards also means always keeping my word to myself, and that has been the best fuel for getting through my to-do lists consistently.
Standards often encourage growth by viewing flaws as opportunities for improvement. You can set many goals, but if you don’t have a high standard for yourself, you may not follow through.
Expressing instead of suppressing
I truly believe that emotions and feelings need to be acknowledged and heard. Suppressing emotions can have significant negative impacts on both mental and physical health, but as with most things, timing is everything, and knowing when and how to express them is crucial.
Equally, no one is ever only happy and positive; we get upset, we get angry, and that’s completely natural and fine. We all have a somewhat dark or so-called shadow side. If we look at Yin and Yang, which are fundamental concepts in Asian philosophy, particularly in Chinese thought, representing the duality and interconnectedness of opposing forces in the universe, we see that there can never be only positivity. I would argue that there is no light without darkness.
Integrating the shadow or darker side of us that we all have allows for deeper self-understanding and promotes psychological development. By acknowledging the repressed aspects of our personality, we gain a more complete picture of ourselves. Embracing this side of us that doesn’t always just see the pure and the good in all helps achieve a more balanced psyche, reducing internal conflicts and promoting mental health. In essence, I believe that embracing the shadow is a necessary step towards achieving psychological wholeness, self-awareness, and authentic living. It allows us to confront our full nature, including both positive and negative aspects, leading to a more integrated and balanced personality.
So, when is the right time to express how we feel?
I am a great believer in taking a moment, perhaps even sleeping on it. When I say we should express ourselves, I am not encouraging angry outbursts or flipping tables. Once you’ve had the opportunity to step away for a moment and consider your feelings and how the events unfolded, reassess your emotional state, and then you can express yourself accordingly. If someone hurt you deeply, perhaps didn’t respect your boundaries, you have every right to address it with them. As time goes on and your self-esteem gets strengthened, you have more certainty around your values, and boundaries are reinforced like the walls of a fortress. You will need less time to react appropriately.
Forgiving is not the only option
Forgiveness is noble and certainly admirable, but there are times when the hurt is far too great. Some say you can forgive but not forget, however I’m not sure I understand the point of that. It’s far more important to know where you stand, how you feel about the person that hurt you, what behaviours you will no longer tolerate, and how you will react the next time you may be faced with a similar situation.
I have been wronged in my life before, as I’m sure many of you have been. Some people are envious, or they subconsciously believe that if they put you down, they will feel better about themselves. Perhaps you will never know why someone mistreats you, but it’s more important to have standards and to know what you are willing to accept and what you will no longer tolerate.
When I was mistreated and used in an absolutely despicable way by someone I trusted fully, I was shattered and I probably will never have it in me to forgive, but I know where I stand with the person, how I would react upon a possible encounter and what I am not tolerating in the future. Having that clarity and structure is extremely important and reassuring. The boundaries are clear, the next possible actions are clearly defined, and I never waste time obsessing over what happened as I’ve dealt with it and come to the appropriate conclusion. It’s very freeing.
Know how you feel, know how you would react, and move forward. As long as you don’t dwell on what happened, you’ll be just fine. Prepare a statement. When you think of the person who hurt you, have an answer ready: “They are no longer my concern, and I hope” fill in the blanks
Don’t be so sure they’re doing well
The reason many of us find it difficult to move on from certain situations is that we become so convinced that the other person is thriving. They maliciously ruined our life while they are living it up and driving off into the sunset. Wrong! Let’s get some facts straight:
Hurt people hurt people
Imagine for a moment that you wake up, the sun is shining, birds are singing, your life is really going well, you love your job and your dog, and you’re grateful for what you have. Coming from a positive state of mind, could you ever imagine yourself being nasty, hurtful, conniving to anyone around you? The chances of that are very low. Now, imagine the opposite. It can be extremely hard to uplift others when you feel like the world is against you and no matter how hard you try, you just can’t catch a break. No one wants to drown in the pond of self-pity by themselves.
Places don’t solve problems
Often, people are under the impression that changing their environment, moving away perhaps, will bring about better fortune. Again, wrong! The mind has a way of subconsciously seeking out situations and people that are familiar to us. It does not like unresolved situations. It will keep pulling you back into familiar territory until you learn your lesson. The mind always wants to make sense of complex situations, and you will keep attracting more of the same into your life until you have made sense of the situation. Sounds confusing? Allow me to elaborate. Let’s say you meet someone at a bar, you’re getting along so well, and an hour hasn’t even passed, and you utter the words: “I feel like I’ve known you my whole life.” The problem with that? You probably have. Unbeknownst to you, you are making plans to date your controlling parent, your neglectful sibling, or someone in your past who caused you pain, and you have now found a surrogate with whom you are trying to resolve your past issues. You have to dig deeper and realise that more often than not, when we leave a bad situation, we are still carrying our issues with us, ready to unpack and unload them onto the next person!
Waving the victim wand
When we get into a conflict situation with someone, the mature thing to do would always be to take accountability for our part in the matter. Take ownership of the part we contributed because no one is ever 100% right and the other person 100% to blame. Do this in an introspective, humble way, though, and don’t try to revel in righteousness when admitting to a fault or something you did wrong. Imagine a friendship ended due to a hefty argument. It wouldn’t come to that if both parties could maturely discuss what happened and own up to their part in the matter.
After a horrible incident, if you lose touch with the person who hurt you but assume they are doing well and left you behind to suffer, all you’re doing is allowing yourself to bathe in the water of victimhood by imagining how much better off they are. What proof have you got? Make no mistake, their Instagram profile isn’t giving you the full picture.
When it is time to forgive
The only thing you have to do, the only person you have to forgive, is yourself for not having made all the right choices and decisions at certain times in your life.
You did at the time the absolute best you could with the level of awareness that you had. Even when we are talking about something very bad that may have happened, it certainly doesn’t condone the behaviour, but you did what you could based on your conditioning and experiences.
Forgiveness is a double-edged sword; it can make us very entitled, especially when it comes to forgiving others, like I’m the almighty one who gets to pardon other people. What actually needs to happen is that we need to let go of our ego, choose to rise above, and realise that there is always something to learn. It’s truly an opportunity for your own soul’s evolution by taking ownership of your life’s circumstances. By maintaining that you cannot move on, you need to somehow find the strength to forgive; you are merely sustaining the state of victimhood.
Forgiving can often just perpetuate a story and reinforce that you are unfortunate, somehow unlucky, and not where you want to be in life, using what happened as an excuse, which is just you not taking ownership of your situation and circumstances. Truly mentally strong people understand that bad things happen, and they happen to everyone. No one is particularly unlucky or somehow cursed, it’s about how you perceive situations and how you react to them, that will define your outcomes.
The bottom line is, you will never like everything in life or agree with everyone on every topic, so why should you have to be ‘ok’ with some injustice that has been done to you? I truly believe that it can cause more harm than good. When it comes to forgiveness, proceed with caution.
Read more from Eszter Noble
Eszter Noble, Clinical Hypnotherapist & Coach
Eszter Noble is an established Clinical Hypnotherapist using the RTT® (Rapid Transformational Therapy) method, trained by world-renowned hypnotherapist Marisa Peer. She is known for dealing with extremely difficult cases and clients who have been stuck for years and who have tried it all. Specializing in anxiety, fears, and depression, she is extremely intuitive and honest, dedicated to empowering her clients to become the best possible versions of themselves. Offering her expertise in English, German, and Hungarian, Eszter’s mission is to take the taboo out of therapy.
