Malice - Resentment

Actualism
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I am starting to get back on track again lately, starting to re-establish a better base line and current time awareness again.

Touching on what Felix mentioned in his journal about facing his resentment of being alive, I really noticed I have been trying to brush my resentment under the carpet and not face up to it. There has been a lack of sincerity in this regard. A lot of what Felix (thanks amigo) has written has struck a chord with me. His writings have helped me remember my own PCE’s and remind me what I am doing on this path. What I have noticed is that there are so many layers of resentment and anger in me.

There is a strong desire to want to see the human race punished. I have this disdain for people. Their cultures, religions, politics, ideas…it all seems annoying to me…I feel apart from the world, like some aberration. There are so many things that have built up towards this anger and resentment, some of the same experiences have also fed into the anxiety and depression I have experienced as well. These range from a strict and aggressive father, difficult relations with siblings, to rejection an embarrassment of spots and rosacea, other embarrassing medical issues, parents that were ill, being from a low income family, being run over, seeing kids so ill and suffering when working on a paediatrics ward as a student, processing medical data and the countless stories of suffering and horribleness from people, all of the suffering and problems.

Having really bad skin was a big one for me personally. To be made to feel different and apart from other people. To be judged as a person based on a factor you can’t control. People who were once your friend, not wanting to know you. Being treated with contempt and disgust. It changed my whole life and perspective of humanity. Though I can be sociable I always had that sense of being slightly an outsider other than my group of close friends formed at high school. As a group we had an “us against the world” type identity.

There is this 90s film called Falling Down, starring Michael Douglas, it always resonated with me, like I was just one wrong moment from snapping. This resentment fosters so many over the top fantasies when very angry like wanting the whole world to burn and be destroyed in a nuclear apocalypse. There is a part of me that was happy about covid, then disappointed it wasn’t more deadly and infective. I am trying to sincerely acknowledge the lack of harmlessness and altruism that I am capable of. To the world I project this image of an ordinary “Mr. Nice guy” but I am really not. I am one bad day from “Mr Apocalypse”.

I used my love of creativity and learning to escape from that anger and it worked, it worked very well. I see that my love of creativity and learning and the emotional vibes and flavours I would experience in relation to this always helped keep anger and resentment at bay. I can see how this in some way could be considered a form of disassociation. I would use other forms of escapism too to never really deal with that undercurrent of feeling. It seems as I have pulled away from indulging in those vibes and highs and that I am confronted with those feelings more frequently. It is like I never fostered the maturity to deal with those emotions because I always escaped from them.

My life is full of more responsibility from child caring, cleaning, working and the monotony of routine life, I can see that I have allowed the resentment to breed and culture and go unchallenged. I am not escaping it with imagination but neither have I been nipping it in the bud.

I would say that exposure to Actual Freedom is the only countering force in my life against that internal anger and rage. I haven’t been sincere though. This last week or so, it has been like a seismic shift. To really see the mess of me.

Anger, resentment…there is such a sticky quality to these emotions. It is so easy to feel that what you are feeling is so just and fair. I find there are some emotions that seem harder to get back to current time awareness and being felicitous from. Like horniness, it seems the snapping out of it slows down in certain emotions. Whereas say feeling embarrassed I find easy to get back to feeling good, less resistance. Like each emotion has its own resistance, the core emotions like fear, aggression, love, etc, have a higher resistance, are stickier, if that makes any sense.

It makes me sad to admit this, but it is my family, that take the brunt of my resentment, anger and frustration. I am trying to break that cycle. Its like since actual freedom, I haven’t wanted to admit what I am still capable of. Like trying to project an image of being further along in my progress in the actualist path than is actually the case.

I have had a few excellence experiences this week and I think I have definitely exposed a part of myself that feels raw but no longer as untouchable/unchangeable. Sometimes, for me at least, it feels like there is no way an emotional response can ever change or go away. It feels too raw, too ingrained, too deep, but this really is not the case.

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@son_of_bob Your post has prompted me to look at my own malice. My malice has been caused by my resentment of authority. I had a gorilla for a father and this has caused me to resent authority through
out my life. It doesn’t seem like malice since I no longer wish anyone harm. However, there does seem to be a deep seated resentment.

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Hi @jamesjjoo, I can relate. I was a good kid but my dad was always so harsh. He grew up in the war time era and was just of a different mindset, I guess. As I got older and began to understand psychology more, I started to get on better with him and I would say we eventually become friends. I was no longer afraid of him but it was a complicated relationship.

Being a parent brings up a lot of issues and makes you think on how you were treated growing up. Now that my dad has passed away there are things that come up that felt unresolved. Is your dad still alive? Has your relationship with him changed at all?

I too have had issues with authority though I was always too afraid to step out of line. I guess I was silently subversive.

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@son_of_bob My dad died in '08. My relationship with him was never fully repaired. He had a hard upbringing which he passed on to me. I got to where I could tolerate him and that’s about it.
The programming he instilled in me such as criticism has made me feel inferior and has showed up in my intimate relationships and I have ended up alone. The good news is I am happy being alone now and I am enjoying my life.

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That sounds tough. I really thought I was going to be alone. I find it hard to give praise to myself and to others and be intimate with people. I thought I was going to be alone too, but I never felt bad about being alone. Again, it was this method that helped improve that area of my life too. Self esteem is a weird thing hey. I am glad you are happy on your own. Do you think your resentment is only associated to your dad and this unfinished business or does anything else contribute?

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@son_of_bob As far as I can tell my resentment is related to authority which stems from my relationship with my dad. I resented Vineeto and others here but never had any resentment toward Richard who never was authoritative toward me.
I haven’t noticed any resentment toward being alive which Richard talks about.
Have you .had the resentment to being alive?

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I get you, is it when anybody is telling you what you can or can’t do, or should or shouldn’t do? I can really relate to what Richard says about resentment towards being alive, wish I didn’t feel that way. Even today I noticed resentment crop up when my boss asked me to do stuff and my wife asked me to do chores after work, a contempt as well, like how dare they suck up my important time with this trivial shit.

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Yes, that is the crux of it when they tell me what I can or cannot do.
It sounds good that you are aware of your resentment toward others as it is happening. I think that real time awareness is what will help us to overcome that feeling.

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Interestingly, I have noticed that it stems from having desires/interests/hobbies that I want to spend time on and then the resentment forms from all of the requests that stop me from spending my time, how I want to spend it.

The work resentment comes from having to do trivial things I wouldn’t have to concern myself with in previous roles, we are a small team therefore I don’t have any juniors to delegate tasks to.

Both seem to stem from the desire of having other preferences for my leisure and work. What is this desire to want a different outcome? This seems less clear to me as a trigger. I understand why the resentment triggers but not the desire. Does this boil down to not accepting the facts of the situation and making do with what the circumstances actually are? I guess it is like not being able to do nothing scenario that was discussed in the other topic.

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Why does doing trivial things makes you want to be in a bad mood? You still have to do those trivial things no matter what mood you are in, no?

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I’ve been in that place a lot.

In my experience, ultimately yes, because it derives from wanting to be somewhere else and/or doing something else. Which is the same as not wanting to be in the place I was, doing whatever I was doing. Which is the same as not wanting to be experiencing that moment of being alive (I wanted to experience another). THAT is resentment.
Therefore, when I did managed to be somewhere else doing those other things I did want, I never achieved the fulfillment I got when I wanted to be doing what I was doing in whatever place I was doing it. That is, when I managed to want to be in that moment of being alive, per se.

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Hi @solvann,

This is exactly the question I am asking myself, and the conclusion I have reached too.

It seems there is a few things here though, like they tend to be types of task I don’t like or am not as good at (or comfortable with), such as documentation or certain UX/UI concepts and also I can see there is a slight arrogance there. Like I shouldn’t be wasting my precious time on this. It is a bit of ugly part of myself to see. Again I try and project an image of humility but there are a few things I have noticed I can be arrogant about.

I guess unless I expicitly state in my employment that I won’t do z, y, z then I have no choice but to accept the tasks required to complete the project. Why risk the cancellation of my contract over such tedious things.I can see the silliness of it all but I still play out the same responses.

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Hi @Miguel,

You have hit the nail on the head with the description of wanting to experience another moment. This moment isn’t right. I guess most of my happiness pre-AF awareness and post-AF awareness has stemmed from selected activities I choose to spend my time on, whether learning, creativity, escapism, sports etc. I proactively decide what I am doing with my time and the moment.

I have put a condition in place, if I am not doing the things I want to do when I want to do them then I can’t be happy.

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The you do not see the silliness of it all.

Remember, it’s not about intellectually seeing the silliness (although that might be a first step).
It’s also not about wishing you could see the silliness (wishing to feel happy instead).
It’s about ‘you’ seeing the silliness, because only ‘you’ can change ‘you’, and only ‘you’ can feel good again.

Also, there’s nothing wrong with feeling bad. Sometimes we need to fully feel a certain set of emotions again and again before they are finally seen as silly.

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Interesting, I think I can see all three points have arisen in me at time. To be more precise, reflecting on a past stupid response I intellectually see the silliness of it. When I become aware and ask myself HAIETMOBA, I see the silliness of it. But sometimes I play out the emotional response and don’t come to that awareness or am slower too, i.e. there is lag in HAIETMOBA to operate.

I guess I always thought if I saw something as silly then that would stop the habitual responses, or at least guarantee that there wasn’t a lag for awareness to operate. I can see maybe there is some expectation on myself there, another way to berate myself for failing or having felt bad or the same type of negative feeling again, i.e. not improving.

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Wonderful statement @son_of_bob

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My wife went away for a week last week and came back just this Monday night. This meant that I had to be responsible on my own to sort out my 3 kids, every meal, their schedules and other needs as well as the house chores. I had all this to do whilst also working and doing things personal life admin.

To be honest it went smoothly but I have spotted some aspects about resentment that I didn’t notice before.

  1. The interplay of fairness and resentment. When my wife was away I had nobody else to delegate or ask for help with stuff, I had to do it all on my own. When my wife is around, there is some expectation that she will help with the house chores in fair manner. I noticed that there is a subtle resentment forming when I think she is not doing her fair share of the chores. When I had nobody else to rely on there was less resentment in action because it just needed to be done, that was a fact.

  2. I noticed that my resentment can be magnified when I am judged on the quality of work I have done for a work task or chore. It is not a uniform reaction though. When it is a type of task or chore I care about, I seem to take it constructively (though there can still be undercurrents of embarrassment and self disappointment) but if it is a task or chore I resented doing in the first place, being judged on it seems to magnify my resentment/anger about it. Like get someone else to fucking do it then.

  3. There is this undercurrent of resentment for having to deal and be considerate of other people. Another reason I like being alone so much maybe. I even feel this towards my wife, less so than other people, but more so than I feel for my kids.

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That’s interesting, fairness and resentment are 2 things I was looking at recently as well. It seems I was always that way inclined, more so than others from a young age.

I remember when I was a kid I would get bitter and sour every time I detected some kind of unfairness, e.g. my brother getting something I didn’t, so everything always had to be split 50/50, perfectly. When I was a teenager I was the same but now this hang up on fairness transformed into a resentment towards my family and society at large for being hypocrites. I was like this super sensitive radar always on the look out for someone not living up to the rules that I was expected to follow and once I spotted a discrepancy I would not let go of it.

Nowadays I notice it in my ‘righteous anger’ at people who I deem to be acting inconsiderately - “how dare you make MY life difficult”.

The flip side of this hang up on fairness is a tendency I observe within myself, to view life as ‘each man for themselves’. This seems like a reactionary response to the religious tenet of ‘putting the other before oneself’, I have jumped from one belief to its opposite.
I can see how this developed, because I always felt resentful to society for being hypocrites, for paying lip service to a system that no-one actually lives and a system that can never work. So there was resentment for ever having to do it ‘their way’ which then flipped to it’s opposite - always doing it ‘my’ way.

The danger of this one is that I can sometimes fool myself for a certain amount of time that this is what actualism is all about! But nowdays I catch myself sooner and sooner when beginning to go down the actualist asshole alley.

There’s lots of things I observed about this whole fairness thing though, I can see that it is largely to do with being a group member. As in the fundamental property of a group member is that he needs the group for his survival. There is a relinquishing of autonomy in exchange for my place in the group. From then on I am bound to play by the rules of the game, all of which upon inspection are silly. This process of relinquishing autonomy and crippling myself results in a personality that has to continually ‘keep the score-sheet’ out of fear of being left behind. This personality is shuttling from being ‘giving’ to ‘not giving a shit’ - both options are the same though in that they lack autonomy. Both options inevitably lead to resentment for having to play any kind of game to begin with.

It’s actually quite a fascinating world to explore… The giving up of autonomy, the crippling of oneself, the score-keeping, the underlying resentment, the inevitable victim mentality which arises which often ends up flipping into the ‘not giving a shit’ mentality.

What I see very clear is that whenever I am hung up on fairness etc I never actually care about the facts of the situation, it is the principle that counts!

What I can also see is that the way out is pretty simple - actually wanting to be here… There can be no resentment when I actually want to be here doing this business of being alive.

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My kids are really like this too and I try to be as fair as possible as well. I was the youngest and so often didn’t get a fair share or voice. My parents didn’t try enough to manage that maybe. That sense of unfairness I got used to it with a sense of futility.

Being the last left at home with parents getting older and more ill at times, I too had to do more chores than my siblings ever did, I can remember feeling bitter about that. My first job was with my dad, with these football (soccer uggh hate that word) pools coupons for gambling they had to be stamped and prepped and had to attend with my dad to sell to regular customers, my siblings had the same job previously and made good money from it and extra bonuses and gifts from people on the estate. By my time to do it the National Lottery killed it off and I barely made any money. These resentments all built up and definitely were the beginning seed of that belief like the universe and life was against me.

Yes, same. I find it hard to understand how people that have no (or very low) expectation of themselves though. That they can be totally ok with the fact that they are a dick, how is this possible? I make one tiny mistake and I am beating myself up about it. I think the glaringly different way these people are too makes it easier for me to be angry towards them too. Maybe I envied that slightly too, caring about every interaction. I remember really being fascinated by The Joker as portrayed by Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight, like he represents my absolute polar opposite. He does whatever he wants without any regards for the consequences. I barely do anything I want because I will imagine undesirable consequences to every event and talk myself out of anything.

I have seen a lot of people go this way. For some reason I avoided this, I guess I always had that sort of Gandhi type philosophy of be the change you want to see. I strived to be a better version of myself. Though I had a sense of futility in achieving fairness which goes back to what I said in that other post about automatically expecting everyone to be a dick. My default then became to expect everyone to be like that and it is a bonus if they are reasonable and fair.

I just didn’t understand why people didn’t expect more of themselves and aspire to be the best version of themselves. Or why they would want to make more suffering in the world or not think if they were on the other foot. I just started to think people were either really dumb or lacked insight or imagination. What bothered me as well, was that fear of aggression always worked better than honesty and open discussion, as I could see my family have more success in difficult social situations with aggression than I ever did with just trying to be reasonable or my sad attempts at assertiveness.

Yes, I agree. The groups regarding family as opposed to friends/acquaintances have very different dynamics as well. I noticed families display way more issues and resentment regarding things than they do with their friend groups. However, I know some people who have more repressed/suppressed interactions with family so maybe it is a bit of a mixed one again.

When you have kids and a family you are then inherently dependent on others for moments of childcare and support. So, for example when I am extremely tired or unwell then I need my wife’s help because it is difficult to do these things alone. In those horrible times when we have been both unwell then we have been dependent on family and friends. We have lost a lot of our support network as well over the years and have had to extended and build new connections because of this. A lot of family and close friends are either dead, unfit to care or help anymore, moved away to other countries or cities/towns or have extremely busy work and family lives themselves. So, circumstances force you into group dynamics outside of your choice too. You are forced into some weird dance of I will scratch your back if you scratch mine, group dynamics.

At the beginning of the week when my wife went away I was feeling lethargic from the remnants of a minor stomach bug and there was that resentment there as well because I didn’t have the luxury to rest or recover. However, I didn’t want to get anyone else involved, I didn’t want the hassle of feeling obliged to owe somebody something so I just rode out the discomfort.

Yes, with kids, they try and suck you into their score-sheet issues amongst your network as well. So you have all these different things to have to bear in mind any personality clashes. They expect you to vouch for their needs and wants.

I think having kids has not allowed me that luxury of going back to ‘not giving a shit’ which used to be my default, that resigned futility. I think that then adds to my resentment as well, resenting being a parent because I have to care about other types of relationships and interactions not just my being there for them. I have to know their friends, friends families, etc. Anti-social people like myself really shouldn’t have kids lol!

Reminds me of Richard’s quote regarding fairness/unfairness not existing in actuality. I think it is reasonable to have optimal decision making strategies but why does it all become so emotionally intense.

I can see there are a lot of feelings about fairness for me. I don’t think I have quite pieced it together in my mind before understanding how much that sense of unfairness has fostered and seeded that general resentment I have towards life. I think it was less intense when I was having more of a life dedicated towards escapism because I was just hiding away and had rejected this reality to my own made up worlds.

Actually accepting this is life and being here and not trying to hide has then brought more of these forms of resentment to the surface. I can see a lot of anger towards those in my life has formed from these perceived injustices on top of the other unfair life events. There is a big belief that life should be fair. That people should stick to their word. That people should be considerate by default.

I have it like this:
Imagination/escapism - Cool
Actuality - as in PCE or EE (or general felicity) - Excellent
Reality - super shit

I have to acknowledge the facts that I am here and exist among other people. If I want to make progress then I can’t try and hide away. I am like a tortoise and imagination/learning/escapism is my shell. I keep reverting to hide in my shell as soon as anything unpleasant happens.

Yes, this simple fact…I am having more moments of wanting to be here but it is not the default…yet lol.

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Yes so I had this going on up until very recently too, it was a truth that I just couldn’t poke a hole in. Exactly as you say - being someone who is naturally thinking about everything a million times I just could not understand why others could be so careless in general.

Now there are some holes poked in this belief for sure and it is all to do with ‘me’ being the yardstick.

A good example would be one of the objections on AFT - ‘How can Richard be actually free of malice and sorrow when he is addicted to smoking’?
To the person making the objection (who cannot help but be captive to their own worldview) A simply does not compute with B…

What the person is not aware of is that they have taken their values, beliefs and principles and created them into a core yardstick against which life is being measured against. They then confuse this yardstick/truth for a fact.

It is all self-centredness in action, in the same way son_of_bob is looking from his self-centred cocoon and comparing life against the yardstick which he has generated.

Of course people seem careless to the one who is an over thinker lol :smile:

People seem not to care about their health to my mum who is a health nut also!

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