It can be healthy to hold a grudge
Crime novelist believes we can learn and benefit from our grievances
Have you ever held a grudge for years? (Unrelated, but are you a Scorpio by any chance?) Grudges can be good, actually, and we should hold onto some of them, like petty Tamagatchis in our emotional pocket. We don’t often associate the holding of grudges with virtuous people, but 2019 is a new year, new you. Sophie Hannah, who wrote
How to Hold a Grudge, published Jan. 1, loves them. So much so that she holds each of her grudges in a special place, in her “grudge cabinet,” where she visits them and tends to them.
A prolific crime novelist, Hannah, who is not a psychologist, used her personal experience to write this book.
Here is her system of enlightened grudge keeping to process your pettiness.
Redefine the word “grudge” as an experience to learn from. Hannah isn’t generally in the habit of redefining words that are in the dictionary. “But there’s no dictionary definition I can find that doesn’t describe a grudge as a negative feeling, or a collection of negative feelings,” she said.
The crucial difference in the way Hannah views grudges is that she believes a grudge is not a feeling. Rather, it’s a story that one can learn and benefit from.
Treat your grudges like protective amulets. Having a grudge-holding system is a little reminder that pops up in our brain as a warning. Say you have a friend named Fred. Fred gets very drunk and is a mess. If you hold a grudge against sloppy Fred because he has been a messy drunk in your house, you don’t have to stop being friends with sloppy Fred. You can, however, acknowledge your grudge: Protect yourself and meet him at a bar instead.
Sweeping bad behaviour under the rug and pretending it didn’t happen will only expose you to more of the same. A lively grudge can both console and validate — it can create space for you to acknowledge that something bad happened to you, and that it matters.
“We are justice-seeking creatures,” Hannah said. Grudges serve as a monument erected to honour the memory of the injustice you suffered.
Not everyone is a grudge person. Now that we’ve established that grudges can be good in your self-preservation, how will you know if you’re a person who can have some grudges? If you’re a person who analyzes behaviour to construct a narrative to explain and compartmentalize it, you’re likely to be a successful grudge holder.
“Whereas, if you barely notice anything that goes on around you, then you’re going to accumulate fewer grudges,” Hannah said.
Write your grudges down so you can remember how you felt, accurately. The act of writing down a grudge — or “constructing a grudge story,” as Hannah calls it — provides space to analyze what happened. Perspective gained by the writing and grading process helps to make negative feelings more manageable. “We’re getting it out of ourselves so we’re not stuck in a feeling,” Hannah said.
She developed a grading system: The 10 Tenets of the Grudge-fold Path.
The grading system asks questions about the intention of the person who wronged you (definitely bad, possibly bad, not bad); the nature of the situation (very serious, somewhat serious, not very serious); if you were harmed seriously (yes, maybe, no).
Make a “grudge cabinet” where you can file things in and rewrite the story. Part of the process also involves turning your grudges into artifacts and having a place where you can store them. “The more concrete they are, the more they will protect and inspire you,” Hannah said.
Here, she suggests stepping away from the grudge for at least a day.
Rewrite the narrative. Check in: “If I could rewrite this story changing only my behaviour, what would I change?” Compare the two versions and ask if the negative feelings you’re experiencing result from frustration about not being able to change the past, or anger because you wish you had acted differently.
Use your grudge stories to forgive and make you a better person. Like a set of resolutions or goals, grudge stories can be motivating. They can inspire us by defining values that are important to us; if, for example, someone is very rude and you form a grudge about that behaviour, it may inspire you to be more courteous.
Happy grudging!