Insult: what is, types and ways of forgiveness

Resentment is a complex feeling that every person experiences. Grievances significantly complicate life and negatively affect health, because at the psychosomatic level, strong grievances often cause serious illnesses. In this article we will tell you how and why people are offended, what insults are and how to cope with them.

Resentment is an ancient and very strong feeling, which is inherent in us almost from birth to old age. An offense in psychology is called the inadequate (negative) reaction of a person to events, relationships that he considers unfair, offensive. Emotions experienced by a frustrated, offended person, whom he considers unfairly offended, always have a negative emotional character. If sadness is light (creative) or dark (longing), then the offense always has only a negative, painful emotional background, which hurts primarily those who experience this destructive feeling.

If you examine the offense carefully, decompose it into components, it becomes obvious that it consists of outraged by the actions of someone, anger towards the offender and pity for her own person. Usually, people feel the strongest resentment when nothing can be changed in the circumstances. This is the main difference between bitter resentment and the usual complaint or reproach, which are used by a person to induce another to change something in a situation.

Resentment is very closely associated with such a concept as justice. It is easy to hurt a person who has an increased sense of justice. Negative feelings develop when a person believes that they are being treated unfairly towards him, his rights are violated, deprived him of something. If everything happened fairly, from the point of view of a person, then there is nothing to be offended about - one can only be upset.

Is the offense normal, can it be considered natural for a person? It is definitely difficult to answer this question, because it deals a serious blow to the psyche and state of health. From this point of view, it cannot be considered natural. This version is confirmed by the fact that no one is born with resentment. The newborn can not be offended - either intentionally or unwittingly. It can cause physical pain, scare him, but the newborn simply does not know how to be offended. Infants have the beginnings of innate anger, resentment for them is too complicated.

Children usually make the first “successes” in comprehending science to be offended by 1–1.5 years old, at first simply copying it from adults or peers. Then the child only improves this destructive ability, some manage to manipulate well with his parents and other adults. Children become masters in the field of offenses by adolescence.

At any age, the mechanism of insult development is very simple and, if you understand it, you can easily learn how to cope with this negative feeling without much damage to yourself. Starting a grudge gives the discrepancy between our expectations and reality: from a person we expected something one, but got the opposite. All offense can be easily put into four mental internal operations:

• first we build our expectation (we present how everything should be, how we will get, how we will be treated);
• then for some time we observe the reality (how everything happens in reality, what is offered to us, how we are treated);
• mentally we compare our expectations with reality, we compare, we find differences;
• we make a conscious decision about the reaction (we take offense, believing that the discrepancy is unfair).

Insults are different. They are united by one thing - this feeling comes from childhood. That is why an extremely sensitive adult is often told that he behaves like a child. Nevertheless, psychologists distinguish several types of insults. In the first place - demonstrative and hidden insults. This is a way to notify the world about their decision: some are offended so that it is obvious to everyone (defiantly), others do not serve the mind, but they save the insult in the soul, hide it, cherish and care. The second type is the most dangerous, which most often leads to diseases such as oncology, severe systemic autoimmune ailments. Internal grievances interfere with living normally, building healthy relationships.

Yuri Burlan, a well-known psychologist and master of system-vector psychology, proposed a very simple and at the same time detailed classification of types of offenses:

• per person;
• on a group of people;
• on the world (life);
• on higher powers (God, fate, providence) and myself.

In the first and second types of insults involved all the senses. A person can be hurt by another person with a word, a look, an act. There is a very clear inconsistency of expectations and reality. Resentment at a group of people - more ambitious. Individuals may be offended by some kind of religious, national group, professional or gender (a man who is offended by all women, a woman who is bitterly offended by all the representatives of the stronger sex).

Usually, such an offense is based on personal experience of an offense on a particular person from such a group, as a result of which the offended begins to generalize, transfer his feelings to other members of the group who, in fact, did not provoke such an attitude. Such offenses make it difficult for a person to interact with society, with specific people.

Offense to life, the world - a very hard kind of resentment. Such a person is offended at all. He refuses to accept the world adequately. As a result, his anger often turns for no apparent reason to everything that his hands reach: a cat or a new children's swing installed in the yard, an insolent person who tried to get to the doctor without waiting in line. We need only a reason to take revenge on the world, to hit, to break, to destroy. In the body of such people also occur destructive processes.

But the most difficult type is considered the last type - an insult to a higher power. It is conditionally divided into two subspecies: an insult to God directly for the fact that "it is given to others, but it is not given to me rightly," and an insult to itself. Such people are almost always in a bad mood, they often say that the higher forces are unfair to them, they usually have difficulty with practicing at least some kind of religion. Those who are offended by themselves are real “Samoyeds”, they actually launch internal subconscious processes of self-destruction. From here - heavy diagnoses with an unexplained medical reason, constant trouble, which can be both domestic and fateful.

It is believed that the offense occurs for several common reasons.

• Desire to manipulate (a conscious decision of a person to be offended, and demonstratively, obviously, in order to achieve the desired from another). This is often done by children whose mother refuses to buy a toy or let them go for a walk in the yard, as often do girls or women who want to make a partner or spouse to change their decision or behavior to do what they need. So sometimes men act, but the representatives of the stronger sex, such causes of insults are less common than others. The exception is pensioners. In old age, the desire to draw attention to yourself, to make others do what an older person needs, is often expressed through demonstrative resentment.
• Inability to forgive (the most common reason). This is also a manipulation, only unconscious, unwitting. If you honestly ask the offended why he was offended and why he needed this offense, he is unlikely to be able to answer these questions to himself, since he is not aware of what is happening. He himself would be happy to get rid of an unpleasant deposit in his soul, but he does not know how, mentally constantly returning to negative experiences.
• Unwillingness to put up with reality (deceived expectations). Of course, everyone has heard that no one is obliged to anyone, no one is obliged to conform to someone else's ideas, but very often we sincerely hope that friends will offer help themselves, they will not have to make requests that the spouse will guess that he must do in a given situation.

Symptoms of resentment depend on whether it is explicit or hidden. Offended, he pointedly changes his facial expression; he can “pout”, turn away, refuse to continue the conversation. With all of his appearance, he shows that he is overwhelmed with indignation, indignation, anger, that his best feelings were “trampled on”, “quarreled”. At the same time, the offended does not go away; he tries to make his resentment noticeable, otherwise the “performance” loses its meaning.

People who diligently hide their resentment in the farthest corners of their souls behave quite differently. They want privacy, they are more pleasant isolation, especially - from the object of offense. Until the moment when a “volcano” matures inside, they may behave quietly, but then they will certainly become irritable, angry, restrained.

The ability to take offense is activated during certain periods of life.

It is difficult to find a person on the planet who would never offended anyone. But we are not faced with the task of eradicating and destroying offense as a phenomenon. It is only necessary to learn how to control it, understand it, feel it and set it free in time — let it fly. To a person who wants to be healthy and successful, such a burden of negativity is completely useless.

Separately, I want to talk about such a pathological insult, which becomes a character trait - a mental insult. There are people who are offended almost constantly. They themselves do not really know what and why, but they are always offended. Such an insult is formed in childhood. A child who is not given enough attention quickly realizes that it is possible to turn on the views of adults and get what you want, often by applying a manipulative insult. He is so accustomed to behave in such a way that soon this destructive feeling becomes part of his personality.

This kind of resentment, fortunately, is not so common. But in each case, it requires professional psycho-correction, which should be handled by an experienced psychiatrist, a psychotherapist.

Since the feeling of resentment is destructive, destructive, it is imperative to get rid of it. This will not only help to improve relations, but will also visibly facilitate all spheres of human existence (it will become easier on the soul, work will be easier, it will be easier to make decisions, if there is a disease, then you will feel much better).

One must immediately understand that fighting offense, resisting it, as many little-known psychologists on the Internet advise, is Don Quixote's campaign against windmills. In addition, an attempt to deny something that has already become a part of you (touchiness) is a sure way to the hospital bed. Such attempts to suppress, hide their anger usually lead to severe intractable disease. Insult is necessary:

• recognize and accept;
• take responsibility for it only on themselves (we ourselves decided that we would be offended!);
• to disassemble it into "components", to comprehend each of the four mental processes of the classic development of resentment;
• replace negative emotions in each stage with positive ones.

In order to learn how to cope with such destructive feelings as insults, in 1993 a method of sanogenic (healthy) thinking was created by a psychologist and professor Yuri Orlov. If you outline the essence briefly, then The professor suggested opposing the whole pathogenic (anger, aggression and offense) positive and constructive (joy, love, forgiveness). The Orlov method today is actively used in recommendations for teachers, doctors, and specialists working with convicts and people with disabilities, as well as for the prevention of cardiovascular pathologies.

Let us consider how to forgive a grievance by the method of sanogenic thinking, using a specific example. For example, a mother is offended by a son or daughter who has grown up and almost does not give her time. This resentment has been gnawing for a long time; it is becoming more and more difficult to transfer it. At the first stage, the mother needs to have a small notebook in which she could bring in her self-observations, record what minutes of life, under what circumstances, how many times a day she mentally returned to feeling resentment at her adult child.

Next, the woman needs to be told about the four mental operations that constitute the essence of the offense (we wrote about them above). In the same notebook, she needs to draw a page into four parts and write out in each:

• expectations (how she saw the relationship with her son, how he should act in her understanding, what he should say, do, give, etc.);
• reality (what he does, what he says and gives in fact);
• the difference between the first and second (here you need to write out all the differences of expectations from reality);
• the nature of the offense (here you need to specify exactly how the offense started: pointedly or implicitly, whether the child knows that his mother is offended, whether the offense is manipulative).

The ultimate goal is to visually see that expectations are just a figment of your imagination, and reality is exactly what needs to be taken adequately. So comes the understanding of why a son or daughter acts exactly the way he does. Along with this comes the internal acceptance of their actions. This already means justification and forgiveness.

No one should be “comfortable” and comfortable just for you. Therefore, the main part of the work is to work with your own expectations from a particular person or from a group of people from the world. It is useful to ask yourself, and where, in fact, did such expectations even come from, did the person give grounds for such expectations to be built, are your expectations realistic, or do you want the impossible from your loved ones. Usually this gives a fairly quick result, and a person begins to evaluate reality more objectively.

Also effective may be a method aimed at putting yourself in the shoes of your abuser. Try to imagine if he knows how he had to lead himself so that you would not be offended.To understand why he acted in a completely different way than we wanted, you can, if you understand the motives that led him. This method will make it possible to realize that the son (daughter) is not specifically giving the elderly mother less attention than before. He just has a lot of work, he has his own family, children, he has problems that need solving.

To forgive is to understand. You can understand everyone, the main thing is to have a desire to get rid of the painful feeling, anger and self-pity, which destroy you. And there is not much difference, whether it is a slight offense or a serious one, whether the offender has apologized or not - all types of this destructive feeling somehow destroy our health, our personality.

To cope with one offense is a big deal, but it is much more important to learn how to do it yourself and to teach your children not to be offended, not to hide an insult. It will take time and desire to work on yourself. The advice of practicing psychologists can help.

Everyone has the right to their own opinion, to their conclusions. If asked about them, feel free to say what you think is right. If not, then you should not try to impose on others what is characteristic only of you. Otherwise, to avoid offensive situations will not work.

Good is in everyone. If you try to see these bits of good, then they can easily push even tons of bad. If someone offends you, try interrupting a chain of four “offensive” mental processes and just remember at least one situation in which this person acted well and pleasantly for you. Insults can be avoided.

If a person is unfamiliar to you and you don’t have a positive experience with him, then just mentally mark something good in his appearance (beautiful eyes or interested hair). As long as you mentally do this, the mechanism of development of the insult will be disturbed, a negative feeling will not be formed.

Even if it is difficult to understand and at first glance it is almost impossible. Just mentally put yourself in the shoes of another. It will help to see the main thing and not to pay attention to offensive trifles, not to build unnecessary illusions and then not to be disappointed over trifles.

Every time when an insult begins to boil in your soul, remember this battered truth. Life is really one - to rewrite it then again will not work. Therefore, is it worth spending every hour and day of it in order to destroy yourself with anger and hatred, self-pity? Try to imagine yourself in old age - will you have something to remember the good, if in the course of your life you most often experienced destructive feelings.

On the other hand, your abuser has one life too.

There are always and there will be people who will have the task to provoke you to be offended, that is, they will consciously offend. The purpose of such people is to hit more painfully, to pinch where it hurts to cause a reaction.Do you need to jeopardize yourself and your health because of someone’s conflict? It seems that no. Therefore, ignoring attempts to hurt you will be an adequate action.

Mentally regret the person (conflict, believe me, it is very difficult to live!), Mark yourself a couple of its positive qualities, keep calm. There will be nothing to oppose against the offender against such a “wall”.

In love, in everyday life, in friendship, small insults often arise. We call them so - frivolous. To overcome them, it is only important to try to see the situation as a whole, completely, not to focus on the little things that are about to make you make the most disastrous decision - to start the process of resentment. Husband fries potatoes not in straws, but in cubes, although you asked to make it just straws? Before you open your mouth for angry speech, think about what he is doing at all - he fries potatoes for you. He wants to do something nice. Is it worth being angry? Moreover, the potato cubes, if not to focus on trifles, is also very tasty.

It is not necessary to tell others that you have forgiven them, it is not necessary to try to hold on to relationships, but it is necessary to forgive. With forgiveness passes heaviness in the soul. Therefore, in any situation, goodbye. Changed - sorry, let go. Betray - forgive and do not return to this in your own memory. Forgive the boor and the insolent, the criminal, the thief, they live as they can, and do not have to be as you want.

How to get rid of the offense and learn to forgive, see the next video.