NICABM – Practical Strategies for Working with Deep-Seated Resentment

Working with Resentment: 19 Experts Share the Latest Strategies to Help Your Client Let Go of Chronic Grievances and Deep-Seated Bitterness

To help clients shift out of deep-seated resentment, we need to:

• Understand the specific neurobiological factors that fuel chronic grudge-holding and grievances
• Know how our limbic system can play off of someone else’s in ways that spark resentment
• Address the two hidden emotions that resentment most commonly masks

So we asked 19 of the top experts in the field to share their best strategies for working with clients who struggle with resentment. This is the result.

Practical Strategies for Working with Deep-Seated Resentment

Why It’s Critical to Factor Anger and Grief into Your Work with Resentment, and Strategies for Approaching Both
Thema Bryant-Davis, PhD   Ron Siegel, PsyD  
Rick Hanson, PhD   Joan Borysenko, PhD

• Helping Your Client Understand Why Anger Can Feel So Good
• One Link Between Resentment and Grief That Your Client Might Not Expect
• The Steep Cost When Clients Push Anger Aside
• What Can Happen in the Body When Anger Goes Unacknowledged
• Three Specific Challenges That Often Arise When Working with the Grief Beneath Resentment

Unpacking Your Client’s “Resentment Story” – Key Strategies to Help Clients Process and Transition Out of Long-Held Resentment
Christopher Willard, PsyD   Ron Siegel, PsyD
Christine Padesky, PhD

• Why Timing Is So Critical in Working with Resentment, and What Can Happen If You Get It Wrong
• One Way to Tailor Your Approach That Can Help You Get the Timing Right
• How to Navigate a Critical Choice Point in Working with Resentment

The Link Between Resentment and Righteous Indignation (and Why It Might Require a More Specialized Approach)
Christopher Willard, PsyD   Rick Hanson, PhD  
Joan Borysenko, PhD

• What Happens in the Brain When Resentment Arises
• One Specific Fear That Can Fuel Righteous Indignation
• A Key First Step in Helping Clients Separate from Righteous Indignation

Working with Resentment When Trauma Is a Factor
Janina Fisher, PhD   Thema Bryant-Davis, PhD  
Christine Padesky, PhD

• One Way to Help When a Client’s Trauma Defense Gets Interrupted (and How It Can Impact Resentment)
• Helping Clients Understand the Cycle of Trauma, Memory, Anger, and Resentment
• The Key “Starting Place” That Can Help You Uncover the Terry Real, MSW, LICSW Root of Your Client’s Angry, Resentful Response (Especially When It Might Seem Overblown)
• Three Common Responses to a Hurt or Slight, and How to Guide Your Client Toward Choosing the One That’s Most Effective
• Using Narrative Therapy and the Expressive Arts to Help a Client Address Resentment – A Case Study

Strategies to Help You Keep a Session on Track When a Client’s Resentment Is Directed at You, the Practitioner
Christine Padesky, PhD   Ron Siegel, PsyD

• A Shift in Perspective That Can Transform How We Respond to a Client’s Anger
• One Practice to Help You Manage Tensions That Arise During a Session
• What to Do When You Start to Dread Your Next Session with a Client

Helping Clients Understand Resentment (and Why It’s So Easily Triggered)
Shelly Harrell, PhD   Rick Hanson, PhD  
Joan Borysenko, PhD   Ron Siegel, PsyD

• Three Specific Attributes of Resentment Your Client Needs to Know Before They Can Begin to Work Through It
• Helping Clients Explore the Common Factors That Can Breed Chronic Resentment
• A 3-Step Process to Jumpstart Your Work with Resentment

The Secret to Preventing Resentment from Developing: Failsafe Strategies for Helping Clients Manage Expectations
Christopher Willard, PsyD   Michael Yapko, PhD  
Bill O’Hanlon, LMFT   Ron Siegel, PsyD  
Christine Padesky, PhD

• Two Critical Questions to Help Clients Stop Resentment in Its Tracks
• One Strategic Word Change That Can Help a Client Who Is Hyper-Focused on the Past
• A Strategy to Help Your Clients Shift Out of Past Resentment and Into Future Possibility
• A 3-Step Process to Help Your Client Walk Away from a Fight

How to Help Couples When Resentment Threatens to Derail Their Relationship
Terry Real, MSW, LICSW   Richard Schwartz, PhD  
Stan Tatkin, PsyD, MFT   Christopher Willard, PsyD  
Christine Padesky, PhD   Rick Hanson, PhD

• Why Resentment Can Snowball So Quickly Within the Couples Relationship
• Three Critical “Shifts” That Each Partner in a Couple Often Needs to Get Good At (in Order to Dispel Resentment)
• One Way to Help Couples Disrupt the Patterns That Foment Resentment
• A 4-Step Workaround to Help You Reach a Partner Who Might Have Dug-In Patterns of Negativity
• The “Garbage Bag Strategy” That Can Help You Work with a Client Who Struggles to Let Go of Resentment Toward Their Partner, Despite Their Partner’s Effort to Change
• Three Questions That Can Help You Get to the Root of a Partner’s Resentment

How to Help Clients Heal Resentment That Started Within Their Family Relationship
Deany Laliotis, LICSW   Christopher Willard, PsyD  
Lynn Lyons, LICSW   Christine Padesky, PhD
Ron Siegel, PsyD

• The “Neurobiology of Expectation-Building” and Why This Idea Can Be So Useful for Working with Resentment in Families
• Powerful Strategies for Approaching Resentment That Stems from Divorce
• Using the “T-Shirt Strategy” to Help Your Client Think About Resentment More Concretely

Helping Clients Who Struggle with Resentment Navigate the Complexities of Forgiveness
Rick Hanson, PhD   Joan Borysenko, PhD  
Christine Padesky, PhD   Ron Siegel, PsyD

• A Metaphor to Help Clients Grasp the Futility of Nurturing Resentment
• The Critical Difference Between Forgiveness and Reconciliation (and How to Help Clients Choose Whether Either One Is Right for Them)
• How to Reframe Forgiveness to Dispel the Common Misconceptions Clients Might Have About It
• How to Help Clients Distinguish “Cheap Forgiveness” from the More Genuine Kind
• Helping Clients Understand the Two Key Hallmarks of Genuine Forgiveness

How Mindfulness Can Transform Resentment – Specific Exercises to Share with Your Client
Zindel Segal, PhD   Ron Siegel, PsyD  
Joan Borysenko, PhD   Christine Padesky, PhD

• Ways to Cultivate “Perspective-Switching” When Working with Clients Who Hold Certain Expectations of Others
• A 2-Step Exercise to Help Clients Change How They Perceive a Slight
• One Way to Prompt a “Mindset Shift” in a Client Whose Fear of Failure Fuels Patterns of Judgment and Resentment

Strategies for Working with Resentment That Stems from Social Injustice
Pat Ogden, PhD   Miguel Gallardo, PsyD  
Joan Borysenko, PhD   Ron Siegel, PsyD  
Christine Padesky, PhD

• A Critical Question That Can Shape Our Approach to Socially or Culturally Charged Resentment
• How Working with Resentment Fueled by Ongoing Experiences Differs from Working with Resentment Rooted in Past Experiences
• One Important Caveat When Working with Resentment That’s Socially or Culturally Charged

More courses from the same author: NICABM