My last post discussed three ways to get stuck in life and how to free yourself. This post covers two increasingly common ways to get stuck. It’s easy to get trapped in self-defeating resentment, and that eventually leads to victim-identity.

It’s so easy to get stuck in resentment because the world is unfair. Resentment results from a judgment of unfairness; you’re not getting the help, consideration, praise, reward, or affection you deserve.

Resentment is, to borrow a phrase from the psychoanalyst Karen Horney, a tyranny of the should:

“Things should be the way I want them to be. They shouldn’t be the way they are.”

Wishing things were not the way they are, instead of improving them, gets us stuck in resentment. What keeps us stuck is justifying resentment by ruminating over all the reasons we’re resentful:

“I have a right to be resentful because she did this, he didn’t do that, and they should have been more considerate…..”

Justifying resentment is like justifying hunger; you never need to do it. But then, some people seem compelled to justify even their hunger: “I’m really hungry; I didn’t have lunch.”

Your resentment is justified, but it’s so unpleasant that you probably don’t want to feel it. Justifying resentment strengthens and prolongs what you don’t want.

There’s a neurological explanation for this. Repeated focus forms mental habits. Justifying resentment strengthens the........

© Psychology Today