Анна Шиман
Draft translation. This text was translated automatically and has not been proofread yet — if something reads oddly, it does.
The capacity of the personality and the mechanics of resentment. Why real freedom is never built from the position of a “victim”
None of us walks around holding a sign that says “I am offended at the whole world”. Grown-up, intelligent people wrap this feeling in far more noble packaging. And it works in a very cunning way: some are swung into furious anger, while others are thrown into paralysing helplessness.
Remember what it looks like in life. Watch your own reactions.
In the first scenario, anger switches on and you are on the “warpath”. The “punish the offender” mode kicks in.
It is the cold war of pointed silence, the exhausting trials you hold in your head where you endlessly prove you were right, the biting sarcasm, or the attempts to outplay and crush the other person in return. It feels to you as if you are fighting for justice.
But there is a second scenario too — when resentment turns into helplessness.
You instantly drop into the state of a small, weak child. Your hands fall, your energy is at zero, you want to hide under the blanket and do nothing. Inside, a dreary note keeps humming: “Why me again? What did I do to deserve all this? I can’t change anything anyway.” It is a chronic dissatisfaction with life wrapped in apathy, when you wait for the world to come by itself, feel sorry for you and fix everything.
Both in “fighter” mode and in “helpless child” mode, a person sincerely believes they are in the right, and that others, or the situation, are unfair. But if you peel off this first layer and explore the mechanics of the process at a systemic level, a hard truth opens up: this battle is always a battle with yourself. And the “enemy” or the “circumstance” here is a figure you yourself appointed to the role.
Until you stop this swing between anger and powerlessness, no real freedom or stability will come.
The structure of the illusion - why do we appoint our own enemies?
What is resentment at its core? It is a reaction of furious denial of reality and a refusal to accept the current course of things as it is.
In your head there lived a perfect script of how a loved one, a business partner or the world as a whole ought to behave. But reality made an unexpected move that did not fit the script. And instead of admitting: “The world works differently, people are different, and I do not control everything,” the psyche chooses either attack or freezing.
You yourself pick a person for the role and declare them guilty. Because it is easier that way.
It is easier to proclaim someone a monster and set off on a crusade against them, or to lie down and suffer, than to admit that your own illusions have collapsed. The psyche desperately wants to stay in the illusion of its own sacred rightness and keep proudly wearing its white coat of moral superiority. But this theatre has to be paid for with a loss of free energy.
The theatre of projective actions - how we cultivate “enemies” in real life
Let us peel off the next layer and see how this swing from anger to helplessness plays out in specific areas. Do you recognise your own perfect theatre?
• In relationships: “The cold shoulder and the infant’s position”
Your husband forgot an important date, gave you the wrong look, or did not share your delight over a new dress or the decorations for a children’s party. That’s it, the picture has collapsed. Then either punishment mode switches on. You decorated the house, and now you walk around with a stony face, hiss through your teeth at any question, and wait for him to come crawling back on his knees. Or you fall into powerlessness: tears, isolation, the position of “I’m miserable, nobody loves me”. You spend tankfuls of resource on this game. And yet this “tyrant” was appointed by you, simply so as not to admit: your man is not a mind reader, he is an ordinary person with his own bugs. Or: your man does not want to make an effort for you, your man wants to lie on the sofa, and what you see is the limit of what he can do.
• In business: “A sacred vendetta and hands that drop”
A major client backed out at the last moment, or a contractor badly missed the deadlines and wrecked your big, rocket-powered launch. Your psyche instantly produces a reaction. Either rage: you spend hours typing angry walls of text in chats and emails, try to destroy their reputation, and in your mind raze their business to the ground. Or apathy: “That’s it, I’ve given up, I’m a worthless manager, business is not for me, I’m going to downshift.” Yet this “enemy” or “crisis” too was chosen and cast in the role by you personally, simply to shield your own Ego from the truth: “I did not insure against the risks, I miscalculated, I made a mistake.” It is easier to fight or to suffer than to go into the storerooms of your memory, take out your mistakes and rebuild the business model.
• In social life: “Guerrilla raids and self-pity”
A friend posted a photo from a restaurant she did not invite you to. Or a colleague interrupted you at a meeting and claimed your idea as his own. The reaction runs on two fronts. Either guerrilla warfare: you start making snide remarks, dropping biting comments with a “so what’s the big deal?” flavour, collecting gossip. Or total resentment at the whole world: an escape into the position of a victim whom everyone uses, self-flagellation and withdrawal into the shadows. Why this circus?
So as not to face a real fact: the capacity of your personality is now so small, and your inner centre so unstable, that someone else’s petty act can knock the ground from under your feet and make you either grind your teeth with anger or howl with self-pity.
The capacity of the personality - why do you pour out the fuel for scaling on everyday swings?
Do you see what a slippery moment we are entering now? In each of these areas the script is one and the same. You sit on the barricades or cry in a corner, spending your life not on scale but on servicing this resentment.
And now let us go to the very depth.
Why do we choose to fight or to suffer, instead of simply drawing conclusions and moving on?
The capacity of your personality at this moment is such that you simply cannot contain the awareness of reality — the way it does not match your expectations, and the way you yourself do not match your own ideals.
Reality has struck your Ego. It turned out that you are vulnerable, that you can be hurt, that you miscalculated somewhere or trusted the wrong person. That in fact you control nothing. To contain this awareness, you have to live through the strong pain of your old picture of the world being destroyed. It is like shedding old clothes — empty, frightening, vulnerable.
If the inner centre of the personality, your adult “I”, is weak at that moment, it cannot contain this pain. And then the psyche switches on a defence mechanism: it takes this concentrate of pain and melts it down either into an aggressive attack or into paralysing powerlessness.
But if you take off these roles and look honestly at what is happening, it turns out that the offender is just a mannequin you yourself pinned a target on. You are not at war with them. You are at war with your own helplessness before the fact that reality turned out to be wider, more complex and not at all as friendly as you had imagined.
How to grow the capacity of the personality and get out of the dead end?
If you truly want to become psychologically stable and gain real freedom, you will have to stop this inner pendulum.
Disarm the figure of the enemy.
Realise this: the person or the situation in front of you is not the root of evil. They simply showed up the way they did. It was you who made them responsible for your illusion being shattered. Take this power back from them.
Accept the surrender of your Ego.
Yes, the perfect picture has collapsed. Yes, you made a mistake, or you were treated in a way you did not deserve. Allow yourself to live through this pain of colliding with reality instead of squeezing it into aggressive outbursts or childish tears.
Grow your capacity.
The scale of a personality begins where you can bear the truth about yourself and about the world without rushing into a fight or fainting from powerlessness. When you stop spending your strength on servicing resentments and bring the focus back inside yourself, an ocean of free energy is released for real life and growth.
War, apathy and resentment are always a position of scarcity and rigid limitations.
Real freedom is the prerogative of grown-up, fulfilled and stable people who no longer need to prove anything to anyone or hide away in their shell. Lay down your weapons, climb out from under the blanket, expand the capacity of your personality, and then inner growth will inevitably follow.
Taking tactics apart on paper is easy, but when you are inside your own theatrical dead end — be it rage, anger or numb powerlessness — it seems that all of this just happens by itself.
Seeing on your own that you are at war with a mirror or hiding from reality is practically impossible — the psyche will defend its barricades to the very last.
If you are tired of this swing, feel that you are pouring your strength into the void, and are ready to rebuild the capacity of your personality for a fundamentally different scale of freedom, I invite you to the individual personal growth programme.
This is deep, individual one-to-one work in which we remove systemic energy leaks, stop inner wars, pull you out of scarcity scripts and systematically build your stability. The programme is expensive and requires your full readiness to look at reality without rose-tinted glasses and to act.
To discuss your question and see whether we are ready for this work, fill in the questionnaire on this page or the form below.
