Overcoming Resentment: Asking for Help in a Way that Inspires Support
In addition to being a single mom, seeing clients, and studying part-time for my MBA, I recently volunteered to coordinate two different immigrant solidarity groups.
I love this work and it often gives me a lot of energy. But I recently noticed that everything on my plate was starting to make me feel worn out and resentful.
Here are some of my early warning signs of resentment:
- When asked for help, my tone is sharper than usual.
- When someone asks me a question, I feel annoyed and answer abruptly.
- I get irritated that other people aren’t working as hard as I am.
- I feel drained and tired.
Any of this sound familiar?
When I feel resentful, I can fall into a trap of thinking that it’s too much work to ask for help.
But I know that if I linger in resentment without proactively reaching out for the support I need, not only do I feel bad. My work is likely to suffer as well. I’m less likely to collaborate effectively, support other people to step into leadership roles, or make the impact I want to make. I’m more likely to burn out.
And so, I’ve learned that when I feel resentful, I need to ask for help. I’ve learned resentment can be a call to action, a call to ask for the help I need.
In today’s article, I want to share with you six steps that I’ve come to rely on for overcoming resentment and asking for help in a way that inspires others to support me. I invite you to practice along.
Pause.
My personal experience, my clients’ experience, and research on conflict resolution all demonstrate that taking a short break is the first step toward overcoming resentment and effectively asking for support when we’re fuming inside.
The more centered we can be when making requests, the more likely the other person is to respond positively. And to center ourselves and formulate an effective request, we must pause.
If you can’t pause immediately when you notice you feel resentful, I encourage you to take a break as soon as possible.
You might also designate a physical object or create a physical cue that reminds you to pause when you feel resentful. For example, you might put a rose quartz heart in your pocket or a sticky note that says “Pause” by your desk.
Pausing, especially when we’re angry, can be really challenging at first. But the more we practice remembering, the easier it becomes to remember that we need to take a break.
Then, during your break, try to offer the resentful part of yourself the love and attention it craves. I recommend getting out a journal and writing down your responses to the following prompts as this helps many people soothe their nervous systems and figure out what next steps to take (myself included!).
Identify what you truly feel.
Once you pause, notice the sensations or emotions you feel in your body, without trying to change how you feel. Do you feel tightness in your jaw? Heat in your arms and shoulders? Anxiety in your solar plexus, that space below the center of your ribs?
Make sure to distinguish between true feelings and false feelings. False feelings are words that masquerade as feelings but are actually interpretations of another person’s behavior, words like abandoned, devalued, insulted, taken for granted, unappreciated, unloved, or unseen.
If you feel compelled to use these words with another person, pause and get curious about what physical sensations or emotions you’re actually experiencing. Naming false feelings is likely to elicit defensiveness or anger in the other person.
Instead, look for a true feeling word—a word that expresses the sensations and emotions you feel in your body, like angry, pissed off, irritated, hot, tight, or agitated.
Accurately naming what we feel can soothe our nervous systems and help us more effectively respond to what’s really going on. I invite you to use these emotions wheels and feelings lists to help you name what you feel. Notice what happens in your body when you find a word that matches what you feel.
Identify what you need.
Once you name your feelings, get curious about what you need.
I use the definition of needs that comes from Nonviolent Communication (NVC). In the NVC framework, needs are the universal qualities that motivate all human actions, and strategies are the actions we take to meet our needs. All humans have the same universal needs, we just prefer different strategies. When we identify our deeper needs, it can become easier to discover strategies we might not have seen before.
For example, let’s say you’re mad at your partner for not doing the dishes. On one hand, you really want them to do the dishes. On the other hand, washing the dishes is one strategy to meet a deeper need such as mutuality or cooperation or order. There may be other strategies to meet these needs such as your partner taking responsibility for all the cooking or some other chores you hate.
For a fun way to get clear about your priority needs and identify which needs your resentment is pointing toward, I invite you to download my Priority Needs Wheel and Needs List. This practice will give you perspective to better meet your needs and make more effective requests.
Identify Specific Actions & Requests.
When we believe others aren’t doing their fair share, we humans tend to make hurtful generalizations—“You never…!” or “You always…!”
The person on the receiving end of statements like this is unlikely to feel inspired to help us and, instead, is apt to shut down and stop listening. As a result, generalizations like these make it even less likely that we’ll get the help we want.
It can be far more effective to identify specific actions we want the other people to take. For example, you might ask your partner to do dishes three days a week. Or you might ask your boss to help you identify the top priorities at work, rather than asking you to do tasks that would exceed the time you have in the week. Or, you may ask a friend to listen to you.
Have a Conversation.
Once you identify your feelings, needs, and requests, it’s time to ask for help. The basic Non-Violent Communication framework can help. In this framework, we share four things with the other person:
- What happened.
- What you feel.
- What you need.
- Your request(s).
For example, if your boss keeps changing their requests for you, you might request something like this—“Sometimes, you ask me to do one thing and a couple of days later, you ask me to do the opposite thing. I feel uncertain. I’d love some clarity about what to prioritize and a process for how to respond when you ask me to do different things. Could you please work with me to figure this out?”
Or, to your partner, you might say—“I’ve been tracking our housework these last couple of weeks, and it seems to me like I’m doing about 70% of the chores and kid care. I feel tired and resentful and need mutuality and shared responsibility in the household. Can we please look through all of the tasks and come up with a more equitable situation?”
Take Time Before Saying Yes.
From now on, when you’re considering saying yes to a new request or opportunity, I encourage you to follow the steps above—pause, notice what you feel, and notice what you really need.
When you do this, you may realize that you wouldn’t be able to meet important needs if you take on the request. Or you might realize that this new opportunity would actually meet your needs well.
Next, identify your next step. This may look like saying yes or no or responding to a request with a caveat like, “I would like to do this as long as these other things happen.”
So, you might be wondering, what did I do when I noticed I was feeling resentful recently?
Exactly what I’m encouraging you to do here. I checked the needs list and realized that I needed more rest and support. I let a couple of my teammates know that I was feeling overwhelmed and made some specific requests. And, I scheduled a whole day of rest at the end of that week.
Eventually, I let go of facilitating one of the two groups, giving this responsibility to another person.
Gratefully, the resentment subsided.
Practicing these steps consistently—both when I notice resentment rising in me and as a daily preventative practice— is key to keeping me out of resentment. I hope they help you to receive the support you need.
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If you take on a lot of responsibility in your community and want to learn how to ask for support more effectively, balance your many competing priorities, and stop feeling so resentful, I invite you to subscribe to my weekly Love Letters to Changemakers.
The love letters are free emails in which I send out morsels of support to nourish the hearts, minds, and bodies of people who work hard to make a difference in the world. I often share about themes such as overcoming resentment.
To sign up, click here: Love Letters to Changemakers.
I’d love to share them with you!