Release time: 2026-04-16 13:48
Resentment Is Bad for Your Health
Four research-based steps to release painful resentment.
KEY POINTS
New research shows how harboring resentment is bad for your health.
Lasting resentment can result in painful feelings and emotional injury.
Research has shown how forgiveness can heal resentment and bring us greater health and peace of mind.
New research reveals how harboring resentment can undermine our health, leading to chronic stress, inflammation, and many serious diseases (Aghakhani and colleagues, 2026). Yet research also shows how forgiveness can relieve these effects, leading to greater peace of mind, recovery, and renewal (Almeida and Cunha, 2025).
The negative effects of resentment. A recent study on resentment and forgiveness in older adults (Almeida and Cunha, 2025) found that when painful feelings are not processed, we may feel lasting resentment, continued pain, dysfunction, and emotional injury. Resentment from old hurtful experiences can stay with us for years, buried deep in our memory. What the researchers call “lasting, ruinous, painful resentment” can produce a range of emotions from aggression to apathy that can block us from meeting our fundamental needs and undermine our relationships (Almeida and Cunha, p. 1191). We can feel unsafe, victimized, caught up in chronic survival mode as our amygdala, the brain’s alarm center, continually sends messages of threat throughout our bodies (Van Der Kolk, 2015). Then, if we’re triggered by some current event, active resentment and anger can emerge, further compromising our immune systems (vanOyen Witvliet and colleagues, 2001).
In a revealing Dutch study, when participants were asked to recall hurtful memories and old grievances, they experienced heightened stress, higher blood pressure, and negative emotions. But responding to the same hurtful memories with compassion and recognizing their common humanity with the offender reduced the painful resentment and its negative effects on their health (vanOyen Witvliet and colleagues, 2001).
These researchers found that developing empathy and beginning a process of forgiveness lowered participants’ stress levels and brought them a sense of relief, peace of mind, and personal control (vanOyen Witvliet and colleagues, 2001). As psychiatrist and trauma expert Bessel Van Der Kolk, MD, explains, processing our resentment from past hurtful experiences calms our body’s alarm system, taking us out of survival mode (2015). And as Portuguese researchers Bernardo Almeida and Carlos Cunha have found (2025), the process of forgiveness can transform resentment into empathy, compassion, and love for ourselves and others.
The benefits of forgiveness. Major world religions, including Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam, affirm the healing power of forgiveness. Psychologist Fred Luskin, Ph.D., director of the Stanford Forgiveness Project, has found that learning to forgive can benefit us emotionally and physically, decreasing stress and bringing us renewed hope, trust, and happiness (2002).
As Luskin explains, forgiveness does not mean excusing the offense and may not even involve reconciling with the person who offended us. Rather, we forgive for our own good.
Forgiveness is a dynamic process that often includes:
Mindfulness, becoming aware of our resentment and repressed emotions by mindfully acknowledging our inner experience in a supportive, friendly manner (Van Der Kolk, 2015).
Self-Compassion, which begins with mindfully acknowledging our feelings, then recognizing our common humanity—“it’s only human to feel this way”—and treating ourselves as we would a dear friend. For example, we could tell ourselves, “I know this is hard right now, but I’m here for you. We’ll get through this”(Neff, 2011).
Sharing Our Story with a trusted friend, counselor, or therapist, which helps us process our emotions, develop greater compassion for ourselves, and see the hurtful experience in a larger context (Ameida and Cunha, 2025).
Separating the Action from the Person. Forgiveness does not mean forgetting or excusing the wrong that was done. What it does mean is condemning the action while recognizing our common humanity with the other person, not giving in to hatred and resentment.
This is consistent with Buddhist practice as described in recent research (Gunalankara, 2025). And as the Dalai Lama has explained, “There is an important distinction between forgiveness and simply allowing others’ wrongdoing. Where the wrong action is concerned, it may be necessary to take appropriate counteraction to stop it” (2016, p. 234). As living examples of this distinction, the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu continued to seek justice for offenses that they and their people suffered while refusing to react with hatred and anger (2016).
If you’ve been harboring resentment from a hurtful experience in the past, you might try these steps. But to deal with painful emotions and ongoing trauma, you may want to work through your resentment with a supportive therapist.
Diane Dreher, Ph.D., is an author, researcher, and positive psychology coach.
psychology today