Why Do I Feel Resentful After Saying Yes?

Why Do I Feel Resentful After Saying Yes?

Resentment after saying yes is very often anger that hasn’t got a place to go. It rises because the yes knowingly or unknowingly crossed a boundary within us. This happens frequently before we even knew that the boundary was there. For many women it doesn’t feel like resentment at all… because it turns instead into guilt, self-doubt, or a low undercurrent of bitterness that seems to have no cause. This pattern is closely woven with people-pleasing and, at a deeper level, with what is called the fawn response, and furthermore with what I have come to call the martyr pattern, in which we give our needs away so completely that resentment quietly builds beneath the giving. I find that understanding this dynamic allows us to recognise the anger hiding beneath the guilt, to hear what it has been protecting, and slowly to begin giving a yes that we truly mean.

Why does resentment keep coming back?

In The Myth of Normal, Gabor Maté describes resentment as “the residue of things unsaid, feelings not honoured”, and he points out that the word itself comes from the French ressentir, meaning to feel again. Therefore, what we resent is something we are actually feeling for the second, third or hundredth time... very often because we never allowed ourselves to feel it in the first place. What I have come to understand, in my own life and in the women I sit with, is that the first feeling was usually a no. The body registered it whilst the mouth overrode it, and therefore the resentment is, in a sense, that no arriving late, long after the yes has already been given and the moment to speak has passed... and it keeps returning, again and again, getting larger and larger, until we finally listen to what it has been trying to say.

What if you don’t feel resentful, only guilty?

For a long time I did not know that I was carrying resentment at all, until my teacher, Jeremie, a Hopi Grandmother pointed it out to me…. Moreover, many of the women I know did not know it either. For me it went straight into guilt, and into a whole big deal of doubting myself, thus the anger never once announced itself as anger. Resentment is anger, yet very often we don’t realise that it is, because we have pushed our feelings down for so long that we no longer recognise them…and even when we do have a glimpse of them, what happens faster than lightning is that we tend to push them straight back down again. Having learned to survive through trauma, I simply couldn’t access this part of myself, nor could I understand what it was. Moreover, I couldn’t even identify the shame feeling within me, let alone the anger beneath it.

This is a different guilt from the one I write about in Why Do I Feel So Guilty After Finally Saying No?, for that guilt follows a no and is often an old alarm going off, whereas this guilt follows a yes and stands in for the anger itself, covering it so incredibly well, that we may never suspect it’s even there. It can be worth wondering whether resentment is speaking in disguise when you notice:

• a guilt that has no clear cause, arriving after you have agreed to something
• doubting yourself, your memory or your right to feel anything at all
• a bitterness or flatness in your voice that surprises you
• harshness towards yourself, or a quiet self-blame that has no end
• irritation at people who seem to look after themselves without apology
• exhaustion that deepens each time you give, rather than easing

Sometimes the body speaks what we cannot yet say, and for me, during the years of my own inner work, it showed up as an incredible amount of cold sores, which, interestingly, stress and being run down are widely known to trigger, and which I now understand as one of the ways my body was carrying what I had not yet allowed myself to feel... Gabor Maté’s work in When the Body Says No explores this wider link between held-back emotion, stress and the body far more fully than I can here.

Why do I say yes when I mean no?

Very often the yes comes so incredibly fast because there’s fear behind it, the feeling/belief of being obliged and sometimes alongside an image we are holding up of ourselves as kind, capable or easy to be around. For me it was very much about all of the above as well as maintaining the peace, since confrontation was simply too much, because it felt threatening and dangerous, I didn’t know how to do it, and my body would go straight into terror/fear mode at the mere thought of it. When the yes is driven by a body that feels unsafe, it’s often what’s called the fawn response, which is a survival strategy of pleasing and appeasing, which I explore more fully in What Is the Difference Between People-Pleasing and Fawning?. However, what I want to say here is that the fear mode never took away the feeling of bitterness quietly gathering underneath…  it only kept me from knowing it was there.

How does a yes cross my own boundary?

What I learned, slowly, was that in saying yes so readily I was in some way overstepping my own self, compromising something within me each time I agreed to what I did not truly want, and of course this causes the anger, the frustration and the resentment that lie underneath. We usually think of a boundary as something another person crosses, whereas with a yes that isn’t truly ours, we are the ones crossing it, often without noticing that we have done so. The author Harriet Lerner, in The Dance of Anger, describes anger as a signal that too much of the self is being given away or compromised in a relationship, and I found this very useful when it came into my knowing. It is not a sign that something is wrong with us; rather, it’s the part of us still keeping count of how far we have stepped over ourselves.

What is the unspoken exchange behind a yes?

Something else I have noticed, in relationships, my own included, is a quiet exchange that sits beneath many of our yeses, something like “because I give you this, you have to understand me”. The giving carries a hope we never voice, which is to be understood, appreciated, chosen or cared for in return. Thus, when that understanding doesn’t come, well…  resentment builds, even though the other person may never have known that an exchange was being made at all.  I hold this as an observation rather than a rule, yet I see it so often that it feels worth naming, since a hope we never speak cannot be met, and therefore the yes keeps costing us whilst the return we long for never arrives.

I wonder, too, how much our exhaustion plays a part here, since a yes given from a totally empty cup, or out of fear, can leave us feeling a kind of shame inside…. even self-blame or self-loathing for having agreed once again and that can slowly sour into resentment towards the very people we are trying to care for….

Why do so many women not know what they need?

Women have long been known for and expected to be the ones who give entirely and hold space, and I sense that many of us have absorbed this knowing so deeply in our bones that it no longer feels learned at all….  Especially in the families, women are so often the ones who regulate everybody else, smoothing the moods, or anticipating needs and keeping the whole system running and steady. I don’t know how much of what I experienced was simply what was expected of me culturally, yet I recognise it in myself and in so many other women too. When I talk with women one-to-one, a pattern I see again and again is that they seem to have no needs, or they don’t know how to even feel them, and somebody else is nearly always more important than themselves…. When this happens often enough, every yes crosses a boundary we cannot even feel, and therefore once again, the resentment builds without our ever understanding where it came from.

What is the martyr pattern?

I’ve known this one too: the martyr pattern is not a clinical term, rather it is my way of describing a pattern I have come to recognise, in which a woman gives away her needs so completely that self-sacrifice becomes her way of being in the world, (also the world praises her for it) whilst underneath it, very often unseen even by her, a resentment quietly builds. One of the clearest places I notice it is around other women: a woman living this pattern may feel angry at other women who take care of themselves, at the friend who rests, says no or asks for help, and the resentment can show itself in a harsh way of speaking to one another, or in putting another woman down. I’d like to share this gently…  that this is not unkindness by nature, rather it is our own unmet need finding an indirect way out, since a need we have never been allowed to voice doesn’t simply disappear, it surfaces instead as irritation at the very thing we have denied ourselves... and when we can see this with compassion in ourselves, it becomes far easier to meet this in others.

Ways forward

The first step is often simply to notice the guilt, the self-doubt or the bitterness and to ask yourself quietly, “Is there an anger here that I haven’t yet recognised?” and “What did I want, just before I said yes?” You don’t need to act on the answer straight away, because recognising the anger as anger is already a huge shift.

Giving your yes a little time can change a great deal, with words such as “I’ll think about it”, which I write about in How Did You Stop Being a People-Pleaser?. In that pause you can notice in your body how the yes feels compared with the no, since one usually brings a little more space and openness whilst the other feels a little more contracted and tighter (the difference may be very subtle).

It can also help to ask, before giving, “What am I hoping to receive in return for this yes?” When the honest answer is understanding, appreciation or care, we can begin either to ask for it directly or to give only what we can give freely, without an invoice attached.

Remember, too, that a yes can be taken back…  you can return to someone and say that you’ve felt into it and changed your mind, which is uncomfortable for a moment and far kinder, to both of you, than months of quiet resentment. Gabor Maté, in When the Body Says No, passes on the advice that when a refusal brings guilt whilst agreeing would leave resentment, it is better to choose the guilt, adding that “resentment is soul suicide”. I understand this not as a judgement on the feeling itself, but on the slow cost of swallowing it, year after year.

Practising feeling a need in small, low-stakes moments, such as what you would like to eat, or whether you have room for one more thing this week, gradually brings back a capacity that was pushed aside long ago. Practising receiving, which I write about in Devotion or Depletion?, slowly loosens the belief that everything must be earned through giving.

Finally, when the anger does surface, meeting it with compassion rather than shame matters enormously, since beneath it there is so often a tender, tired part of us that simply wished to be considered too.

When to seek support

When the resentment, guilt or self-doubt feels too heavy to meet alone, when anger seems completely out of reach however much you look for it, or when it has turned inward into self-blame or self-loathing, it can make a real difference to explore this with a trained professional or therapist, since some feelings only become safe to feel when somebody meets them first with care and without judgement. Furthermore, your GP or huisarts is a good place to begin when exhaustion, anxiety or low moods have stayed with you for weeks….it may be physical.

NOTE: When a yes is driven by fear because disagreeing has been met with anger, coldness, punishment or threats, or worse, the problem is not your resentment, and holding your ground alone may not keep you safe. I describe the signs of a relationship where your no is not safe more fully in How Did You Stop Being a People-Pleaser?, and when you are being hurt, threatened or controlled, you can call Veilig Thuis (Safe at Home) on 0800 2000, free, day and night and anonymously if you wish, or 112 when you are in immediate danger.

Questions and answers

Can I be resentful without knowing it?
Yes, very often, since resentment is a form of anger that many of us learned to push down so early and so thoroughly that we no longer know it or recognise it, therefore it may show itself instead as other feelings such as guilt, self-doubt, bitterness, exhaustion or irritation that seems to come from nowhere.

Why do I feel guilty instead of angry?
When anger was unsafe or unwelcome when we were growing up, guilt and shame can take its place, turning the feeling inward so that the relationship stays protected, which is why the guilt after a yes is sometimes the anger itself in disguise.

Why do I get irritated by women who look after themselves?
This irritation can be a sign of a martyr pattern, in which our own needs have been given away for so long that seeing another woman meet hers touches the deep inner resentment we carry about our own, and therefore it is worth meeting with curiosity rather than judgement.

What is the martyr pattern?
The martyr pattern is a way of describing a woman who gives away her needs so completely that self-sacrifice becomes her way of being, whilst resentment quietly builds underneath -  it’s not a clinical diagnosis but a recognisable pattern that can soften once it is seen.

Can I take back a yes?
Yes, of course you can return to someone and tell them that you’ve felt into it and changed your mind, which may feel very uncomfortable in the moment, and yet, it is usually far kinder to the relationship than a yes that slowly turns into resentment.

Is resentment always a bad thing?
Resentment is uncomfortable, yet it carries real information, which points towards a need that has gone unmet or a boundary we have crossed within ourselves, therefore, it is less a sign that something is wrong with us than a signal asking to be heard.

A gentle invitation

Learning to recognise the anger beneath the guilt, and to give a yes that is truly yours, is rarely a single moment of insight, but a slow return to your own needs, your body and your voice, and it is so much gentler when you don’t walk it alone. This is the work I love sharing with women, in 1:1 sessions beginning with the Foundations Path, where we can meet the fear beneath the fast yes at a pace your body can trust, and in the NewMoon Women’s Circle at De Roos, where women practise having needs among other women, without anybody having to give themselves away.

With warmth and care,
Wen-Wei

Wen-Wei Ong is the founder of Rest2Flow, a trauma-informed practitioner and mentor for women in Amsterdam and online, working with somatic and body-based practice, depth-oriented enquiry, hypnotherapeutic and guided imagery work, ritual and cyclical wisdom.