At some point in the late 70s, during a Brownies meeting, something happened to Deborah that she has never been able to forget. Well, she can’t actually remember exactly what the incident was, but she knows the perpetrator – another girl, who still lives in her town. “I think she might have pushed me,” says Deborah. “I think she might have said something mean to me.” Whatever it was, she has held a “deep grudge against her for 46 years”.
It affected her deeply at the time. Deborah (not her real name) had been bullied at school, but says she doesn’t hold grudges against those people. Brownies was different – it was supposed to be a safe, happy place, and this girl ruined it for her. It hasn’t had a huge impact on her life, but the grudge – and the negative association – seeps into her mind every time she spots the woman. “It happens quite a lot.” She might bump into her in a shop or drive past her. “She’s always been a shadow in my life.”
They still have friends in common. Recently, Deborah went to a birthday party and the woman was there. She says the woman has no idea how Deborah feels about her: “She can’t even remember being in Brownies with me.” This makes things worse, she says. “I think it’s difficult to get over a grudge if they don’t know you have a grudge against them, or why.”
She could confront her, but doesn’t think it would help. “She might apologise, but if she can’t remember then it feels a bit meaningless.” Instead, Deborah is resigned to living with it. “It’s not eating away at me, like it did maybe the first 10 years. I’m pleasant to her – I’m not mean – but there’s always this little thing at the back of your mind, gnawing away.”
If you are someone who holds grudges, you may recognise this feeling. I hold many. Every time I go past a shop in my town – a shop that wronged me egregiously in 2016 – I surreptitiously flick them the V-sign, a gesture now so ingrained that I often find myself doing it automatically. I could have exacted revenge with a blistering online review and then moved on, but instead I choose year after year of this futile pettiness. A 2022 survey found that a typical British adult holds six grudges, which seems incredible – I could easily gather six new grudges each week. A small selection: at least one ex, eight local businesses, a Vinted seller, a fox, my old dentist. Not too many past colleagues, but certainly several celebrity interviewees. I harbour animosity towards gulls for countless crimes against me and my loved ones. I have boycotted countless companies for so long, I can no longer remember the reasons. My grudges feel like warm companions, or pets I like to keep close – there is a reason you “hold” one, or “nurse” one – and I have no intention of giving them up.
But maybe I should. Grudges, it is fairly well established, are bad for us. People who hold grudges are more likely to have lower levels of mental wellbeing, and even experience depression. Forgiveness is associated with lower stress levels, lower risk of heart disease and mental illness, and may lead to a longer life. You only need look at the worst people in public life, and the way they wield grudges, to want to distance yourself from them.
A grudge can be enjoyable, says Fred Luskin, a psychologist and director of the Stanford University Forgiveness Project, and author of The Forgive for Good Recovery Workbook. “Short doses of anger release dopamine, which is a pleasure chemical.” This is fine in the short term, but the issue, he says, is when the grudge goes on too long. “The problem with dopamine is not that every now and then you might release a tiny bit of it, but if you do it too much, it will make it harder to get pleasure from things you should be getting pleasure from. The pleasure centres in the brain have been captured.”
Robert Enright, professor of educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a pioneer of forgiveness research, says short-term anger is “probably a good thing because it shows: ‘I am a person of worth – people should treat me that way.’” Your anger may be justified and if it does turn into a grudge, that probably comes with enjoyable feelings such as a sense of empowerment or self-protection. “But then there’s this tendency, if we’re not careful, for grudges to turn on us. Grudges are rather deceptive little things. Once they take hold in the heart, they become the unwelcome guest that doesn’t know how to leave.” They can transform into anxiety or blanket mistrust.
It’s natural to have a grudge for a short time – a day or a week – “because sometimes your mind needs to mull over what to do about things,” says Luskin. It can last much longer, he points out, when “things are so painful it takes a while to process.” Finding out your partner is having an affair with your best friend, say, is not something you will get over in a week, “because it disrupts your whole life and somehow you have to figure out how to move on. A grudge needs to be time-limited. It’s just not helpful to keep it going for too long.”
Holding a long-term grudge, Luskin says, “amplifies helplessness. When you have a grudge against something, you’re saying, ‘I don’t really know how to cope with it, and all I can do is get pissed off and say nasty things.’ That teaches you a lack of efficacy and self-confidence – so grudges are a sign of weakness.”
Physically, they can also have an impact, he says. “Every time you think of the thing that upsets you, you have a stress response. You’re filled with adrenaline and cortisol, and those are not good for you after a while, so a grudge is not in your best interest.”
By keeping us tied to a negative experience, says Elena Touroni, consultant psychologist and director of the Chelsea Psychology Clinic, it reinforces those feelings of “anger, resentment or betrayal. This can increase stress levels, disrupt sleep, and even contribute to anxiety or depression. Grudges take up mental space – ruminating over past hurts means we are reliving them rather than moving forward.” They are so powerful, she says, because “grudges often stem from a deep sense of injustice. When we feel wronged, our brains hold on to that memory as a way of protecting us from similar harm in the future.”
Some grudges can last a lifetime, and some people are more inclined to hold them than others. “Those with a high sensitivity to injustice or who struggle with letting go of control may find it harder to move on. Personality traits such as high neuroticism, which is linked to anxiety and emotional instability, or a strong sense of moral rigidity can also make grudges more persistent.”
The clinical psychologist Linda Blair says that grudges can come “from a place of rigidity, that we feel someone has broken our rules. And that’s very narrow because, of course, why should we expect that our rules are universal rules?” Many grudges arise because of unmet expectations. We may also consciously, or subconsciously, fear being in the wrong. “If you could be merciful rather than harsh on yourself, you would say, ‘Yes, I was wrong, and I need to apologise.’”
Enright suggests asking yourself if you are in control of the grudge, or if it is in control of you: “For example, if it is starting to affect sleep or your energy level, or even how you interact with others.” Then, he says, it’s time to think about letting it go – although this is hard in our society, because we are not used to practising forgiveness.
Joe, whose father left his mother for another woman, recognises that his teenage grudge against his stepmother harmed himself and his father in the long run. “I guess it was a legitimate grudge at the start, but, as time went on, I held it for no reason. The grudge just took over.” A few years later, Joe met his stepmother, not long before she died, and realised that he could have been building a relationship with her. “The impact of holding that grudge for so long was that my dad really didn’t get to experience that feeling of having me and her in his life at the same time.”
It was an early lesson, he says, in trying to view a situation from someone else’s perspective, and how that might have changed his own experience. “Everyone has their own way of looking at a situation, and you need to open your mind a bit and understand it’s not black and white. In the first instance, maybe there’s a good reason why you should have a grudge – because you need space, or time, to come to terms with something – but after a while, the longer you hold it, the more bitter and self-defeating it becomes.”
Forgiveness, says Enright, is “a good idea because the one hurt by the grudge in the long term is the one holding it, rather than those towards whom the grudge is directed.” You can decide to let go of the grudge, says Blair. Once you have defined what it is you are angry about, ask yourself if you can change it. “Almost certainly you can’t, because it will be in the past. And if I can’t change it, why am I wasting my energy on it? And then, what else could I be doing with my energy if I didn’t hold it for this problem?”
Ask yourself, she says: if this was happening to a friend of mine, what would I advise? “We’re much more logical and kinder to our friends than we are to ourselves, and that might give you the solution.” She also advises talking it through with a friend, “preferably someone who doesn’t know the person or circumstances that you are holding a grudge against, so they can be more objective. Should that fail, you can, of course, talk it through with a professional.”
Enright adds that you can decide to be “merciful” to someone you believe has wronged you, “without excusing what the other did. People tend to think in either/or ways. Either you forgive and abandon justice, or you stand firm and you don’t forgive under any circumstances until you get justice. But you can have forgiveness and justice grow up together, so that, as you forgive, ask something of the other, and your ask will probably be more gentle, more reasonable and maybe better received.” You may never be reconciled, but that doesn’t mean you have to harbour the grudge in your own life.
Try to start thinking about the person in new ways, so you don’t “think of this person only as the one who engaged in these behaviours against me. Then you see, eventually, do you both have worth as human beings? Once you see that you share commonalities of humanity, and you even share commonalities of being wounded, there’s a tendency to start softening the heart.”
Forgiveness, says Luskin, “is that quality of withdrawing the ability that you gave other people to ruin your day.” He recommends practising relaxation techniques every time you are reminded of the original crime, “so you are not so physically captured by it”. It can be helpful, he says, to remind yourself that you won’t always get what you want in life, or that life can sometimes be difficult. “You have to practise some degree of gratitude so you get used to seeing life as both difficult and good, and that helps to reduce the power of grudges.”
The realisation that life might be even better without my trusty resentments and the warming fantasies of revenge makes me think it might be time to let go of my grudges. But the gulls, they are not forgiven.
