Resentment and Grudges: What They Are and How to Recognize Them

Resentment looks like a simple emotion, but beneath it lies a particular way the mind works — a refusal to accept a certain side of life. Dr. Saulitis describes resentment not as a feeling but as a cognitive process: a person begins to sort incoming information into "acceptable" and "unacceptable," letting through only what already fits their inner picture of the world.

What happens when we feel resentment

When a person holds a grudge, they effectively impose a form of censorship on information. Part of the signals from outside — another person's behaviour, the context of a situation, one's own reactions — gets cut off before the brain has a chance to process it. The result is a split: some things are perceived as absolutely good, others as absolutely bad, with no nuance and no connection to reality.

"To feel resentment is to refuse to accept a certain side of life — it means a person is ignoring some piece of information."

How resentment differs from a healthy response

According to Dr. Saulitis, psychologically healthy perception works differently: everything that happens is acknowledged as real and meaningful — but evaluated according to the specific situation. A psychologically healthy person does not permanently divide the world into "good" and "bad." They understand that the same piece of information can be useful in one context and unhelpful in another. Resentment, by contrast, locks that judgment in place for good.

How to recognize resentment in yourself

A few signs worth paying attention to:

• Selective vision. You notice that you see only one thing in a person or situation — either all good or all bad — and cannot hold both views at once.
• Inner censorship. You catch yourself dismissing explanations that "don't fit," without really considering them.
• Fixation. The memory of the hurt keeps returning, and each time it triggers the same sharp reaction, as if nothing has changed.

"When we feel resentment, we start filtering information selectively — meaning a split is already happening inside the mind."

Why it matters to notice this

The brain makes its best decisions when it receives a full, unfiltered picture. Resentment is precisely that kind of filter — and as long as it is running, a person is responding not to the actual person or situation in front of them, but to their own truncated version of reality.