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by John Welwood

  Since young children are so totally dependent on their parents, they need to see them as good. Seeing the parents as bad would undermine the child’s sense of safety and security. So children usually drop their experience of the frustrating, hurtful mother out of awareness, and it falls into the shadow of unconsciousness (from whence it emerges in fairy tales as the wicked witch or evil stepmother, or on the male side, as the malevolent giant or ogre). This is how children protect their connection with the good mother—the one who feeds and cares for them—and maintain their equilibrium.

  But whenever any aspect of our experience falls into unconsciousness, it takes on a life of its own, growing in the darkness like mold silently spreading through a basement. Thus the repressed sense of the frustrating or neglectful parent eventually blossoms into a more generalized sense of the bad other—the other who cannot love you as you are, who threatens to hurt or betray you and therefore cannot be trusted. In this way, the bad other takes up permanent residence in the shadows of the mind.

  This explains one of the most disturbing and perplexing experiences that crop up in intimate relationships: One moment two lovers can feel sweet and loving, and then, with the exchange of but a few words, they can be at each other’s throats. How can the honeymoon glow of new love dissolve so quickly into mutual acrimony and recrimination? How can two people who claim to love each other more than anyone else in the world turn against each other so suddenly, reacting with violent aggression or fright, as though they were the worst of enemies? This instant enmity has shaken many a lover into wondering whether he or she has gone stark, raving mad or whether the beloved is actually a Jekyll-Hyde monster. What is even more mystifying is that these flare-ups are often triggered by the most trivial incidents, such as a partner’s showing up ten minutes late.

  These explosions of rage and blame happen when the bad-other image and its painful associations suddenly emerge into consciousness and become projected on the one we love. It’s as though our full-time security guard keeps a Most Wanted Criminal poster on the wall and is constantly scanning the environment for signs of this villain. So whenever our partner acts, speaks, or treats us in a way that even slightly fits this profile, it triggers a deeply submerged sense of alarm, and we shift into fighting for all we’re worth.

  Suddenly we see those we care about as the living embodiment of everyone who has ever hurt or rejected us: “I knew I never should have trusted you. You’re just like all the rest. I’ll show you that you can’t treat me like this.” And even worse, as we retaliate with blame or aggression, this sets off our partner’s alarms. He or she then reacts to us in turn with defensiveness or aggression, which further justifies our bad-other story. And the conflict escalates from there.

  A woman has had a stressful day at work, and that evening happens to be the time her lover chooses to reach out to her in a highly intimate way. When she doesn’t respond in the way he had hoped, he sees her as an embodiment of all the unresponsive people in his life, starting with his mother, who were too caught up in their own world to show interest in him. So he suddenly goes cold and says something nasty. He has become so swept up in reactive emotion that he doesn’t realize he’s not even seeing his partner; instead, he’s projecting an image of the bad other onto her, based on his old wound. In truth, she may care deeply about him and their potential for greater intimacy. But he can’t see that right now because his ancient bad-other picture is occupying the screen of his awareness.

  Road rage is another common instance of how old grievances against the bad other can spring to life full-blown at a moment’s notice. Why else would perfectly nice people suddenly turn into monsters behind the wheel? The faceless driver who cuts in front of you represents everyone who hasn’t treated you with caring or kindness. And as you lean on the horn or yell obscenities, you want to let this person know you’re not going to take it anymore.

  A therapist I know told a funny story about driving to work and taking a parking space that another driver coming from the other direction had been eyeing. The other driver started honking his horn and then leaned out the window to make an obscene gesture, when he suddenly saw that the person he was yelling at was his therapist. Needless to say, they had an interesting session that afternoon.

  Modern warfare, like road rage, is another vehicle for enacting ancient grievances about feeling mistreated. Especially when war is waged with technology, with little person-to-person contact, it becomes easy to project the bad other onto an enemy people that have no face. In demonizing the enemy, war draws popular support from the grievance mentality smoldering in the populace at large. What underlies all the war rhetoric is: “I don’t feel important; I don’t feel properly recognized, honored, or respected. I haven’t been given my due. I’m angry about that, and I’m going to show those bastards they can’t push me around.” In belligerence against other nations, a people may use bombs and missiles to compensate for a deep sense of powerlessness, helplessness, and frustration that, if we trace it all the way back, is rooted in the wound of the heart.

  In personal relationships, subconscious bad-other images cause people to overemphasize and overreact to the ways their partner is not attuned to them, while minimizing or overlooking the ways the other does love or care for them. Often there is one aggrieved partner who tends to complain, while the browbeaten partner tends to withdraw to ward off the onslaught. This was what was happening with Dan and Nancy.

  After years of defending himself against Nancy’s complaint that he didn’t love her, Dan learned through our work together to show up and be more attentive and present with her. I have witnessed this countless times—the withdrawn partner finally coming forward to meet the aggrieved partner in a beautiful fresh moment that I often find quite moving. I sit there feeling, “Wow, that’s so great. He [she] finally took the risk and showed up.” But then, to my dismay, the aggrieved partner hardly seems to notice!

  Once when Dan made himself emotionally available to Nancy, she held firmly to her grievance: “I don’t trust this. I can’t imagine it will last when we leave your office.” While her concern was understandable, she was also bringing it up in a way that kept Dan at bay, thereby justifying her complaint.

  This is what is tragic about the mood of grievance: It shuts down the channel through which love could enter into us, cutting us off from its healing and regenerative power. In one way or another, many of us suffer from the same problem as Nancy: “I don’t feel loved” eventually hardens into “I don’t trust love enough to let it in.” Opening to love feels too threatening, and we don’t believe it’s safe to do so. The final step in sealing ourselves into this box is to cover up our emotional vulnerability with blame or condemnation: “You don’t really love me. . . . You don’t know how to love. . . .”

  Thus the mood of grievance is totally self-defeating, not only shutting us down to love but also driving others, who are the target of our complaint, away. In treating Dan as the bad other who couldn’t be there for her, Nancy triggered his own inner freak-out about being unworthy and unlovable. This brought up shame and self-blame, making it harder for him to be open to her. In that contracted condition, he also had little to give. And the less he could give, the more Nancy felt justified in her grievance. Meanwhile, his bad-other projection on Nancy—that she was impossible—made it harder for her to soften as well. This is how grievances invariably become self-fulfilling prophecies.

  One American psychiatrist, Vamik Volkan, has studied how this mind-set operates in certain ethnic groups and nations that define themselves in terms of a victim identity, based on historic wrongs and oppressions. Volkan uses the term “chosen trauma” to describe this phenomenon. Looking at the world through the lens of their chosen trauma, such groups are continually on the lookout for dangers and threats from some other ethnic group. This makes them act in defensive and aggressive ways that generate fear and animosity in the other group, which then reacts in hostile ways, thereby confirming the first group’s view
of the world as unfriendly.

  In a similar way, we all harbor our own chosen trauma—about not getting enough love. And our story about the bad other who has wronged and deprived us generates fear, suspicion, resentment, distrust, or aggression that inevitably pushes others away and undermines our relationships, thereby reconfirming the old belief that we’re not loved or lovable. Thus we keep reenacting the child’s original love trauma by continually generating fresh evidence that the world is indeed a loveless place.

  Grievance Run Amok

  One of the most insidious things about grievance is that it takes on a life of its own and poisons everything, cutting us off from the joy and beauty of life. What started out as a hurt feeling turns into a generalized grudge against the world.

  My mother provided me with an up-close study in how grievance becomes generalized into a whole way of being. Although she had a big heart and was basically very kind and generous, she had had a very hard childhood, and as she grew older, she began to dwell in grievance as a way of life. In the last half of her life, she always had something to complain vociferously about, whether it was politicians, the weather, the food she ate, her relatives, her doctors, or the apartment in which she lived. At a moment’s notice she would launch into long, bitter tirades about any of these things. At these times there was no reasoning with her, and she would brush aside any of my attempts to provide a more balanced, less negative view of things.

  Toward the end of her life, when she was being taken care of by home health aides, many of whom were immigrants, she would complain about how awful it was that there were so many immigrants in America. Yet whenever one of them showed up to help, she was actually quite kind and sweet to them. There was one Jamaican woman whom my mother was particularly fond of and grateful toward. I saw that in the moment of relating to someone personally, her heart could be present in a direct, pure way, even though at other times she might include these same people in her tirades against the bad other. Grievance had become so woven into her identity and psyche that it had taken on a life of its own, remaining split off from her awareness and even from her actual behavior.

  In observing my mother, as well as the tendencies I inherited from her, I saw how grievance can take on a life of its own. It doesn’t matter whom the grudge is directed toward, because the target can change with the circumstances; it becomes a “movable grievance.” A few years before my mother formed her grievance against immigrants, she had one against gays and lesbians, and people on welfare before that, and men with long hair before that. As grievance generalizes, it finally becomes a complaint about the way things are and The Injustice Of It All, which winds up isolating us from life altogether.

  The Investment in Grievance

  Given that grievance exacts such a heavy toll, what makes it so compelling and hard to let go of? Wanting to explore this more fully, I brought this question to the students in my group the week following their exploration of how the stress in their lives was based in old grievances arising out of their core wound.

  “Now that we’ve looked at the painful and destructive consequences of grievance,” I said, “I’d like you to check something else out. See if you are willing to let go of your grievance. Please be honest. Who’s willing to do that right now?” There was silence. Not a single person raised a hand! I said, “Good. Thank you for your honesty. Before we can find a way to let our grievances go, it’s essential to acknowledge how attached we are to them. We need to understand our whole investment in grievance and see exactly why we hold on to it so tightly.”

  I then asked them to pair up and explore with each other what was good about holding on to grievance. In other words, what purpose did it serve, what was the benefit or payoff it provided, what did they get out of maintaining it? Here are some of the answers people came up with.

  “Holding on to my grievance gives me a sense of power, which protects me from feeling vulnerable. It’s a way of standing up for myself and defending myself from being hurt, disappointed, or rejected again. It keeps me vigilant against recurrences of harm.”

  “Holding on to a grudge lets me feel right and righteous. It’s as if I have my own private jihad. Giving it up would be a way of letting the people who hurt me off the hook and letting them walk all over me.”

  “Grievance bolsters a familiar sense of ‘me’—I know myself in this place. It gives me a sense of identity. Even though it doesn’t actually feel good, I’d rather live with this familiar discomfort than let the grievance go and feel the discomfort of stepping into the unknown. Letting it go would undermine my whole identity.”

  “It’s a way of saying ‘poor me’ and feeling sorry for myself. So it becomes a way of trying to get some sympathy. It’s a cry for help.”

  “Holding on to a grievance is a way of taking care of myself, of soothing myself by shifting my attention away from the wound. In this sense, it’s self-affirming.”

  “It’s a way of bonding with the members of my family, who all harbor some complaint against the world. My family were immigrants who were mistreated in Europe for many generations and again when they first arrived in America. Voicing our grievances is a way of licking our wounds together. Being victims together is a membership card in the family.”

  “It provides an organizing principle—a unifying story about exploitation, oppression, haves versus have-nots, and fighting to get what you need—which gives me a worldview, a sense of what I need to fight for. This provides a sense of order and purpose in the midst of chaos.”

  “My grievance is bound up with feelings of being abandoned by my father, who left our family when I was young. Oddly enough, holding on to it helps me maintain some emotional connection with him. I can see how my anger and resentment are a way of trying to hold on to him.”

  “Shifting the blame onto others allows me not to have to take responsibility for my own problems.”

  No wonder it’s so hard to let go of our grievance and forgive. These statements show the powerful functions it can serve in the psyche. If we have a grievance ready at hand, it can protect us from feeling vulnerable. We can avoid putting ourselves in situations like the one that originally hurt us. Hardening around grievance gives us a certain righteous strength: “I’ll show you that you can’t mess with me. I’ll show you I’m someone to be reckoned with.” It seems to provide a place to stand.

  Furthermore, as a way of making others bad or wrong, grievance is also a way of trying to feel better about ourselves. That was why my mother indulged in complaining about people whom she actually liked in person. Complaining about the bad other let her feel righteous, and thus good about herself. Criticizing others’ faults was a way she could access some power, to compensate for how small and helpless she felt inside. It gave her a sense of being somebody in a world where she felt totally at sea.

  All of this sheds light on why it is often hard to let ourselves receive love even when it’s available. To let love in requires us to melt—to dissolve our hardened defenses and let down our guard. Receiving love is more threatening than giving it because receptivity requires opening, which feels vulnerable. So even though we may cry out for love, as Nancy did with Dan, when love is actually available, we often sabotage the relationship, shut down in fear, or provoke a conflict that will justify our grievance. Then we can feel safe again, righteously justifying our shutdown as a way to protect ourselves from the bad other.

  No wonder nations so quickly demand an eye for an eye and march off to war to settle disputes. If we as individuals are not ready to give up our personal grievances, how can we condemn our leaders for waging war, since we nurture the same seeds of violence within ourselves? To the extent that we indulge in the mood of grievance, each of us is implicated in the strife that dominates our planet.

  This is why Jesus’s injunction to turn the other cheek is such an important teaching: It strikes at the heart of the grievance mentality, which is the core of the defensive ego, around which our sense of identity and security is
built.

  When I present these ideas about grievance in workshops, people often ask, “What about legitimate grievances that have to be addressed, such as social injustice or oppression, or abusive relationships?” Certainly there are legitimate wrongs and injustices that require attention and action. However, if we come from the mood of grievance, insisting on our virtue while condemning the badness of those who wrong us, we are unlikely to address these concerns in a constructive way that leads to true peace and justice.

  The Dalai Lama, for example, has as much to be aggrieved about as anyone in the world. As the exiled leader of Tibet, which was brutally invaded and occupied by China in the 1950s, he has witnessed the desecration and destruction of all that he held most dear: his people, his culture, the free practice of his religion, and the land and wildlife of Tibet. The Chinese occupation has been responsible for the torture and murder of up to two million Tibetans, and this living holocaust continues to this day.

  The Dalai Lama has worked tirelessly to redress this situation, but he has made a choice not to live in a mind-state of grievance, bitterness, or resentment. Far from it, he lives and breathes joy and directs compassion toward the Chinese invaders, out of concern for the great harm they are doing themselves by acting so hatefully. He knows that the mood of grievance confers no benefit whatsoever, for himself or for anyone else. And he makes an all-important distinction: He recognizes evil actions without regarding the people who perform them as intrinsically bad. He understands that people are usually unconscious and therefore helpless in the face of the karmic forces that propel their hurtful behavior. His understanding accords with that of Jesus’s words on the Cross: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”