Holding a grudge against someone is very easy especially when you are wronged. Studies have shown that holding a grudge is nasty for your mental health and physical health. 

Why do people hold grudges in the first place?

From petty issues (why did you have the last slice of pizza) to significant issues (why the hell that hoe is dating my ex?), we all hold grudges in our daily life. It’s like an emotion—an emotion like happiness, sadness, and grief. However, holding grudges for a long time takes an emotional toll on us.
It’s a situation where an incident in question makes way for negative feelings, and those negative feelings stay with us for quite some time.

Holding onto a grudge can significantly impact your mental and physical health.

How Do Grudges Affect Our Mental Health?

Holding grudges can damage both the people, the grudge-holder, and the person against whom the grudge is being held.

Holding on to such a feeling generally means you will be leaving in continuous anger; even though you are not angry all the time, it will be inside you. You will start having this feeling; everyone is trying to wrong you directly or indirectly.

How Do Grudges Affect Our Physical Health?

The negative emotions can impact your physical health, but how do our emotions affect our physical health? Holding a grudge can increase the feeling of your physical pain. Even though your physical pain is not connected to your grudge somehow, your emotions and mental health can badly affect your physical health. Your feelings can rise your blood pressure (when you are angry, there are high chances of facing this). Like mine, I had faced a situation when I had an anxiety attack because I was angry, and according to my therapist, It could have caused me a heart attack, and it is one of the reasons behind my constant migraine – my anger. So when we hold a grudge against someone, we tend to feel angry and bitter about them, which affects our health, and we face many health issues and disorders.

Why is it so easy to hold a grudge or Why is it so hard to let go of the grudge?

It is very hard for us to forget our pain. The constant questions which we have inside us. Why and how? Sometimes we just want to stick in our own opinion. In our own ideologies or just we do not want to forget them. But in the way, when we stop ourselves – we just make things hard for ourselves.

What Are Some Ways To Let Grudges Go?

Since we have discussed how grudges impact our physical and mental health, we need to know how we can let go of resentments? The only way to fix this is to remain positive. You have to understand that staying positive could be challenging, but it is the only way to solve half of your life’s problems. When you are alone and think about one particular person who ruined something for you, you will not live fully. Somewhere deep down, when you stop holding that one link – your grudge toward a specific person will feel nothing about them. When you keep yourself around the people who care about you and understand you – you will see the beauty of your life and the people in it who are making your life better, so there will be no reason to hold onto a grudge against someone who may not care enough.

Forgiveness: Letting go of grudges and moving on

We all know why forgiveness matters. It is not only that forgiveness makes us a better person, but it heals us as well. Forgiveness helps us in building relationships, friendships better. We all are hurt by someone’s action but blaming them for their actions or words can damage us and affect our mood. The experiences can be traumatic, which is why it is hard for people to let go. When you accept someone’s action and why they might have done it – you forgive them. When you forgive someone by your heart, it brings you harmony and peace. Forgive & Forget – we should accept and learn this so that we cannot only move on but also for ourselves.

What are the benefits of forgiving someone?

The benefits of forgiving can be:
It gives another one a chance to make the relationship/friendship better.
It can reduce your stress, and when you are not under pressure – you perform well.
The happiness you have not felt for a long time – suddenly you can feel that you will eat, sleep which you have not been doing for a long time.

Forced forgiveness is never the answer.

Do you know what is worse than someone putting on a situation when you are holding a grudge? Forced forgiveness. You can not force someone to forgive you. Just because someone is angry and asks for forgiveness without letting them feel and heal, that will not undo anything. To make sure nothing goes wrong. Do not push anyone for forgiveness. They will let go when they want to – you or anyone else can not make them stop feeling the hurt. A person has all the right to feel what they want to, and if you do not accept what is hurting you, you will pile up all the problems inside yourself. Instead, show your emotions and be vulnerable toward them. Storing your feelings will only make your mental health worst.
If you need to ask for forgiveness, you need to make sure the person is empty. They have vented out entirely, and now they can listen to you, and you can apologize. Give them a choice to forgive you.

Final thoughts

The point behind this article was to tell you why holding a grudge is your loss and how you can heal yourself. Healing matters a lot in life because we do not know what the future holds. If we forget about our grudges – it is only for our benefit. It is up to you if you want to forgive or not, but life has better things to offer. It has much more happiness than one small grudge.

It’s completely up to you to decide if you want to forgive the offending person or not. We are no one to decide on your behalf. But remember one thing, holding grudges against another person have never helped anyone under any circumstances. If you are completely unable to forget/forgive, do move on. There are wonderful things in your life to concentrate about, instead of some offender ruining things for you.