The Truth About Resentment: How It Builds in Your Body and What to Do About It

Hello, hello my love. Let’s go full nerd today, in the best possible way. I want to walk you through something I call the equation of resentment, explain what’s actually happening in your nervous system, and show you how to break free from the resentment cycle with tools rooted in nervous system safety, not guilt, shame, or hustle.

The Resentment Equation: A Formula You’ve Probably Been Living

Here’s the math:

Unmet needs + self-abandonment × time = resentment and rage

This is what happens when:

• You push through exhaustion instead of resting

• You say yes when your body screams no

• You don’t ask for support because you “don’t want to be a burden”

• You hide your needs to keep the peace

Time turns those small self-abandonments into quiet rage. The kind that flares when someone chews too loudly or asks for just one more thing. It doesn’t come out of nowhere. It comes from you not mattering to you over and over again.

What Resentment Really Is: More Than Just an Emotion

Most people think resentment is just a feeling. But it’s also a physiological state. Every time you override your body’s no, you train your nervous system to tolerate what feels intolerable.

Eventually, your system starts reacting to everyday stress like it’s a five-alarm fire. The cost? Exhaustion, anxiety, poor sleep, gut issues, chronic pain, and emotional disconnection.

Your Body Is Keeping Score

Your nervous system has a built-in surveillance system called neuroception. It’s constantly scanning for safety and threat, whether or not you’re aware of it.

When you constantly say yes out of fear or habit, your body takes notes. It registers each act of self-abandonment as a survival threat. Over time, your system gets hypervigilant. It starts interpreting things like disappointment or disapproval as danger.

And that’s where resentment is born. Not just in your mind, but in your cells.

Why Saying “Just Set Boundaries” Doesn’t Work

If your body doesn’t feel safe saying no, all the advice in the world won’t help. You’ll keep saying yes when you mean no, smiling through the dread, and resenting everyone around you.

Why? Because your nervous system has been conditioned to keep you safe by keeping others happy. That’s why true healing has to start with nervous system awareness, not surface-level self-help.

Resentment and Emotional Outsourcing

Emotional outsourcing is what I call the people-pleasing, perfectionist, codependent patterns that keep you looking outside yourself for safety and worth. When you live this way, resentment becomes your default setting.

It’s like trying to balance your emotional budget on other people’s approval. It might feel okay for a moment, but it creates deep instability over time and your body pays the price.

How to Begin Healing from Resentment

You don’t have to overhaul your life overnight. That’s not how real change works. Instead, we take kid steps which are gentle, doable shifts that start retraining your nervous system to feel safe honoring your own needs.

Try this:

• When someone makes a request, pause

• Gently look around your space to orient to the present moment

• Ask yourself, “What is my body saying right now?”

• Try responding with “Let me think about that” before giving an answer

• Set a timer (15 min, an hour, 24 hours, whatever gives you space)

That pause is where resentment begins to heal. That’s the moment you tell your nervous system: I matter too.

My Book Can Help You Break the Resentment Cycle

If this is resonating hard, my upcoming book End Emotional Outsourcing is here to help. It launches September 30 and is filled with tools to help you break the resentment cycle from the inside out.

When you pre-order, you’ll receive:

• A set of guided journal prompts to reconnect with your inner voice

• A 45-minute nervous system workshop with me

• Exclusive pre-order bonuses only available until launch day

Pre-order here to give your body the support it’s been craving.

You Don’t Have to Stay Stuck in Resentment

Resentment doesn’t make you a bad person. It makes you a person who’s been disconnected from your own needs for too long. But you can reconnect. You can learn to listen to your body. You can start honoring what you want before your mouth says yes.

And when you do that, something beautiful happens.

You stop resenting the people you love.
You start making choices from truth, not obligation.
You become deeply available for connection because you’re no longer running on empty.

Your nervous system is ready for a new story. One where your needs matter. One where resentment isn’t your default, but a signal. A turning point. A chance to choose differently.

Hand on your heart, love. You are safe. You are held. You are loved.
And when one of us heals, we help heal the world.