Is Rancor Bad For Your Health?

Who hasn’t felt disadvantaged at some point? Who hasn’t given in to rancor at some point because of this? Maybe a friend once mistreated you or gossiped about you behind your back. Maybe you just needed someone and he put you at the very bottom of his priority list.

Maybe it was a teacher who didn’t recognize how much effort you put into something, your parents who didn’t understand how difficult it is to grow up in this era, or your partner who fell in love with someone else. Everyone has felt disadvantaged at some point, that’s for sure.

Emotions and health

It would be great if negative emotions were accompanied by some sort of warning sign. It would also be great if schools taught children to control their negative emotions.

These can be very dangerous. There is enough evidence that negative emotions that are not well controlled are often a huge threat to our health.

For example, depression is associated with measurable changes in how your immune system functions:

• People with clinical depression and those who often act hostile are at greater risk of heart attack than people without depression.
• Anxiety also seems to play a big role in heart problems. This also plays a role in delaying the recovery process after possible operations for this.
• In addition, depression seems to increase the risk of osteoporosis – or bone loss – especially in women.

• In men, depression can lead to reduced muscle strength after 3 years.

What is rancor?

Rancid is a word that encompasses many feelings that many will have experienced at one time or another. It is anger, a desire for revenge. It holds you in its grip and chances are you will hold it just as tight. This makes it hard to let go once you feel it.

A certain degree of stubbornness therefore plays a role in this. Thus it becomes resistant to our attempts to relieve the feeling. People cling to resentment because they have been treated unfairly. Someone has failed to live up to their expectations or someone has betrayed them. They feel rejected by the person who hurt them.

The person experiencing resentment is often the one who can remember all the details of an argument. These people need a lot of time to process what has happened and then forgive the other person and move on with life.

How does resentment affect your health?

To analyze this topic, Witvliet et al. (2002) studied the emotional and physiological consequences of resentment. To do this, they conducted an experiment.

• They asked university students to cite a number of events where they felt disadvantaged by others. In most cases, this refers to friends, partners, brothers, sisters or parents. This often involved rejection, lies or insults.
• The researchers then collected all the information about these events and physiological data. This data included heart rate, blood pressure, tension in the facial muscles and the electrical conductivity – electrical conductivity – of the skin.

• Researchers also collected data about the fantasies of the participants. To do this, they asked the participants to imagine every possible reaction to the aforementioned event. These reactions could be based on either resentment or forgiveness.

How we think affects our health

Is it possible that two different approaches to the same situation can change the mood and physiology of the participants? The answer to that is “yes.”

• When the participants became more forgiving in their fantasies, they felt more empathy and mercy.
• However, when they felt more resentful, they became vindictive and reported more negative, hostile, and sad feelings. The researchers also observed more tension in the forehead muscles. They also noticed that the heart rate, blood pressure and electrical conductivity of the skin were increased. This last fact seemed to indicate that the autonomic nervous system was becoming more active. The autonomic nervous system plays a major role in our perception of risk and danger.

• Their latest discovery was an even bigger surprise. Once the experiment was primed, they asked the participants to relax. The people who had particularly clung to their resentment were unable to do so. Their increased physiological activity made it difficult to let go of this feeling. As a result, these participants felt tense for a while.

So rancor is dangerous

What are the implications of the results of this study? Of course, it’s not so bad if we sometimes feel hostile. This will have no adverse effects on our health. However, people who can never let go of hurt feelings and the past will only hurt themselves further in the long run.

By maintaining your anger and thus your physiological reactions to it, you make yourself vulnerable to the negative consequences. Think of the aforementioned consequences for your cardiovascular system and your immune system.

Therefore, holding onto grudges can be dangerous to your health. Even if it isn’t always easy, forgiveness for those who have hurt us can reduce our stress and improve well-being.

We can compare the effects of resentment to lifting a sack of bricks:  it is a burden and will eventually be bad for our health. Therefore, you must put your own well-being first and let go of your resentment.