How to stop being bitter – proven method step by step –

When you become upset or outraged by a situation, it is normal for you to feel anger, an emotion that temporarily invades you but that you eventually overcome.

But if you don’t do it and assume anger as part of your life, you move on to a new stage of negative emotions that is more difficult to overcome: bitterness.

Bitterness is also known as reconcomio, or resentment, and occurs when anger is added to a feeling of helplessness, which leads the person to a dead end in which it is easier to hate than to move forward.

Therefore, it is much worse than anger, because it clouds those who feel it and makes them think that everything is out of their control. This makes it impossible to find new solutions to problems, and plunges you into conformist behavior.

And while it is true that there are things that you cannot change, the truth is that you will always have the option to cope with life and move forward.

Read our guide to know if you are the toxic person in your life

Why is it necessary to overcome bitterness?

A person somatizes their emotions when they are so intense that they cause physical problems in the body. If you have positive emotions, you will most likely have better health or at least a stronger body; But if it’s the other way around, you can start to suffer from illnesses just because of what you feel.

In the case of bitterness, constantly feeling it can cause trauma-like symptoms: insomnia, fatigue, and decreased libido. In the long term, it can undermine your self-esteem, increase your insecurities, and even develop an inability to maintain stable, healthy relationships.

All of this has a direct impact on personal relationships and your work performance.

Now do you understand why bitterness is so harmful?

12 steps to overcome bitterness

If you feel that you have been becoming a bitter person, apply these tips to overcome that state and leave your frustration behind:

1. Reevaluate yourself

Maintaining bitterness depends largely on the empathy others feel for your situation. Many times, when telling or explaining the reasons for this emotion, we exaggerate the details a little to make our feelings more understandable.

Some people get bitter about totally irrelevant situations, but they don’t see them objectively and that’s why they sulk in their annoyance. So take some time to evaluate as impartially as possible what you feel and the true causes of the bitterness.

Keeping a diary in which you record your feelings or going to therapy with a specialist are excellent ways to keep track of yourself. You have to ask yourself: is this situation worth feeling this way? Is my problem really so important that I should give up my happiness? What is really bothering me?

Many people harbor bitterness in their lives from situations, people or things that they don’t even really like or want, and they lose friendships or good times because of those emotions.

Possibly you have been victimizing yourself in front of your friends, without realizing that the situation that caused your bitterness is complete nonsense.

2. Take a break from problems

Pause the story of what caused you bitterness. I know that many times you may feel like you need to tell it over and over again, but avoid doing it unless it is with someone in charge of helping you, or because you are really looking for positive ways to handle the situation.

If not, then keep quiet. If you repeat and repeat in your mind the story of what makes you uncomfortable, you will always be victimizing yourself.

Learn to break those negative thought patterns, and do not allow your mind to wander into those energies constantly.

3. Take responsibility for what happens to you

When you victimize yourself about the negative things that have happened to you, it is common for you not to recognize if you were responsible for what hurt you.

There are times when things happen and you can’t help it, like when a loved one dies. But there are also others in which you were also responsible and that is perhaps what causes your constant annoyance.

Maybe your partner was unfaithful to you, but you saw many signs and refused to accept reality. It is likely that you were scammed, but that you did not do the market research or were rigorous enough to take care of your resources. Or maybe they warned you about that harmful relationship, which you still insisted on getting into.

Recognizing our responsibilities frees us from unhealthy feelings and allows us to forgive ourselves to move forward. It is our decisions that free us from guilt, sadness and any emotion that can plunge you into despair.

4. Don’t spy

When your bitterness is caused by or related to another person, it is common for us to start spying on them every day, to find out what is happening in their life and if they are doing well.

One of the defects of social networks is that they allow us multiple tools to literally know everything that happens in a person’s life.

The problem with this is that spying only feeds the obsession with the other, which can become addictive. And the truth is that it does not contribute anything and is rather a torture for you, since the most likely thing is that you will end up discovering that it is going well, and then your bitterness will increase.

If you want to overcome your bad experiences, stay away from social media and anyone who enjoys other people’s disagreements. Only in this way will you be able to focus on yourself to regain your self-esteem and control over the situation.

You will be able to get rid of conflicting loves, despotic bosses and insolent people, if you stop spying on what they do.

5. Face your fears

Sometimes bitterness is not real, but a disguise for fear of change or failure.

It is likely that the negativity you carry is nothing more than a load of excuses to close off the possibility of moving forward for fear of failing.

For example, perhaps you say to yourself: “I won’t be able to study anymore because I lose all my savings” but the truth is that you haven’t done it because you are afraid of the challenge of increasing your training. You then put on a shell of bitterness about your financial problems, when they are just an excuse.

6. Forgive and move forward

If you feel ready, there is nothing better than forgiving to truly overcome your problems and leave bitterness behind.

But yes, only do it if you really feel it. Because if you pay lip service, out of obligation or to look good, your emotions will remain the same and your negative view of life may even worsen.

7. Forgive yourself

An important part of forgiving is doing it with yourself. If you don’t, you will always carry on your shoulders the burden of your mistakes and, even worse, your reproaches for having made them.

When adverse feelings plague you day after day, overcoming a problem becomes almost impossible.

Seek professional support, practice yoga or meditation, to help you. Faith can also be an important support. Self-understanding and compassion is the key to completely overcoming bitterness.

Remember that emotional burdens are like small wounds that you cause to yourself, which get worse if you don’t treat them in time.

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8. Focus on the present

Bitterness usually takes you out of your current reality to focus on a past of mistakes to blame, or on a future of things you long to have but have not yet achieved.

Stop fantasizing about revenge or obsessing about your mistakes, and start living in the now and what you need to move forward.

Focus on your present, setting goals to achieve and purposes to change your situation. Instead of focusing on what happened or will happen, create new realities with your actions.

9. Look for new emotions

Bitterness fades when you become interested in new things that motivate you.

Explore what activities you like and connect with them. You will see that even the most difficult problems disappear when you do what you really enjoy.

10. Set small goals every day

When you are mired in bitterness it is very easy to lose focus on good things and feel that everything you do turns out, or will turn out, necessarily wrong.

A good way to overcome that feeling of constant failure is to set small daily goals that you can achieve and thus gradually give yourself the impetus to continue growing.

You can start by making a list of your tasks for the day, including doing a short meditation, reading a book, or simply looking for new schools to learn a language.

Being able to accomplish these tasks, which are simple and part of the routine, will help you feel like you are back in control of your life. But they should be simple objectives, because if you set very ambitious goals that you cannot achieve, you will end up increasing the feeling of failure and then fueling your bitterness.

11. Seek another perspective

Bitterness clouds the mind and easily convinces you that you have no alternatives or solutions to your problems. It feeds and at the same time increases your frustrations and fears.

It is important that in those moments you remember that bitterness cannot control you, and force yourself to see things from another perspective. You can try to think about things differently, imagining that situation seen from a different person and external to what is happening.

This practice allows the brain to look for new and creative solutions to the problem. This way you will be able to observe what is bothering you from all angles and be able to take action instead of just becoming more bitter.

12. Seek help

Battling bitterness can be very difficult. Turn to your family or friends if you need to vent your problems and really want to seek help.

And if their advice does not help you, or is insufficient, then seek professional help from a specialist psychologist.

Psychological therapy or help with a counselor is vital in these cases, because it will give you the right tools to overcome any inconvenience and feel liberated.

Conclusion

Bitterness poisons little by little, just as negativity does. Most people find it uncomfortable to live with someone who sees everything as negative, or with someone who thinks from anger and revenge.

That is why bitterness usually also brings isolation, and causes a cycle of negativity in our lives. Life is too short to allow past situations to affect your ability to smile and be a better person, so don’t let it eat away at you and prevent you from being happy.

Do you have a different way to let go of bitterness? We invite you to share it with us in our comments box. Likewise, we would like to know if this information has been useful to you. If so, remember that you can spread it on your social networks so that your friends also receive it.

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