How To Stop Holding Grudges (And Why You Must)

📅 8 May 2025 • 📖 13 min read

A grudge is like a nail that you hammered into your head. To stop the hurt, you have to get rid of it. But how, and why, should you even let go of your grudges?

Everyone you know has, at some point, hurt you in some way. Some you forgave, and some you broke up with, because they had turned toxic.

Some stayed on because you were late to see the damage they were causing. Relationships with a narcissist are often like that.

When they finally leave, you are left holding a bag of grudges.

That rage and hate keep returning, making you restless to seek vengeance.

How To Stop Holding Grudges?

A grudge is a persistent feeling of ill will or resentment resulting from a past insult or injury. They slowly ruin your peace of mind and ability to fully enjoy your happy moments.

Here are some highly effective ways to let go of your grudges:

1. Forgive And Stop Expecting Compensation

Forgiveness is the most recommended way to release your grudges.

Grudges form when we forget that other people’s mistakes are keeping us bitter.

Forgiveness can remove that bitterness, but it may not be easy. Many people simply reject forgiveness and strongly criticize those who support pardons for offenders.

Like this woman who wrote on a social media post: “I do not believe in forgiveness. Adults make choices, and bad choices have consequences. It’s on them. Not me!”

Forgiving doesn’t make us weak, it sets us free from the bitterness we have been carrying in ourselves.

Psychological studies indicate that forgiveness can lead to better physical health and emotional balance. It is not just about letting go of past hurts but also about restoring inner equilibrium.

Unforgiveness can become a psychological trap that blocks personal growth and happiness. Refusing or being unable to forgive keeps one tied to past hurts, causing ongoing trauma and unhappiness.

Let us understand the idea of forgiveness before deciding to forgive or not.

a. What Forgiveness Is Not:

• Forgiveness does not mean accepting and behaving as if there were never any wrongdoing.
• It does not mean you’ve absolved the perpetrator of their guilt, so they’re free to repeat it.
• It also does not mean you have agreed to heal your relationship with the transgressor.
• Finally, it does not automatically restore your trust in them.
• Forgiving is not forgetting.

Forgiveness is for you. It stops your emotional pain from the violation.

Forgiving your offender, you reject playing the victim’s role and choose your happiness over continuing to stay hurt and miserable.

b. Parts of Forgiveness:

Psychology says, forgiveness has 2 parts that are independent of each other:

1. Letting go of inner anger and resentment (intrapsychic state): The first part is the most essential part of forgiveness. In essence, it means you stop feeling angry or resentful over the transgression.
2. Telling the offending person “I forgive you” (interpersonal act): The second part is secondary. You may choose not to return the relationship to normalcy.

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.” ― Mahatma Gandhi

c. Types of Forgiveness:

There can be 4 types of forgiveness:

1. Hollow forgiveness: when you tell them “I forgive you” but do not actually forgive them in your mind.
2. Silent forgiveness: when you forgive them in your mind but do not let them know.
3. Total forgiveness: when you forgive them in your heart and tell them you have forgiven them.
4. No forgiveness: when you continue holding a grudge against them.

So, even “silent” forgiveness has a value. You can forgive them in your mind without needing to tell them you forgave them. Silent forgiveness eases the stress on your mind while also freeing yourself from the responsibility to help them get over their guilt.

To forgive is to cancel the debt you think your offender owes you. It means you will not seek any revenge, demand any compensation, or expect them to make amends.

2. Understand Your Grudge Better

Grudge is keeping a rent-free tenant in your mental space.

After a while, you might have forgotten the specifics of the crime that sparked your grudge. But you’re still angry, and the grudge has taken on a life of its own.

A few steps to know your grudge better:

a. Find the one you hold the most grudge against.

It is fairly easy, as it’s usually someone you are or were close to. If it doesn’t seem obvious, ask yourself, “Who’s that person that I haven’t forgiven ever for what they did to me?”

b. Think and write all your grudges against them.

It would be obvious to you what still makes you angry and bitter thinking about them. You may or may not go over the entire incident in your mind again.

What’s more crucial is that you ask yourself what scars they left on you.

• Did they destroy your self-confidence and self-respect?
• Did they make you develop a deep distrust of all people?
• Did they replace your positivity and joviality with negativity and anxiety?

Then write down why you still harbor hatred, anger, and bitterness against them. It will help you identify your emotions around your grudge.

c. Change your perspective about the grudge and the offender.

“A grudge seeks revenge. And the best revenge is a life well lived.”

1. One perspective is to think of it as a debt you forgot to collect. Letting go of your grudge against a person could be like forgiving a debt; you stop expecting the debtor to pay it back. The moment you stop expecting it back, you feel relaxed.
2. A compassionate perspective may be to think that the offender might have already suffered enough, or they might still be going through their painful process of guilt.
3. Another viewpoint: unwritten social contracts differ. Their rules of integrity may differ from ours. If we believe a breach occurred, it may not be written in their life rules book. Why expect them to compensate us for letting go of our grudge?

Forgiving a villainous person is like:

“Forgiven. Expelled from my life. No future access permitted.”

d. Replace the emotions whenever hostile memories appear.

When the memory of that transgression surfaces, decide beforehand what you will get yourself busy with to turn the emotion dial.

Tell yourself you will get up and dance your heart out for 5 minutes whenever you remember the hurt.

Pack your bags to visit a new place. Even a trip to an art gallery in your city or to the nearest town might be helpful, as traveling makes us happier.

Forgiving isn’t always forgetting. When you forgive, it does not mean you have to forget their acts of cruelty. You choose not to remember it; there’s a difference.

A grudge keeps the bad thing stuck in your mind. Instead of remembering the bad thing that happened, you choose to think about the other good things that happened in your life.

3. Find A New Passion or Hobby

Unfortunately, most grudges are long-lasting and sometimes stick to us like leeches for life. We need to indulge ourselves in a new passion to get over them.

a. Rediscover your long-ignored talents.

Find an activity that used to make you relaxed and happier, but something you stopped doing. Sit down and think for a while: did you love making simple cartoons to explain something to a group?

Or something else? Pick up that activity. Do it once and see if you want to keep it up or do something else.

Then do it regularly.

b. Write down your greatest positive achievements.

It is an easy activity. What were you praised for, by anyone, in your entire life? Write each of those.

Think of everything that makes you unique among your social circle and family. Write them down.

Find out what things you did that you were particularly proud of. They may not be so important for others, but they were exceptional achievements for you.

Choose one and do it regularly.

c. Start a new course of learning.

If you can’t seem to find anything from your past to interest you, then start something new.

Go ahead and find something you could learn with deep interest. We have listed some open courses on Positive Psychology here.

You might subscribe to a YouTube channel on creativity, history, or science (like Scientific American), and go through the lessons for free.

✶Try learning Stoicism—an ancient Greco-Roman philosophy that is so practical even today.

d. Share your passion with the world.

Once you feel you have learned enough, start to showcase your knowledge and skills to the world. It serves two purposes. One, it helps you hone your expertise. Two, it gives you a chance to give back to the world.

You might start a blog or a podcast or a video channel. Even if there are countless other blogs and podcasts, you can make yours unique.

One podcast we are so much in love with is Scott Barry Kaufman’s The Psychology Podcast.

Once you start expressing yourself to the world, you will gradually grow your own style and voice.

4. Write A Grudge Letter

This is an offbeat way to handle your grudge. But it works. A simple, straightforward process, writing can heal us.

1. Write a letter to the person you are holding a grudge against.
2. Write in detail about how you feel about them in the letter.
3. Do not post it. Burn it, shred it, or destroy it any other way.
4. Do not speak to them or contact them about your forgiveness.
5. Replace their thoughts with positive thoughts and actions.

• How To Deal With Someone Who Has A Grudge Against You?

Why Should You Stop Holding Grudges?

You should stop holding grudges because they store anger and remorse, both unhealthy emotions that keep your stress levels high.

Self-forgiveness allows you to go forward without being held back by the past.

Here are the reasons why you should stop holding grudges:

1. Grudges Drive Unhelpful Actions

Grudges drive us to unleash our rage on the culprit. However, acting on a grudge isn’t helpful because the vengeance obtained isn’t always an equalizer.

Moreover, revenge frequently returns as a bigger source of grudge. Vengeance feeds on itself and often becomes a vicious cycle.

And if the offender pays back the victim, whether by consent or by force, the victim may not feel fully compensated.

2. Grudges Cause Biased Thinking

People who hold grudges tend to engage in black-and-white thinking. This bias is also known as all-or-nothing thinking.

In this bias, people view the world and others’ actions as either all good or all bad , without any room for in-between possibilities.

3. Grudges Stop Progress

Grudges can hold us back from moving on with our lives. They keep our brains trapped in the past, rather than focusing on the positive or moving forward.

Holding a grudge prevents a person from progressing in life because it keeps them frozen in that exact moment when they were victims of wrongdoing.

A grudge can demotivate us from working consistently on a hard task. It can frustrate us into abandoning our goals.

4. Grudges Intensify Pains

A grudge replays the emotional pain when someone hurts us, causing us to relive the negative experience over and over again.

Holding grudges often leads to negative fantasies about our perpetrator’s losses and doom. Now, when the offender doesn’t incur the losses we fantasize about, it makes us even more bitter.

Grudges worsen our emotional agony, particularly when the opponent is too powerful, and can lead to self-harm.

“A grudge is a dangerous weapon to hold because it hurts the owner before it hurts the target.”

5. Grudges Stop Processing of Negative Emotions

Grudges drive us to vent our frustrations on others. But there is an even worse way to deal with it: deny that it even exists.

Denial is the defense mechanism that protects us from a powerful offender’s terror or wrath. By stifling the painful memory, we also gag the accompanying negative emotions.

When we don’t process our difficult emotions but escape or avoid them, it stops us from:

• building resilience (our ability to cope with adversity and adapt to changes), and
• developing flexibility (our ability to respond to difficult situations with actions based on current feedback).

According to a 2021 study, tolerance of negative emotions and confrontation with one’s behavior are both elements of the self-forgiveness process.

FAQs

Further Reading:

• Does forgiveness alleviate depression after being phubbed for emerging adults?
• The mediating roles of guilt- and shame-proneness in predicting self-forgiveness.
• Dispositional self-forgiveness, guilt- and shame-proneness, and the roles of motivational tendencies.
• The cost of self-forgiveness: Incremental theorists spent more money after forgiving the self for past overspending.
• Roads less travelled to self-forgiveness: Can psychological flexibility overcome chronic guilt/shame to achieve genuine self-forgiveness?

Final Words

“A grudge seeks revenge and payback. But revenge doesn’t settle the score and paybacks don’t please either.”

Sometimes, you hold a grudge against yourself.

It’s the memory of times when someone didn’t appreciate your efforts, made you feel useless, and acted as if you didn’t matter.

Self-grudges are quite common (just ask yourself). Unresolved, they can turn into shame and guilt.

“Self-grudge often reshapes itself into guilt. And guilt, by definition, is marked by unpleasant emotions and self-criticism.” — Baumeister & Stillwell, 1994

If you’ve had your fair share of self-grudges, then note that if you can forgive the world, then you can forgive yourself, too.

Let’s close this with a fitting quote by Chloe Neill: ‘The best revenge is a life well lived.’

• • •

√ Also Read: How To Forgive Yourself For Hurting Someone Unintentionally

√ Please share it with someone if you found this helpful.