An overlap between resentment and trauma: a fictionalized
client experienced restlessness and boredom and sometimes drank when her
boyfriend left her for the evening to do almost anything fun. Tennis. Poker
night. Bowling. The frequency of this was not great and she was sober most of
the time. When we explored the experience, we made a direct connection to her
being left alone as a child while her single mother drank at the local tavern.
Because of the helplessness involved, I treated this as a trauma and utilized
the “thera-tapper .” Not only did the process not reduce the emotion we had activated, she became more and more aware of how much resentment she had. This, of course, could be dealt with by other means. The lightbulb that went on for me, as a clinician, was that trauma and
resentment have one major element in common. Reliving the earlier experience. And both trigger their fair share of craving and relapse.
