Chapter 1
The Transformative Power of Gratitude in Difficult Relationships
Have you ever found yourself trapped in a relationship that feels like a prison of resentment? Perhaps it's with a parent who failed you, a colleague who undermined you, or a friend who betrayed your trust. Kerry Howells' "Untangling You" offers a revolutionary perspective: gratitude isn't just for the good times-it's the very tool we need to navigate our most challenging relationships. This isn't your typical "just be grateful" self-help book. Instead, it provides a nuanced roadmap for addressing the complex emotions that keep us stuck in cycles of pain and disappointment. The book has garnered attention from mental health professionals and relationship experts alike, with Brene Brown calling it "essential reading for anyone seeking healthier relationships." Its approach resonates particularly in our current era of polarization, offering practical wisdom for bridging divides that seem insurmountable.
Chapter 2
Why Gratitude Matters in Our Most Difficult Relationships
Why should we bother being grateful toward people who have hurt us? This question sits at the heart of Howells' work. She doesn't suggest we should be equally close with everyone, but rather that unresolved relationships eat away at us subconsciously. Take Sarah, whose friendship with flatmate Dave deteriorated over household chores, causing her significant distress while he remained oblivious. When Sarah's father suggested gratitude might help, she was horrified-she needed her pain acknowledged first, not just advice to be grateful.
Finding personal reasons to approach relationships differently is crucial. Your motivation for practicing gratitude will be influenced by your values, faith, gender, race, and personality. Howells' own motivation came from wanting integrity with her students when teaching gratitude, and believing gratitude contributes to a better world.
Gratitude naturally invites a broader perspective where we recognize our interdependence. When we thank someone, we're acknowledging that without their gift, something would be missing from our lives. Research demonstrates gratitude's powerful role in building relationships. Sociologist Georg Simmel called it "the moral memory of mankind," the bridge connecting humans, without which society would break apart.
Gratitude also uniquely amplifies our awareness of beneficial events and the good in others. Research by Phillip Watkins shows that evolutionarily, "bad is stronger than good"-negative events have more psychological impact than positive ones. However, gratitude helps orient us toward seeing beyond what we consider bad, providing protection against long-term resentment.
When we practice gratitude, we feel calmer. It gives us a sense of abundance, focusing on what we already have rather than striving for more. It brings us fully into the present moment, freeing us from worrying about past or future. By practicing gratitude consciously, we take greater control of our responses, realizing we can't change others but can change ourselves.
The benefits extend to our physical health too. An oncology professor observed that cancer patients with grateful attitudes managed treatments better than those harboring resentment. Clinical studies show gratitude protects against depression, anxiety, stress and trauma while improving sleep, heart health, immune function, and reducing fatigue. Conversely, resentment can contribute to ulcers, gastric disorders, cardiac disease, headaches, joint pain, and insomnia.
Importantly, gratitude must be non-reciprocal-we don't practice it to change others or make them feel grateful toward us. Our actions may impact others in ways we never know or discover much later. Gratitude's important role is illuminating where it's absent, helping identify issues that need addressing.
Chapter 3
Recognizing Resentment's Grip on Our Lives
Resentment hides in plain sight, making it difficult to recognize within ourselves. Unlike more socially acceptable negative emotions like anger or frustration, resentment often carries shame, exposing vulnerabilities we'd rather not acknowledge. We might be caught in what Howells calls "the sticky web of gratitude," torn between feeling we should be grateful to someone while simultaneously harboring resentment toward them.
Gratitude has a remarkable ability to illuminate where it's missing, particularly where resentment resides. We notice this when attempting to express gratitude but finding it difficult because of underlying pain. Resentment naturally stays hidden-we might fear admitting it because it contradicts our self-image as positive people or threatens to upset relationships.
Consider Jeremy, who dreaded visiting his mother Gwen in her nursing home because their conversations inevitably turned to her 30-year resentment over her husband leaving her. Her bitterness consumed her identity, poisoning relationships with family and caregivers alike. Despite Jeremy's attempts to remind her of good memories, Gwen's resentment obliterated any possibility of gratitude.
Philosopher Amelie Rorty describes resentment as feeding on the past, "chewing over painful memories" until "their very bitterness acquires a savoury taste." The word itself derives from the Old French "resentir," meaning "the re-experiencing of a strong feeling." When we can't confront someone directly, our sense of injustice becomes lodged as resentment.
At the core of resentment is our need to seek justice-it's our way of righting perceived wrongs. When we say we forgive but never forget, we're still bound to the memory of wrongdoing. However, this is an illusion-resentment brings nothing but harm to ourselves, while those who wronged us often move on. As Nelson Mandela aptly said, "resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies."
When long-term resentment takes hold, it controls our worldview. We gather evidence that reinforces our pain, and the wrongdoing becomes our whole story. We feel powerless to choose another state, blaming others not only for the initial wrong but also for making us feel stuck in resentment.
Suppressing resentment only makes it worse-it doesn't dissipate with time but festers and gathers energy. We attract others who harbor their own resentments, reinforcing our view that the world is unjust. Our resentment also generates resentment from others toward us.
Philosopher Robert Roberts shows that gratitude and resentment are mirror opposites-completely opposite states of being. While we can have both in our lives, we cannot genuinely feel grateful to someone while simultaneously resenting them. With gratitude, we want to be around someone and celebrate their good points. With resentment, we avoid the person physically or emotionally.
Our resentments reveal what truly matters to us. The people in our lives, their reactions to us, and our sense of justice around these interactions dominate many relationship decisions. By seeing where gratitude and resentment exist in different areas of our lives, we can understand them more clearly in contrast to each other.
Chapter 4
When Expectations Shatter: The Birth of Resentment
Broken expectations are one of the most common causes of resentment, leading to feelings of disappointment, betrayal and unfairness. During a workshop with Olympic athletes, one participant named Jocelyn shared how resentment affected her Olympic performance. When her close friend Alice didn't make the Olympic team while Jocelyn did, Alice began spreading malicious rumors. This betrayal created such intense resentment that Jocelyn carried it into her Olympic finals, where it consumed her focus. Though she won silver, Jocelyn believed her resentment cost her the gold medal.
The athletes shared how common such resentments were, particularly around competition selections. Many described massive fallouts, lost relationships, and negative impacts on physical and mental wellbeing. Similar disappointments occur in workplaces when people miss promotions despite dedicated effort, or as parents when children don't achieve what we expected for them.
Nearly all relationships-personal and professional-are built on expectations about shared values, ethics, and unwritten agreements about behavior. Ideally, these expectations would be clearly communicated and revisited regularly, but many of us find such conversations awkward. Often we form expectations without including the other person, simply projecting what we want and assuming agreement.
Resentment connects deeply to our sense of justice. Our expectations are entrenched within our values-how we believe the world should operate, how relationships should work, and how people should behave. When expectations aren't met, something fundamental in our moral framework breaks. The shock disorients us when things don't align with our beliefs.
Rather than abandoning expectations entirely, wisdom comes from holding high expectations without attachment to outcomes. Gratitude helps with acceptance, orienting us to find learning in adversity and focusing on what we have rather than what we lack. It reminds us of the good in relationships, making us less likely to cast others aside when disappointed.
Cultivating compassion helps untangle resentment by maintaining an "I-Thou" relationship with others rather than treating them as means to our ends. When we value people as ends in themselves, accepting their frailties and vulnerabilities, we can better withstand disappointment. Understanding that "underneath the most annoying behavior is a frustrated person crying out for compassion" helps lessen the pain of broken expectations.
Resentment makes empathy impossible, trapping us in binary thinking where we're right and others wrong. When consumed by perceived injustice, we can't consider others' perspectives. Gratitude counteracts this self-absorption by moving us outward toward connection. It creates conditions where empathy can grow by turning our attention from inward to outward.
Chapter 5
The Wound of Feeling Inferior: Recognition as Healing
This aspect of resentment can shatter our sense of self. Madeline, nearing retirement after an illustrious human resources career, found herself suddenly marginalized by a new general manager and team leaders. Despite her extensive qualifications and nationwide reputation, she was excluded from meetings, bypassed for leadership roles that matched her expertise, and socially isolated. The realization that she was being pushed out because of her age created profound resentment, anxiety, and self-doubt.
Resentment naturally emerges when we're placed in inferior positions through unfair treatment. Madeline's experience reflects widespread workplace ageism, which the WHO reports affects half the global population and damages older people's mental health and quality of life.
When our fundamental expectation of fair treatment is violated, we become disoriented and shaken to our core. Resentment becomes our way to reclaim power and dignity. This pattern appears in various scenarios: being the target of jokes or prejudice, sibling favoritism, romantic betrayal, or rejection in favor of others.
Madeline found salvation through her biweekly meetings with regional facilitators who genuinely valued her contributions. Their appreciation-offering tea, baking cakes, thanking her for traveling-provided psychological safety starkly contrasting with her main office's competitive contempt. This recognition gave her resilience and perspective.
The French word "reconnaissance" (recognition) captures this dynamic perfectly. Margaret Visser explains that humans fundamentally long to be recognized, as it fulfills our need for identity and belonging. Crucially, we cannot give this recognition to ourselves-it must come from others, making gratitude expression essential.
Behind every bully lies another bully and often a history of trauma. Research shows those who bully others are likely to have experienced stress or trauma themselves. Their behavior stems from hidden resentment and a desperate need to feel powerful and validated.
Effective reconnaissance requires understanding what's meaningful to the recipient. Deep gratitude is inherently relational-we need connection to know how to express it sincerely. Even contemplating how to meaningfully thank someone draws us closer to them.
When we feel diminished, processing this shock requires careful selection of a trusted friend with whom to share our pain. For Madeline, Leah became this trusted colleague who offered attentive listening without trying to solve her problems. This validation helped Madeline feel less isolated while recognizing how her resentment had pervaded her life.
Attentive listening requires genuine presence, humility and empathy-abandoning our own agenda to be fully with another person. Approaching listening with gratitude for the opportunity to hear another's heart creates deeper connection and can initiate the untangling process.
Chapter 6
Choosing Gratitude as an Inner Attitude
While resentment traps us in powerlessness, gratitude offers us choice in perspective. Viktor Frankl's wisdom from Nazi concentration camps demonstrates that even in horrific circumstances, we retain "the last of human freedoms"-choosing our attitude. This universal truth applies to choosing between resentment and gratitude, though resentment often blinds us to this possibility.
The author shares her humbling experience with shingles-months of debilitating pain that prevented work and normal functioning. Despite years of practicing and teaching gratitude, she found herself unable to access gratitude during this intense suffering.
This taught her that gratitude requires mental strength that diminishes during physical or mental pain. She realized gratitude isn't innate or something to master, but a constant practice requiring vigilance and mindful cultivation.
Five months into her illness, a naturopath revealed that his shingles patients typically shared one trait: they saw themselves as victims and harbored resentment. Through quiet reflection, she discovered long-held resentment toward her husband from early in their marriage. By consciously choosing gratitude practices centered on her husband, her health mysteriously improved.
To truly choose gratitude over resentment, we must go deeper than our thoughts and emotions to make gratitude part of our being. The author introduces the concept of "inner attitude"-who we are at our core and the perspective through which we orient ourselves in the world. This inner attitude sits behind and influences our thoughts, emotions, actions, and physical health.
The author shares Shelley's story from a principals' book club discussion. Shelley questioned whether choosing gratitude was possible in relationships with long-term resentment, particularly regarding her brother Jack with whom she had a complex "love-hate relationship."
As the first-born child, Shelley experienced painful favoritism toward her younger brother throughout her life. While she was labeled a "wild child" who struggled in school, her brother was praised as "brilliant and well-behaved." Though now a successful principal, Shelley dreaded family gatherings, especially her brother's upcoming wedding.
The author introduces "a state of preparedness" practice-focusing on preparing our inner attitude toward gratitude before events or interactions. This involves setting a tone of gratitude both inside and outside ourselves by consciously focusing on things we can be grateful for, even when facing challenging situations.
For two weeks before the wedding, Shelley practiced preparing her inner attitude during evening walks. Initially focusing on how sibling rivalry had developed her empathy and resilience as a principal, she gradually recalled good memories with her brother and parents. At the next book club, Shelley reported the wedding had gone better than imagined. Her inner attitude of gratitude helped her feel calm and centered.
The book club members often observed that changing their inner attitude directly impacted others around them. When prepared with gratitude, others seem to feel this energy before any interaction occurs-the vibrations of our inner attitude influence those around us.
Chapter 7
From Self-Resentment to Self-Gratitude
Andrew, an award-winning teacher, suffers from severe self-resentment despite external recognition. Having dropped out of school early, he developed a core belief of unworthiness that haunts him despite his later achievements. He overworks himself creating perfect lessons and obsesses over perceived mistakes, suffering from imposter syndrome and chronic anxiety.
Self-resentment is often harder to detect than resentment toward others. Often rooted in childhood or adolescence, it diminishes self-regard and confidence, making us take things personally and compare ourselves unfavorably to others. Like external resentment, self-resentment attracts confirmation of negative beliefs, creating self-defeating cycles.
While regret can be constructive-offering wisdom and motivation to improve-self-resentment prevents us from seeing lessons in our mistakes. With regret, we take responsibility for choices; with self-resentment, we feel trapped in disappointment.
Andrew's perfectionism led to burnout, declining health, and growing indifference toward his teaching. His all-or-nothing approach-perfection or failure-caused him to give up when perfection proved impossible.
Perfectionism fuels self-resentment because "perfect" is inherently unattainable, leaving us perpetually dissatisfied. The Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi offers an alternative: celebrating imperfection as beautiful and authentic. Rather than hiding flaws, we can acknowledge and appreciate them as part of what makes us unique.
The solution isn't lowering expectations-which can lead to mediocrity and more disappointment-but maintaining high standards while developing self-awareness that prevents disappointment when we fall short. We can maintain excellence while accepting imperfection, even celebrating our flaws in the spirit of wabi-sabi.
Self-gratitude involves developing empathy and compassion for ourselves while appreciating our inherent worth as human beings. It means celebrating our imperfections and being grateful even for perceived failures, which increases self-acceptance and enables positive change.
Rather than fixating on the unattained 100% target and feeling resentment about what we haven't accomplished, we can orient ourselves to the 0% starting point and express gratitude for what we have achieved. This shift allows us to stop striving for perfection and instead celebrate small gains.
When filled with self-resentment, we often dismiss expressions of gratitude from others, believing we're undeserving or doubting their sincerity. As self-gratitude grows, we become capable of truly receiving others' recognition. Andrew's experience with his student Jared's gratitude letter demonstrates this transformation-what once would have been dismissed became "an anchor of hope" that exponentially increased his self-gratitude.
Self-gratitude enables us to establish clearer boundaries around how we want to be treated. When we lack self-gratitude, we often prioritize others' needs above our own, as Andrew had done. Without self-gratitude, we struggle to make decisions honoring our integrity and wellbeing during conflicts.
Chapter 8
Addressing Others' Resentment Toward Us
Dealing with resentment directed at us can be even more challenging than managing our own resentment toward others. When someone harbors resentment toward us, the situation becomes painful and complex, often leading to mutual resentment. The resentful person typically believes we should make the first move, yet we may not even understand the problem.
Simon, a managing director at a large IT company, believed his organization was running smoothly despite staff turnover and sick leave issues, which he attributed to lifestyle choices rather than his management. When an anonymous employee survey revealed extremely low scores on his leadership, with comments indicating deep resentment, Simon was shocked. Many employees reported dreading work, feeling ill from the workplace, or wanting to leave.
Though Simon initially resisted working with Michael, his appointed coach who specialized in gratitude strategies, he eventually realized he needed support. Simon hoped for quick fixes to make his managers show more loyalty, but was shocked when Michael suggested he focus entirely on himself for at least a month.
Through Michael's questioning, Simon admitted to slandering and undermining others, particularly his female CEO whom he resented for getting the position he wanted. He began to see how his behavior had fostered the organization's culture of resentment.
With his resilience crumbling and self-resentment soaring as his blind spots were revealed, Simon needed to build personal resilience before addressing staff resentment. He started small, focusing on gratitude outside work-his grandchild, garden, home, and neighborhood-listing five things he was grateful for daily. Despite initial skepticism, Simon was surprised that gratitude made a difference. He approached work with optimism instead of bitterness, slept better, and could view the survey more objectively as a cry for change rather than a personal attack.
When Simon found courage to examine his role in causing resentment, he recognized numerous missteps-making people feel inferior, breaking expectations, and publicly backbiting certain staff members. He saw how his inconsistent expectations and perceived favoritism had damaged trust.
Feeling more resilient after his gratitude practice, Simon made a public statement inviting people at all levels to speak with him directly about their grievances. He acknowledged he might make mistakes in these conversations and couldn't promise to solve all problems, but committed to listening attentively.
Simon began experiencing greater integrity than ever before, both personally and with colleagues. He started enjoying acknowledging each employee individually, often beginning conversations with apologies for not previously expressing gratitude for their contributions. Though the process was painful and required tremendous effort not to take grievances personally, Simon was transforming into a more effective leader through gratitude and humility.
Chapter 9
Gratitude Across Cultures: Diverse Expressions of Appreciation
The book explores how gratitude and resentment manifest differently across cultures. In First Nations Australian communities, gratitude functions differently than in Western culture. The story of Katie, a teacher with Anglo-Celtic background, illustrates this contrast. Initially confused by her Aboriginal students' lack of verbal thanks, Katie discovered that gratitude is deeply embedded in their cultural framework of interconnectedness and relationships rather than expressed through explicit words.
In Zulu culture in South Africa, gratitude manifests through numerous rituals and symbols far more elaborate than Western expressions. Central to many African indigenous cultures is ubuntu-the philosophy that "a person is a person through other people"-making gratitude inherently relational rather than individual. Unlike Western expressions, Zulu gratitude often involves personal sacrifice; the sincerity behind the gift matters more than its size.
The author recounts meeting Mina, an Iranian research student struggling with cultural differences in expressing gratitude. In Iran, gratitude is deeply tied to spirituality, even embedded in everyday greetings that begin with "Thanks to God." Mina's traditional Iranian approach to showing gratitude-bringing gifts to her Australian supervisor-was rejected, causing cultural confusion and hurt.
In Chinese culture, gratitude is felt inwardly rather than spoken outwardly. Parents don't expect verbal thanks from children, as studying hard is considered the proper expression of gratitude. In close relationships, expressing verbal thanks might actually create distance by treating family like strangers. As a collectivist society, gratitude is woven into the cultural fabric rather than overtly expressed.
The author emphasizes the importance of understanding cultural differences in expressing gratitude and resentment for enriched communication. She suggests "knocking before you enter" when communicating across cultures by tactfully seeking to understand how others express gratitude and handle resentment. By welcoming these differences rather than expecting others to follow our cultural norms, we avoid unconscious resentment.
Chapter 10
Small Actions, Profound Changes
Though resentment seems an integral part of human experience, we should strive to create cultures where it cannot take root. Resentment can teach us valuable lessons if we identify its causes and choose different responses. Gratitude helps loosen resentment's hold by turning attention to what we appreciate in others.
Rather than seeing gratitude as a quick fix, we should approach it as a practice-something we won't always get right and that develops over time. By focusing on one relationship and one gratitude practice at a time, choosing approaches that are both authentic and achievable, we can make progress. Self-gratitude is crucial for maintaining boundaries around what we can give to others. Starting with easier relationships builds confidence for tackling more challenging ones, often creating ripple effects throughout our lives.
Gratitude is fundamentally relational-we awaken to what we've received from others and life itself, which motivates us to give back. The development of our character is shaped by how we face adversity, with difficult relationships presenting the greatest opportunity for growth. As Cicero wrote, "Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others." By choosing to see difficulties as opportunities and practicing gratitude whenever possible, we create the best path toward personal peace and the welfare of humanity.
