Dear Scott:

You wrote: “If she is critical towards me, it’s hard not to hold a grudge against her”-

You shouldn’t TRY to not hold a grudge against her. I will explain: when she criticizes you, she is attacking you. When an animal/ person is attacked, it automatically feels either fear that motivates it to run away or anger which motivates it to fight. The grudge that you feel is natural, a result of having been attacked, and its motivation is to fight the attacker. And so you pick back at her.

You wrote that you don’t know why you pick at each other- you already know because you wrote that it is “like a defense mechanism”- a definition of “defend” is to protect from harm or danger, and so you pick back at her.

A couple of things: a lot of people don’t see criticism as an attack. People are fast to see something that draws blood as an attack, but criticism, not so much. But it is an attack. How do I know? Because I experienced it and witnessed others, and people respond with fear or anger upon being criticized. The response tells me it is an attack.

We talked a bit about intelligence. You probably heard the term “emotional intelligence”. I learned the following equation: Wise Mind=Rational Mind + Emotional Mind.

To access ourselves to the most complete intelligence there is, logic (Rational Mind) is not enough, not when it comes to relationships between people. We have to avail ourselves to the Emotional Mind, that is, to understanding our feelings/ emotions (I use these two words interchangeably). There is a message/ a motivation behind what we feel. Again, you hold a grudge and build resentment for a reason: she is hurting you.

Once you figure what your grudge/ resentment (degrees and qualities of anger) are telling you, once you understood the intelligence behind them (that she is hurting you by criticizing you), you go back to the Rational Mind and state the problem: she is hurting me by criticizing me. Then you try to solve the problem, using your logic and always availing yourself to emotions.

Take it from here, if you will.

anita