Are You Cultivating Resentment—or Gratitude?

What rehearsing anger and expressing thanks can mean for your brain, your relationships, and your well-being.

By Bridget Garrelts, LCPC, CADC | Today’s Sober Women

Have you ever appreciated something someone did for you—and decided not to say thank you because you were angry with them?

You noticed the effort. You knew it helped. But acknowledging it felt like giving them something they had not earned. Perhaps you thought, After how they treated me, why should I thank them?

Consider an ordinary example: A friend checks in after a difficult day, but you are still hurt that she was unavailable when you needed her last month. You appreciate the message. Yet instead of acknowledging it, you return to the earlier disappointment.

That moment raises a question worth asking:

Why would you want to cultivate resentment instead of gratitude?

The question is not whether you have a legitimate reason to be angry. You may. It is whether the way you are responding is helping you address what happened—or giving resentment more opportunities to grow.

Anger is a feeling. Cultivating resentment is a pattern.

There is an important distinction between acknowledging anger and repeatedly rehearsing a grievance.

Acknowledging anger might sound like, That hurt me, and I need to decide what to do about it. Rehearsing a grievance sounds more like, Let me go over everything they did again so I can remind myself how wrong they were.

One invites a next step. The other can become a mental loop.

Psychologists call repetitive dwelling on upsetting experiences rumination. In a brain-imaging experiment, researchers insulted participants and then asked them to ruminate. Activity in the medial prefrontal cortex was associated with participants’ reported rumination. Activity in other regions, including the insula and hippocampus, following the insult also predicted subsequent rumination. These findings connect angry rumination with measurable brain activity—not merely an abstract attitude about another person.

The practical concern is not that remembering an upsetting event automatically damages your brain. It is that repeatedly returning to the grievance may keep you emotionally engaged with it rather than help you resolve it.

Your body can remain involved, too. Research has linked rumination after anger-provoking experiences with slower cardiovascular recovery. In other words, the upsetting interaction may be over while your body is taking longer to settle.

That makes an important question more useful than Am I justified in being angry?

Is the way I am thinking about this helping me move forward, or keeping me upset?

You can be right about what happened and still need a different way of responding to it.

What gratitude practice does in the brain

Gratitude is more than telling yourself to be positive. A meaningful gratitude practice asks you to identify something you value and recognize that you received something worthwhile.

Instead of concentrating exclusively on an injury, you deliberately attend to an experience of care or support.

A 2016 study published in NeuroImage examined people entering psychotherapy. Some participants also wrote gratitude letters; a comparison group received therapy without that writing exercise. Approximately three months later, the gratitude-writing group showed greater gratitude-related responsiveness in the medial prefrontal cortex during a task involving receiving money and deciding how much to give to charity. This suggests that practicing gratitude may influence how the brain responds to later opportunities for gratitude. It does not establish that a single thank-you permanently rewires the brain.

Another study made the contrast especially relevant: Researchers compared guided gratitude with guided resentment in 32 healthy adults while recording brain activity and heart rate. Average heart rate was lower during the gratitude exercise, and patterns of coordination between brain regions differed across the conditions. The study examined short-term responses, not lasting changes in brain structure. Still, it offers evidence that dwelling on appreciation and dwelling on resentment can involve different brain-and-body responses.

The science is more nuanced than the claim that saying “thank you” automatically floods your brain with dopamine or serotonin. These studies did not directly measure those chemical releases. They studied meaningful gratitude exercises—not the magical power of two words.

The distinction matters. You are not trying to perform gratitude convincingly. You are practicing actually recognizing something worth appreciating.

Why saying thank you matters

Imagine the difference between briefly thinking, That was nice, and telling someone, “Thank you for checking on me. I was having a difficult day, and your message mattered.”

To make that statement sincerely, you have to notice the kindness and put its significance into words. You also give the other person information they might otherwise never receive: What you did made a difference.

Research by Amit Kumar and Nicholas Epley found that people writing gratitude letters underestimated how positively recipients would feel and overestimated how awkward the experience would be for them. The appreciation generally landed better than the writers expected.

That finding challenges a familiar excuse: They already know.

Perhaps they do. But knowing that someone probably appreciates you is not the same experience as hearing them acknowledge it.

Saying thank you also creates an opportunity to examine your own response. Can you recognize a thoughtful action without immediately disqualifying it because the person has disappointed you before?

In an otherwise safe relationship, you might say:

“Thank you for helping me today. I appreciated it. I also want us to talk about what happened yesterday.”

The appreciation does not settle the disagreement. The disagreement does not make the appreciation dishonest.

A thank-you is an acknowledgment, not an acquittal.

When withholding gratitude becomes part of resentment

There is a difference between forgetting to say thank you and deliberately withholding appreciation because you want someone to feel your anger.

Ask yourself what the silence is meant to accomplish.

Are you taking time to respond honestly? Or are you trying to communicate, Until I am satisfied with you, I will not acknowledge anything good you do?

That second position deserves attention. It makes appreciation conditional on the absence of disappointment.

The research does not establish that withholding a thank-you damages the brain. The concern is not imperfect manners. It is the broader pattern of repeatedly engaging with grievances while declining opportunities to recognize anything else. The evidence about angry rumination gives us reason to take that pattern seriously.

Nor should gratitude become a way to leave anger unaddressed. Thanking someone while quietly building a case against them is not the goal.

Address the problem that needs addressing. Have the necessary conversation, or decide what boundary you need. Then consider whether continuing to rehearse the grievance is accomplishing anything that those actions cannot.

Resentment is not a substitute for a boundary. Gratitude is not a substitute for accountability.

Cultivate gratitude without abandoning yourself

No one owes an unsafe person access to them in the name of gratitude. You do not have to thank someone for mistreating you, and appreciation for a kind act does not obligate you to tolerate a harmful pattern.

Your gratitude practice does not even have to begin with the person you resent.

Begin with someone whose kindness you genuinely value. For a woman in recovery, that might be the person who answered a difficult phone call or welcomed her into a meeting. The point is not to manufacture appreciation for something painful. It is to acknowledge support that is actually present.

Try choosing one specific expression of thanks today:

“Thank you for listening without judging me. It made it easier to be honest.”

Then notice any impulse to minimize it: It was nothing. They were just doing what they should. It does not make up for everything else.

You do not have to argue with every thought. Simply ask whether it is accurate—and whether it is helping you recognize the kindness in front of you.

When resentment returns, use a different question: Is there something I need to do about this, or am I repeating what I already know? A necessary action deserves your attention. A familiar mental argument does not always need another round.

These are suggested ways to practice, not a promise of an immediate emotional shift. A large 2025 meta-analysis covering 145 papers and nearly 25,000 participants found that gratitude interventions produced small average improvements in well-being. That supports gratitude as a useful practice, not a cure-all or a replacement for professional care when it is needed.

What are you choosing to cultivate?

You may not choose the first angry thought. You may also need time and support to work through a significant hurt. The question is not whether you can force yourself to stop feeling something.

It is what you do when you recognize the pattern.

Will you return to the grievance without taking action? Or will you address what needs to change and make a deliberate effort to acknowledge what is good?

You do not have to wait for every disappointment to be resolved before offering a sincere thank-you.

So when you notice appreciation and feel tempted to withhold it, pause:

Why would I want to cultivate resentment instead of gratitude?

Not because the hurt was insignificant. Because your well-being matters enough to stop giving resentment all the practice.

About Today’s Sober Women

Today’s Sober Women supports women in recovery with practical, recovery-focused tools designed to strengthen emotional wellness, gratitude, connection, and long-term sobriety.

The Today’s Sober Women Gratitude Coaching Program helps women move beyond simply knowing they “should be grateful” and begin intentionally practicing gratitude in everyday life. Through weekly gratitude coaching, reflection, and practical exercises, women learn how to train their attention toward what is good without denying difficult emotions or the realities of recovery.

About the Author

Bridget Garrelts, LCPC, CADC, is a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor and Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselor and the founder of Today’s Sober Women. Her work focuses on helping women in recovery develop practical tools for emotional health, personal growth, gratitude, and sustained recovery.

This article is part of the Today’s Sober Women Gratitude Coaching Series.