Wow, that’s exactly what I thought. I kept saying that to my sponsor, finally adding, “and I resent you for asking about it.” He laughed. My denial started to crack. OK, maybe I resent my boss a little bit, oh, and the company, their policies suck. Maybe I’m still a little…well a lot, angry with my ex. And my father, and my mother, oh and my brother and my sister-in law, oh yeah…
Chris H

My sponsor said, let’s forget about resentments, just right down all the times somebody did you wrong. Just write down every S.O.B. that ever screwed you over, lied to you, said bad things about you, whatever, anything bad that you can remember. I ended up with quite a list. Then my sponsor asked me how I felt about each person on my list. I had to admit, I had a lot of resentments.
Priscilla H

A sponsee asked me this question recently. My immediate reaction was to tell him to turn to p.64 of the Big Book and start reading. We list our resentments because the book tells us to list our resentments. Of course, this reason is entirely sufficient. Upon reflection, however, I can see how listing my resentments and my part in them helped me to really see myself, to take a moral inventory with depth. I thought I was generally a really nice guy who just drank too much; very much above the liars and criminals one normally associates with alcoholism and addiction. I never thought I did to others the kind of nasty things that they did to me. Looking at my resentments and listing my part in them showed me that I was very much cut from the same cloth as the “bad guys”. In many ways I was a “bad guy”. I needed to see that before I could begin to change it.
Chris H