We often think of grudges as something that lives in the mind.
A story we replay.
A memory we return to.
A thought we can’t quite shake.
But in my experience, unresolved hurt rarely stays confined to our thoughts.
More often, it settles quietly into the body.
It shows up in the way shoulders remain slightly raised.
In a jaw that tightens without conscious permission.
In a nervous system that never quite returns to baseline.
Not because the person is choosing to “hold on.”
But because the system never found a sense of resolution or safety around what happened.
The body, after all, doesn’t run on logic or time in the way the mind does.
It runs on meaning.
And when something carries emotional meaning, particularly when it felt unfair, unsafe, or overwhelming, the system learns from it.
Not in the way we learn facts, but in the way we learn threat.
This is one of the places where people often feel confused or even ashamed.
They tell me: “I know this happened years ago. I know it shouldn’t still affect me.”
But the body doesn’t operate on “should.” It operates on patterns.
If something once required protection, vigilance, or bracing, the system may continue offering those responses long after the original situation has passed.
Not because it wants to keep you stuck, but because it’s trying to prevent you from being caught off guard again.
This is where the idea of the body “holding a grudge” becomes less about bitterness, and more about biology.
What often gets labelled as holding on is, more accurately, a nervous system that never felt safe enough to let go.
And that distinction matters.
Because when we assume someone is holding onto hurt by choice, we tend to respond with pressure:
“You need to move on.”
“You’re letting this control you.”
“You’re choosing to stay angry.”
But when we understand that unresolved hurt lives in the system, not just the story, the response shifts.
From pressure…
to curiosity.
From judgement…
to compassion.
From trying to force release…
to gently creating the conditions that allow it.
One of the simplest ways to begin shifting a system out of threat is not through insight, but through regulation.
This doesn’t have to mean meditation or breathing exercises if those don’t suit you.
It can be as small as changing posture, softening the jaw, placing your feet on the floor and noticing contact, or slowing one part of your movement.
These aren’t tricks.
They are ways of giving the nervous system a different input – one that says, quietly, right now, I am safe enough.
And when safety increases, the body’s need to hold the past in tension often begins to reduce on its own.
Another layer to this is how often unresolved hurt becomes organised around blame.
Blame is a very understandable response when something painful happens.
It gives pain a location, a direction, and a sense of order.
When we ask “whose fault is this?” we’re often really asking:
“Why do I feel like this?”
“Where did this come from?”
“How do I make sense of this pain?”
In that way, blame becomes a hypothesis – a way of explaining hurt when clarity feels unavailable.
And for a moment, it can feel relieving.
Because if the pain belongs to someone else, then perhaps the solution does too.
But over time, blame tends to tether us to the past in ways that the body can’t resolve.
Because as long as our nervous system is organised around what someone else did,
our system remains oriented towards what it can’t change.
This is not about denying harm or excusing what happened, or pretending that people don’t cause real pain.
It’s about recognising that when our inner world remains structured entirely around someone else’s actions, our body stays in a state of readiness rather than recovery.
Holding people accountable for what they did is very different from organising your nervous system around them.
And that difference is often where the body begins to soften.
One of the quiet shifts I see when healing begins is not that people forget what happened, but that the story they live inside changes.
Not from “this didn’t matter”
but from “this mattered, and I am no longer living inside it.”
That shift is not cognitive alone, it’s physiological.
As the system learns that it is safer now than it once was, muscles begin to release their grip, breathing deepens, sleep becomes less fractured. The body gradually stops scanning for a threat that is no longer present.
This is also where forgiveness is so often misunderstood.
Forgiveness is not excusing. It is not forgetting. It is not reconciling with someone who caused harm.
In the work I do, forgiveness is better understood as a change in what the system is organised around.
And perhaps most importantly, forgiveness is not something the mind can simply decide.
Because if the body still feels under threat, no amount of positive thinking will override that.
What helps instead is working gently with the system:
– creating experiences of safety
– allowing feelings to be acknowledged rather than bypassed
– learning how to soothe rather than suppress
– and gradually reducing the need for the body to stay braced
Another helpful shift is learning to separate what happened from what is happening.
When something painful from the past becomes active in the present, the system often responds as though the original event is occurring again.
Gently orienting to the now – naming the date, the room you’re in, the sounds you can hear, can help the body recognise that this is a memory, not a current threat.
This isn’t about dismissing what you’ve been through.
It’s about helping the system locate it in time, so it no longer has to keep responding as if it’s still happening.
It’s also why healing often looks less like dramatic breakthroughs and more like quiet shifts.
A moment where the body settles more easily, a reaction that doesn’t arrive with the same intensity, a sense that something which once dominated the inner landscape now occupies less space.
Not because it didn’t matter, but because it no longer has to carry the entire system’s attention.
When the body stops holding the grudge, it’s rarely because we forced it to let go, but because the system learned that it no longer needed to hold on in order to stay safe.
And that is not a failure of willpower.
It is a success of safety.
Perhaps the most compassionate question we can ask, then, is not:
“Why can’t I let this go?”
But:
“What might my system still be trying to protect me from — and what would help it feel safe enough not to have to?”
And often, that question alone begins to change everything.
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