Bitterness is the internalization and personalization of a real or perceived injustice with a persistent and intense rumination about the injustice or the agent of the injustice, resulting in more damage caused by the bitterness than could ever be caused by the injustice. You may have suffered some horrible abuse and feel your bitterness has merit.

Physical, sexual, or emotional abuse is never justified. Civil society needs strong laws with harsh penalties for abusers. If you have suffered abuse, you do not have to live the rest of your life defined by the pain of the abuse. Abuse is a legless, hungry tiger growling on the other side of the room. Bitterness gives the tiger legs and claws, so now it can tear you to shreds. Do not allow your bitterness to provide a destructive power to abuse.

When I first began this journey to write about bitterness, I naively thought it would be a simple task. Bitter people are victims, victims of their own making, imprisoned by their own hands. Working as a family physician for four decades, I have seen lives destroyed by many agents. I have witnessed cancer taking the life of the young, heart disease kill people in their prime, and addiction rob the lives of many. Of all these agents of destruction, none compare to the devastating impact of bitterness.

Bitterness will turn the wise into fools, the wealthy into beggars, and the delightful into the disgusting. Bitterness will steal your wealth, your health, and at times, your life. I thought it would be a simple matter of just stating the evils of bitterness, sound a loud warning, and I could then move on to another topic. My simplistic view may be of help to someone who is not bitter, but it has no value to those who are already bitter. Bitterness tosses away reason and makes the bitter person both blind and deaf.

If it is possible to help someone caught in bitterness, we must look behind the scenes and address the causes of bitterness.