Have you ever met someone who was sharing some positive news with you, but during their conversation your gut was telling you there was a deeper issue lingering behind what they were saying? Or possibly weaved within their positive words and smiles, you strongly sensed that they were angry about something?

This is resentment leak.

Resentment leak is when someone expresses a positive story - usually in the form of gratitude - to gain a platform to express resentment in their life. I often have great sympathy for those who have it because I know fueling resentment is usually a deep wound left unhealed. My sincerest desire is for for them to experience forgiveness and healing.

But resentment leak does not allow that. Here's why.

Gratitude helps center us into a posture of thankfulness for the blessings in our lives without minimizing the hurts in it. The benefit of practiced gratitude is that it allows us to evaluate our challenges, seek healing and move forward. We don't pretend those difficulties aren't there - we simply view them with a healthy, balance view of the blessings we enjoy as well. Gratitude is necessary for healing.

Resentment leak wipes out that entire process of gratitude. Any chance of healing in our lives and encouragement we could have shared with others gets thrown out the window. Below are five major flaws that result from resentment leak.

1. It kills gratitude
Craig sat down for coffee with his friend Jason to catch up on how things were going with his search for a new job. Jason started out with what seemed to be a grateful statement: "This week's been alright. I filled out a few applications and have an interview scheduled." Craig was thinking this was awesome news. Some results were finally paying off for Jason's effort. But then it went downhill from there. "They want me to be there by 8am which sucks because it's a 30 minute drive from my house, and I'm going to have to take the bus which means I'll have to leave even earlier. If it's going to be this much hassle getting there, it's probably not even worth going to. Honestly, this just sucks that I'm even having to look. I still think I could sue my previous company for letting me go - they had no legal grounds." Craig stared blankly at Jason. Last week he had literally spent two hours encouraging and coaching Jason through the steps to go find a job and thought he was on the right track. But Jason was still resentful toward his previous job, and it was killing his ability to see the bright side of his situation.

Resentment leak does that.

When you continue harboring resentment toward a past experience, it's very easy for that resentment to leak out when sharing what could have been a positive experience. If allowed to continue, it will be impossible for someone to find gratitude in their lives without exploding with cynicism. It kills gratitude.

2. It sabotages growth
Gratitude is what allows us to continue maturing in our lives. A past challenge has great opportunity to make us stronger and wiser. So when gratitude is killed by resentment leak, we don't grow. We wallow. We don't step up. We stew in our bitterness.

Felisha was the new office manager for Smiths & Sons Roofing company. Part of her job was to purchase roofing materials for the crews and have them delivered to the customer's site. She was delighted to get a quote from a local roofing supplier that would save them 6% on their sheet metal and shared this information with Mr. Smith, the founder and owner of the company. He took a look at the quote in his hand, scoffed and crumpled it up tossing it into the waste can.
Seeing Felisha's stunned face, Mr. Smith yelled "As long as I'm alive, we'll never do business with this supplier, even if we have to pay higher prices. I'll never forget what Johnson their founder said to me five years ago in front of my crew. He's an a**-h*** and can go to h*** for all I care!"

I wish I could say this story was made up, but unfortunately it's true (the names were changed.) When you can't see past a hurt or challenge, it stunts your growth. Both your organization's and your personal growth.

3. It enables a toxic mindset
When you wallow in your woes, you enable yourself to stay stuck in your resentment. And a person who's comfortable in the mud is the hardest person to motivate to move.

This is where resentment leak gets diabolical.

When you try helping someone step out - someone who's enabled their resentment for a while - they contently - almost smugly - say "no thank you". At this point they don't want to change. They can no longer practice gratitude because they're incapable of expressing it without leaking resentment. It has enabled a victim mindset and let's face it - it's much easier to glean sympathy from others as a victim rather than as a victor.

It's painful to see people decline any kind of help to change their situations or even seek healing from it. You can't make people see a therapist. You can't make someone change their mind or at the very least be open to a different perspective.

4. It causes harm to others
Resentment leak can quickly go from a diabolical form of self pity to the need to harm others. Thankfully not a lot of people reach this point, but there are dangerous people who feed off of their resentment and look for ways to take revenge on others because of it. In his book "Necessary Endings" Dr Henry Cloud describes these kinds of harmful people as "Evil people" and recommends "protecting yourself from evil people with lawyers, guns, and money" because they will try harming you legally or illegally.

Some forms of harm that these kinds of people can cause include:

• Defaming someone on social media

• Attacking someone's character behind their back

• Gaslighting a friend or group of friends

• Confronting others with abusive language

• Physically harming someone

• Threating to sue someone

• Intentionally dragging someone through a lawsuit for the financial hardship on them

• Manipulating someone emotionally and mentally