Episode 65: James Kimmel, Jr. - This is Your Brain on Revenge
In this episode of Faith for Normal People, Pete and Jared talk with lawyer, lecturer, and author James Kimmel, Jr. about our primal desire for revenge against the people we feel have wronged us. James shares the science behind the belief that revenge is an addiction tied to gratification, and offers alternative strategies to break the revenge cycle and move towards a forgiveness-oriented approach to living.
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Pete: On today's episode, we're talking about what to do when someone's wronged you with James Kimmel Jr. Now James is a lecturer in psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine and founder of the Yale Collaborative for Motive Control studies.
Jared: Most recently, he's the author of the book, The Science of Revenge, which is very relevant for what we're talking about today, and he's also created the Miracle Court app, which we talk about in the episode, and sounds like a great tool if you're working through someone who has wronged you.
So stick around at the end of the interview for quiet time where we'll reflect on the conversation and talk more about revenge.
Pete: All right, let's get into the episode.
James: Forgiveness is an extremely powerful drug that you don't need a doctor or a prescription for. You're hardwired to do it, and you can do it to heal yourself from the wrongs of the past, and you can use it as often as you like or as Jesus said, 70 times seven.
Pete: James, welcome to the podcast. It's great to have you here.
James: Thanks Pete. Uh, thank you for having me on your show. Really appreciate it.
Pete: Yeah. To talk about, uh, what I think is a fascinating topic, and I hope that's the right term for it. So let, let's begin with, um, you have a very powerful personal story about revenge and how it affected you.
So maybe just take us back there to, to, you know, get, get a sense of what that was like and how it drove you to, um, think maybe in very fresh ways about, um, about those kinds of things.
James: So when I was about 12 years old, my folks moved me from, uh, my brother and I from, uh, small suburban house to a home in the country that had been my great-grandfather's farm.
And, uh, my great-grandfather was still alive at the time. I knew him well. Uh, he had a small herd of black Angus cattle and, uh, we had some pigs and things and. This was a great opportunity for me. I mean, 12 years old to land on a farm was like, you know, descending onto another planet, but it was a beautiful planet and I really, uh, was really excited about it.
Um, and part of my, you know, kind of becoming a farm kid was trying to reach out to the other farm kids that were on the other farms around us. Um, and they were on really big, you know, working dairy farms with hundreds of head of cattle compared to our kind of gentleman farm that, uh, we didn't actually make a living from it.
My dad, uh, you know, was an insurance agent, worked in the nearby town. Um, but I loved it so much. I, I actually, my, my goal from maybe age 12 till, I don't know, 16 or so, was I wanted to become a farmer. I mean, that's just how much I really wanted to be part of that community when I reached out to the farm kids around me, uh, to join in, uh, you know, with their fun and also to hang out with them on their farms.
There was no interest in that. I mean, there was a lot of shunning, uh, almost from the beginning. And I think, uh, in hindsight it was probably because, you know, I was considered for them, you know, in their outgroup, you know, I was, uh, I was an outsider just sort of parachuting in on their world. And, uh, I think they were suspicious and didn't really want to have a lot to do with me, but that wasn't, uh, enough to deter me.
Uh, I just kind of doubled down on, uh, trying to get them to like me and consider myself, or consider me one of them doing things like, you know, joining ag, uh, classes in my school and Future Farmers of America and things like that. Dressing like them, listening to their music, all of those kinds of things.
Uh, but they still weren't having it. And as we got older, uh, you know, moving now to from age 12 to maybe 13, 14, 15 range, uh, their shunning turned into bullying. And the bullying started, you know, with a lot of humiliation and nasty talk, uh, things like that. And then moved on to, you know, light and then more kind of medium forms of physical violence, um, in the school, getting off on and off the bus in gym, gym classes and locker rooms and things like that.
Uh, so it, it kind of turned, uh, on me into a sort of a pretty grim existence for a while. Uh, and then, you know, you know, so we're around, I may age 16 at this point. Uh, so a little bit older. The guys who were, uh, hassling me were that age and a little bit older than that, maybe 16, 17. And, uh, one night, um, my, you know, very late at night, my folks and I and my brother were asleep late at night and, uh, we were awakened to the sound of a gunshot.
Uh, and so we, you know, jumped out of bed and, uh, raced to the windows and I saw a, uh, a pickup truck owned by one of the guys who had been bullying and tormenting me, taking off, uh, down the road away from our house. And we lived on this one-lane country road. Uh, so we checked around the house to see if there was any damage and things looked okay, thought maybe they had been spotlighting deer, which is, uh, not terribly uncommon, but also not legal.
Uh, but people do it. Uh, so next morning, uh, before going to school, one of my jobs was to take care of our animals that, that herd of cattle. And we had some pigs by that point, chickens. And this, uh, beautiful, sweet little, uh, beagle hunting dog that we had, whose name was Paula. And, uh, when I went up to her pen to feed and water her that morning, I found her, um, lying dead with a bullet hole in her head, in, in a pool of blood.
The initial response to this, uh, you know, unbelievable escalation in violence over, I couldn't figure out what, honestly. Uh, but our initial response was to call the police, you know, kind of the right thing to do. Uh, but this was the early eighties. No real anti-bullying programs in my school to, to manage it there.
And the police, the state police weren't very interested in it as well. Uh, although, and it wasn't that they weren't sympathetic, but, um, you know, they took a report and, you know, said if it, if it escalates beyond that, obviously contact us and we'll have this on record. But, uh, they didn't really do anything.
Um, so a couple, three weeks passed and, um, I found myself alone, uh, late at night. My, my folks were out somewhere and my brother was gone as well. And, uh, I heard a vehicle come to a stop in front of our house and I got up to look outside to see what was happening. We lived on this one-lane country road, like I said.
So it was unusual to have that happen. And as I looked out, there was that same pickup truck again, and there was a flash and an explosion, uh, and they had just blown up our mailbox and the truck took off down the road. You know, with that truck and with it, with that explosion, you know, went, what was left of my self-control.
Uh, so, you know, we'd been hunters. I'd been shooting guns since I was probably about eight years old. And, uh, my dad had a loaded revolver and a nightstand, and I went and I grabbed it and I took off through the house. I jumped in my mother's car and I, uh, I went after those guys, uh, through the, through the middle of the night just shouting and screaming in rage, uh, and driving as fast as I could until I was able to corner them on one of their barns.
And so, you know, it's their pickup truck kind of up against a barn and me and my car behind that truck with my bright beams on, and I can see three or four heads in the rear window. Uh, and they slowly are getting out of the truck and, uh, I'm looking at them and they're turning around and squinting through my headlights to see who had just come, you know, charging down their road.
Um, and what was clear to me at that moment was, you know, they were unarmed, they didn't have anything in their hands, no weapons in their hands, maybe in the truck, but I don't know. Uh, and that they couldn't have known that I had a, a, a gun. Um, and so I really had the element of surprise at that point.
And, uh, you know, I, I, I started to open the door and put my leg through the opening and grab that, uh, loaded revolver off, uh, off the passenger seat. Uh, and, and just at the last moment before I, you know, went through the door and stood up to, uh, do, eh, I don't know, do something to get the payback that I wanted for about four or five years of abuse, including the killing of my dog.
I had this flash of insight, uh, this little inspiration. Um, may have been, uh, the voice of God. I'm not really sure, but it, this, this idea came through my head that if I went through with what I wanted to go through with, uh, and survived it, I would never be the same person again who, you know, the same guy who drove down that road.
I would be, um, I'd have to identify myself, uh, in an entirely different way that would be irreparable, and that would be as a, as a killer. And, um, I knew I wasn't that guy and I didn't wanna become that guy. I didn't want that label. Um, and that was just enough of an insight to get me to, you know, stop and, uh, reconsider for a second, pull my leg back in the, in the door and, and put that gun back down on the passenger seat and, and drive home.
Uh, but I came within seconds of, of committing a horrific act and a, and a true tragedy.
Jared: That's a, it's a, it's a harrowing and very sad story, uh, about this topic. So you've, you're clearly very intimately, uh, associated with revenge and, but also the, the pain and the violence that is perpetrated against you and having to deal with that.
And then fast forwarding in your story, you eventually become an attorney and I'm curious if you can connect dots on what it seemed like that those are not unrelated things. And so maybe you can say something about that and how that informed your later work about revenge to kind of bring us up to where you are now, just in terms of your work and vocation.
James: Yeah. Happy to do that, Jared. So, um, you know, one thing that was clear in the, in the days or weeks after this event was that, uh, you know, my, my dream of becoming a farmer was, was, was over and done with, right? Um, and so I had to kind of reset my, my goals. And, you know, I hadn't been an academically directed student, uh, which is a polite term for really bad grades and not very, being very interested in, in classwork.
So, uh, I, I, I was not the shining star of my high school up to that point. Um, but I, you know, I got the idea that, that maybe that was a group of kids and a way of life that, uh, would accept me more than, uh, what had happened to me with the farm kids. And so I started to look into that a little more carefully and pick up the pace in terms of, uh, my academics.
Uh, and I came upon the idea of becoming a lawyer. And, um, you know, I, I say that's really the idea of, of coming, of getting into the professional revenge business, right? Uh, you know, and that's, and that's because that's what we're really, uh, litigators and prosecutors, lawyers who do that kind of work. Are being hired to get, you know, a legalized form of revenge for their clients or society.
And we do it under the brand name justice. Uh, but regardless of the brand that we, uh, do it under, uh, you know, it's the same revenge seeking. It just has maybe a few more steps and a lot more formalization, uh, between the beginning point or the end of the grievance and the desire for revenge being gratified.
Uh, and, and there's more distance and that's useful. Um, it's useful for society, it's useful for all of us, but it, it's limited in its use. In any case, I decided ultimately to become a lawyer. I went on to law school, I became a lawyer, became a litigator, and I got really into that, uh, that business. And, and what I found in doing that was not only that people, not only were people willing to pay me and my law firm, uh, you know, ridiculous amounts of money to get this satisfaction of punishing the people who wronged them.
And I started, you know, as a prosecutor at first, which is not a well-paid job. And then I moved into private litigation pretty quickly because I had student loans and I needed that money. Um, but you know, when, when you're doing that, uh, you know, practicing law that way and you're trying to hurt the people who hurt your clients, uh, for me it, it started to become its own gratification process.
I was really enjoying, uh, the, even the smallest wins inside a case that would make the other side's day a little worse and their clients feel a little worse. And I also sense that was happening to me, uh, from, you know, the lawyers on the other side, and that's what their clients were looking for as well.
And, uh, so we were all kind of locked in this, in this process of, of, of what looked like revenge gratification to me. And it started to bleed out of my professional life into my home life. I became kind of an avenger extraordinary, not only at work, but at home with my wife, with my kids, uh, with other people.
Uh, and this was directly in conflict with, I'm a spiritual guy. Uh, I had been raised as an Episcopalian. My grandfather was a minister in the Brethren church.
Uh, I had thought before going to law school a little bit and even, uh, after law school about going to seminary and maybe becoming an Episcopal priest and looked into it and eventually found that that wasn't really right for me.
But the ideas, uh, behind, you know, the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus's teachings about forgiveness were really in conflict with what I was doing as my professional career. And I tried to pull away from it. Uh, and the more I tried to pull away from it, the more I felt drawn back into it and missing these, uh, these really, you know, these highs that I was getting from, uh, winning parts of cases or entire cases.
Um, it seemed to be kind of a habit, and I seemed to be hooked on something, and I began to wonder, is it possible to become addicted to revenge? Uh, is that a thing? And I, in the earliest times, my first book called Suing for Peace, which was a spiritual journey to unravel this, um, you know, I didn't call it addiction to revenge.
I called it addiction to justice in the form of revenge.
Uh, and that was my real focus there. And, and, uh, I, I, I didn't have any scientific proof for it, but it sure felt like and looked like to me, uh, what other, uh, people who struggle with other addictions like drug, alcohol and tobacco and, uh, gambling addictions are facing.
Uh, and that launched me on, uh, on, on an entirely new path, the third phase of my career, in which I became a researcher at Yale to try and figure out the answer to that question.
Pete: Yeah. So, um, what really strikes me in all this is, is the power that revenge has legitimately, I mean, I wanna say in your case, certainly, I mean, you, you were traumatized by this and revenge was a way, I'm not playing therapist here, but, you know, revenge was a way of, um, of coming to terms of protecting yourself or whatever you had to do, and then it sort of bled over to legal and, and your, your second family.
Um, so, but now we're talking about the brain, right? And so this is a good place maybe to sort of bring into this what, talk about neuroscience and, and, and revenge and what that does to the brain and how it works.
James: Yeah. Great question. So, up until about 20 years ago, science had, uh, science had completely ignored, uh, revenge desire, revenge motivation.
It hadn't been a question that scientists were asking or interested in investigating. Um, and it was at, at, at the very end of me when I wrote this book, uh, Suing for Peace, which came out in 2005. And I was finishing the manuscript. Uh, and just before I'd finished it, there was an article in the New York Times about this amazing brain imaging study that took place at the University of Zurich, in which they, you know, kind of for the first time put somebody, uh, under FMRI or it was a PET scan, maybe at that time, uh, to try and see what's going on inside the human brain when, uh, somebody has a grievance and is, and is given an opportunity to retaliate.
That is to say, to punish or inflict pain upon the person who wronged them. And this was in a, a set of, um, economic games. And what they found, uh, there at that, in that first earliest study is that, uh, you know, having a grievance, um, cues the brain, uh, causes the brain to activate, uh, the reward craving and processing center.
Of the brain in that study, it was the dorsal striatum, which is also the habit-forming center of the brain. So we had that, the first little bit of evidence. Um, at that time, it supported my, you know, my, my thesis that, uh, we can get hooked on this. It can become a dangerous addiction and that, that maybe is the root cause of, of human violence because we know from other, um, other behavioral studies around the world and public health data and law enforcement data, that it is the desire for revenge.
A grievance trigger, desire for revenge. That is the root singular kind of root motivation for almost all forms of human violence and intentionally inflicted suffering, starting with bullying, uh, as I experienced. And going up through intimate partner violence to gang violence and street violence, uh, violent extremism.
Police, police, abuse of force and brutality, terrorism, war genocide, all of those generally have, uh, this, this, uh, ex this perception by somebody at some point that, hey, you did something wrong and it it's gonna now take, I'm now gonna come after you and I'm gonna, and I'm gonna hurt you for it.
Jared: Is there any, um, like sociologically or even evolutionarily, is there any reasons behind this, uh, grievance and if it's reward center, it seems like it came about for some particular purpose. Like what was the, the reasoning behind it that seemed to cohere us as a society or, or something like that. It seems like there's gotta be some reason there.
James: Yeah, it, that's an excellent question. And, and so the desire for revenge, uh, I guess a few things. Evolutionary psychologists, uh, there, the leading theory is that it is an evolved adaptive, adaptive strategy, probably from the Pleistocene Epic or the Ice Age. Uh, and the desire for revenge evolved when humans started to live in, uh, social groups and needed a way, uh, for, uh, you know, the members of the social group to comply with social norms and also to stop, uh, or at least deter bad, you know, bad behaviors that would interfere with, um, the ability to survive or procreate.
So, you know, taking your mate or, you know, stealing stuff from your, stealing your food. Uh, those are just kind of basic concepts. Um, and that made sense, uh, probably back at that time to motivate people to do this in order to have, uh, human humanity progress. Uh, but you know, now in the, in 2025 here, uh, you know, we have a lot of revenge seeking maybe the dominant amount, uh, that comes from, uh, perceived, uh, wrongs or grievances, uh, or injuries to the ego, right.
Just, just the ego. It's not, your survival is almost never at stake. But you just feel bad if somebody insults you, betrays you, humiliates you, these types of things. And we also have, you know, really powerful and widely available weapons that can do a lot of damage to people fast.
And so having this, um, you know, this desire, uh, that's built in and hardwired into everybody's brain, uh, it's fine, but we need to actually be able to control that, perhaps better now than we used to be able to, you know, 10,000 or 50,000 years ago.
Jared: The, the question bubbling in my head, just the more you've talked and, and it started when you, um, mentioned justice is, you know, rev revenge with a different brand. And how, how do you decide the difference?
Because I think there's a real danger here where we at best have mixed motives. Maybe at worst, delude ourselves into thinking that our desire for revenge is, is righteous. It's the right thing. And so it's very easy and slippery to go back and forth between justice and revenge.
So how do you decide the difference?
James: Yeah. Great. Uh, an important question, and I think, you know, the idea of diluting ourselves is, you know, you've kind of hit the nail on the head right there. Um, you know, justice means, uh, to many of us, right? To many people it means fundamental fairness, equity, love. It's, you know, it's a concept that Jesus taught. It's a concept that Martin Luther King taught that Gandhi taught. Um, it's, uh, what we, uh, think about when we think about social justice. It doesn't have revenge as a component of it at all. It's just trying to treat everyone fairly and equally, uh, as brothers and sisters.
On the other hand, though, we have, um, a world now that uses justice as the polite, politically correct term we use now when we mean revenge, because revenge is an uncomfortable word. So, for instance, um, after, uh, the terrorist attack on the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon and, uh, Flight 82, uh, on 9/11, um, you know, President Bush didn't come out to the people and say, we're gonna bring the terrorists to revenge.
He said, we're gonna bring the terrorists to justice and what he meant, and I think we all knew what he meant, was that we're going to go and get revenge and we're going to make it big and we're gonna be relentless about it. And that, that didn't mean that we were gonna bring the terrorists to fairness and equity and love.
It meant we were gonna hurt and kill people. And that's exactly, of course, what happened. And we do this a lot in our own minds and socially, uh, you know, up and down, um, the scale from the, an individual person who goes, I was wronged and it is equitable and fair for me to now wrong you, um, and punish you and make you feel pain for it.
And there is an elegant sense to that. It's, it's a false chase, but there is a sense to that of balancing the scales or giving payback because you took something from me. What you took from me was my happiness. I'm gonna now try and get my happiness back by punishing you. Oops, I can't really take happiness from you and give it to myself.
So I'll make you feel bad in just the same way that you made me feel bad. And we'll call that revenge and it, it'll, it licenses by calling it justice because justice means all these beautiful, um, you know, things that our greatest, uh, greatest human examples have taught. Uh, but by calling that revenge, it gives us license to do the most horrific, terrible things that humans have always and forever and, uh, are continually capable of, including war and genocide and torture, uh, and, and everything in between there.
Jared: I was gonna ask if you can clarify, you said something that I think is pretty profound, more as an aside, but maybe you can unpack it a little bit, where you said some people will try to take your happiness and apply it to me, it's sort of level setting, right? There's a zero sum game here. We're, we're equal.
You've come under my territory and you've taken something from me. And so I think if I retaliate, I'm gonna get that thing back. And it doesn't, happiness doesn't really work that way. And I think that's a maybe a fundamental thing to talk about when it we're talking about revenge, because I think we do get something there is like a dopamine hit or there is a sense of gratification when we retaliate, but maybe what we are hoping for is this deeper sense of joy or how the thing that we lost was a sense of happiness and we think this dopamine hits gonna give us that, but it gives us some level of satisfaction, but it feels more like a sinister sense of satisfaction.
It's sort of like the negative of, uh, you know, the inverse of the joy. But can you say more about that? I'm, I'm just kind of reeling about that.
James: Sure. Yeah. So we'll swerve back a little bit into brain science. So, you know, uh, what, what later studies, uh, have shown is that, um, so humans derive enormous pleasure and satisfaction from inflicting revenge or punishment upon people who wrong them or their proxies.
So we, we can get revenge, uh, not only against the person who wronged us, but we can get this revenge satisfaction even by targeting someone who had nothing to do with the original grievance. And a simple example of that is, you know, for instance, you've had a bad day at work. Maybe your boss or a coworker insulted you or mistreated you.
You can't retaliate at work because maybe you'll lose your job. So you go home, it's safer to, you know, quote unquote kick the dog, or, uh, pick an unfair fight with your intimate partner. Or do something like that or even slug a wall, um, and take it out and we call it take it out. But we're really getting revenge by proxy against an easier, more defenseless target.
We're still getting revenge and we're still getting some of that gratification. And that comes from activating that pleasure and reward circuitry, specifically the nucleus accumbens, which is responsible for driving craving. And so, you know, what happens inside your brain really is a grievance, activates the pain network, which is known as the anterior insula.
So it's a physical pain that you get from humiliation and, um, betrayal and uh, insults and disrespect. You really feel it. I mean, it's inside your brain in a physical way. Uh, and that cues your brain to start seeking revenge, pleasure. And this gives us this short-term, short-lasting dopamine hit, which falls away pretty fast, but that motivates you.
The, the disappearance of the dopamine is what motivates you to wanna seek more and more and more of it and move it from just revenge fantasy into revenge real life actions. So you're, you're right, Jared, that we get a, a short burst of pleasure. And so it seems like by, you know, going and inflicting pain upon the person who roamed us, we're going to get our happiness back.
But it's such a false happiness 'cause it's not the happiness that we had before. It's a temporary dopamine hit. And the, um, huge consequences of it are, um, very negative because you can't, uh, become the instrument of another person's pain without experiencing that pain yourself. Uh, and you're putting yourself in our, and studies have shown that people feel worse, not better.
After, uh, gratifying this desire for revenge and they create new rounds, endless cycles of revenge seeking, because my act of justice seeking toward you as ours was, for instance, after 9/11, becomes the targets victimization and, and grievance experience, and recreates for them, a desire to retaliate back against us.
And this goes on in endless cycles.
Pete: Why prefer revenge over justice? You know, why, why do we go there? And I think the, the brain chemistry thing helps me understand that, uh, justice takes time. You can't get immediate gratification. It's like scrolling on your phone or something like, you know, I'm getting the dopamine hits.
It's like, well, delay it. I don't wanna delay it. This is the whole point. I want to keep getting these hits. And, um, and, and the effect that that has on us individually and then as a society. That, I mean, this, this is a very clarifying discussion for me. It's also a rather frightening one. Uh, you know, 'cause it's, it's, if there is almost an evolutionarily built in, uh, desire to seek revenge to, to transcend those laws, ideally do that.
But I, I, I agree with what you're saying. Justice is just a, a nice word we throw onto some type of revenge. You know, we're gonna get somebody and hold them guilty for this. The public needs it. We want to do this. It's almost like a scapegoating kind of thing. And, um, you know, if, if we're wired in certain ways.
Like, what's, what's the hope of getting out of this cycle? You know, um, I, I felt it myself. I mean, who hasn't felt revenge and feeling good? Like when I give a great answer to some idiot on social media, right? I'm not gonna mention anybody, you know, like, I feel so good when I do that. I feel attacked, I feel, is it me?
Well, we'll talk later, Jared, but, you know, I just, I feel, I feel good about that. And for me to, to, to sort of, to take a step back. It's my moral beliefs, it's my religious beliefs that sort of ground me there. But, you know, I'm also not 20 years old either, you know? And, and, um, I've had a relatively stable life.
I haven't had a ton of trauma that I'm dealing with. So I just, I, I, I'm wondering, maybe this is a bigger question we can get into in the time we have left, but just how, how to, how to give individuals hope, a hard hope, maybe that, that it's gonna take work, but a hard hope. To move beyond the cycle that seems baked into our DNA.
James: Yeah, a couple of things there. So first of all, in terms of that sort of, it, it sounds scary, we're all also, um, hardwired, uh, every human being experiences euphoric pleasure, uh, from opioids, right? We all have it. Um, we can live at peace with opioids and sometimes an opioid will be useful, right? If it's used medically, uh, to stop pain, uh, from a surgery or to, uh, put us under so that we can, uh, have some sort of disease or a, a broken bone corrected, that's fantastic and very useful.
If it's used, you know, or abused, um, then that becomes very problematic and can ruin your life. And that's the same way with revenge seeking.
Uh, it can be, you know, used as, sometimes let's think about teaching a child a rule, like don't run across the street without looking both ways. And I just, you know, I've explained this to you now 10 times. I just watched you do it again. I'm so glad that there wasn't a bus coming down and didn't, uh, you know, run over you.
Uh, but I'm gonna have to now add some, some additional sort of pain moment, uh, that's gonna be safer because I want to protect and save your life today. Uh, and so I'm going to do that. That is, uh, you know, the purpose of of that pain is not your own pleasure. It's to teach a lesson that might become a life-saving lesson for your child versus, you know, I'm going to give you some pain for that and then I'm gonna continue doing it and doing it.
'cause it kind of makes me feel good when I punish you this way and I can get away with it because I'm your dad. That's a different thing that looks more like addiction when you can't control it despite the negative consequences. So the desire for revenge itself, not an addiction, and it's not, uh, it's not pathology, it's not, uh, a disease.
The inability to control that desire despite knowing negative consequences. And even worse, more so if that becomes habit forming that moves into, you know, a more of a pathological type of debate, right? And disease. So that's one thing to think about is that we're not talking about all revenge. The second point I wanna make is that we're also not talking about self-defense.
Self-defense, uh, operates in a different area of your brain that's really driven primarily by the amygdala, and that is, you know, your fight or flight instinct that comes on board immediately to potentially save your life in a, a situation in which there's an imminent threat of harm to yourself or someone you love.
I'm not, and, and, and none of the research impinges on that. That's very different. And that means a real threat that's very different from revenge seeking, which is always past-looking. It's trying to avenge and punish a wrong from the past, right. That is no longer, you know, even none of us can experience a wrong from the past.
It only lives in a few people's memories and those who we tell about it, and that's about it. So revenge seeking is past looking and it drags these, uh, grievances and wounds and traumas from the past, and it keeps inflicting them on the present in the future and contaminating that and ruining our lives.
So you know, revenge is that, and it's not self-defense, so there's no, uh, desire here, uh, by me or any of this research to suggest that people should become victims. Specifically not because it's victimization that triggers this entire process. Self-defense, good revenge, seeking bad might be the best way to, to put it.
And then, you know, to give people though the real hard, um, answer to your question of, so what, how do we manage this going forward? There are two ways. One is by seeing, uh, revenge seeking is an addictive process. This brings on board and makes available all of our already existing addiction prevention and treatment strategies that humans have developed, particularly with intense effort over the last 30 or so years.
Um, and so things like educating kids about not only the, the cravings that we want them to be aware of, like drugs, alcohol, and sex and health classes, we ought to also be telling them about you're gonna experience grievances and a real strong desire to punish other people in your life, and that's natural, but here are some ways for you to manage that, um, and up through treating people, you know, with addiction treatment strategies.
But I won't get into that because the more potent and powerful and I think more interesting for this discussion, um, remedy for all of this turns out to be forgiveness. Let me just explain what happens inside your brain when you simply imagine forgiving a grievance or somebody who wronged you. So if you remember, I said a grievance activates the pain network, the anterior insula.
When you forgive, brain studies now show that inside your brain that idea of simply imagining forgiveness deactivates the pain network, it actually takes the pain away. So going back to that example of moving pain from one person to another and how that doesn't really work.
What forgiveness does is it shuts down pain.
It, it stops pain. It's like a wonder drug or a superpower that we don't use enough and that we kind of look at a scan at, uh, because we think the word give and forgiveness is a gift to the person who wronged you, and it's really not. It's a gift to yourself.
The second thing that it does is it shuts down the craving network for revenge desires, so you no longer have these nagging revenge desires. And the third thing it does is it activates the prefrontal cortex, which is your executive function and decision making strategy. So you're able to make good cost benefit decisions. So forgiveness, even if you're an atheist, forgiveness is an extremely powerful drug that you don't need a doctor or a prescription for.
You're hardwired to do it, and you can do it to heal yourself from the wrongs of the past. And you can use it as often as you like, or as Jesus said, 70 times seven.
Jared: Can you say more about some of the mechanics? Because I think for me, I have specific instances in mind where people have said, Hey, you just need to forgive them. Or I even thought that, you know, as a Christian, it's like, this is the Christian thing to do. I should forgive them. But it feels like it's such an emotional process that just saying, I forgive you, doesn't actually activate all the things you're talking about.
There seems to be some kind of process that goes on in forgiveness that would be of great benefit, but it doesn't ever feel like, to me, like, it's a three step program. It feels like a jumbly mess. So maybe you can help get it in line for me so I actually know how to do it.
Pete: And may, and maybe if you could James weave into that.
I wanted to ask that question too. Just what is forgiveness?
Jared: Yeah,
James: Yeah, yeah. Okay. So forgiveness there. So psychologists recognize or have identified two types of forgiveness. One is decisional forgiveness, and the other is emotional forgiveness. Yeah. So decisional forgiveness is a decision to forgive and, um, it can be made, uh, regardless of any intention to repair the relationship, and it can be made without ever communicating that decision to the person who wronged you.
So it's an entirely internal, very profound personal decision to go, I am going to move on from what you did to me. I'm leaving it in the past.
I'm making that decision. And to experience the benefit of that, you can experience that very quickly by imagining any grievance that you might, you know, have in your mind. And we all tend to do this. Uh, Freud thought that we are endlessly hour-by-hour of every day doing away of the people who insult us and, and wrong us or get in our way.
Um, and so we have these things and if you just imagine a grievance that you have that you haven't let go of, and just imagine now deciding to forgive it. If you decide to forgive that, just that decision. And then I say, how would you feel if you did that? You don't have to forgive it. Just imagine what you might feel.
Like, almost invariably people will respond to me and go, oh wow, I would feel a lot better right now. Like, I would feel all this weight of having to plot and scheme how I'm gonna get back at them. That's gone. That's been lifted. I would also feel the disappearance of the pain that I've been carrying around.
All of a sudden that's gone. And what, and we can see what's going on, how that's happening inside the brain is it's shutting down that pain network, like I said, and it's shutting down the, the craving circuitry of the brain. So you're actually getting brain biological benefit from making a decision to forgive.
That can be just that simple. You can experiment with it. And then if the, you know, the memories of the grievance and the pain return, do it again. Do it again and do it again. And you'll find that that decision has suddenly become 70 times seven permanent. I, I think, we now have brain science that kind of supports Jesus's teaching there, I think.
And it's, it really is a profound thing. That's different from emotional forgiveness. And emotional forgiveness is, uh, this amazing, uh, uh, uh, kind of brain trick that people can do and have the ability to do that's based on their, um, their, their, their empathy center of the brain and their ability to imagine the thinking process of someone else and what was going on in their minds.
And when we activate that, and I can't say that I can explain how we do this, uh, but it, it can be a choice like decisional, but when we do that, we can reform, uh, an entire grievance scenario and the pain around it to, to make it feel like, oh, maybe that person was a little more justified than I thought.
Or maybe I had a little more responsibility and I played a bigger role in what happened than I thought. So we gain new insight. And then the third thing is we gain more empathy toward the person who wronged us. Uh, but that's a longer process and it's more emotional. That's , you know, that's the emotional forgiveness process.
But to really make this hard and fast and make forgiveness a lot easier to do and more satisfying, because some people might be going, well, geez, I, I don't wanna forgive. I hate what this person did to me. I, I cannot give up my, my pain and I don't want to. I created and studied a system at Yale called the Miracle Court or Non Justice System in which you're given, it's a role play in which you get the opportunity to put on trial anybody who's ever wronged you in your life, but you play all the roles.
So you play the prosecutor and victim, and you play the defendant testifying as to their side of the story. You play the judge and jury finding guilt or innocence and handing down a verdict, and then you play the warden administering that punishment.
And then in the last step,] you, which I call the final judgment. In the final judgment, you become the judge of your own life. And in that moment, you have to decide for yourself, do I wanna continue to carry this pain and this desire for revenge and this plotting and scheming that I've been doing and rumination, or do I wanna let it go?
And what we found in our studies is that most people would rather let it go and move on, uh, with their lives, and that creates the opportunity for decisional forgiveness. So there's your five step program, Jared, for getting through that.
Pete: Well, just, just a quick thought here. The, um, I, I think what you're talking about is humanizing the perpetrators in a sense, right?
I mean it's, um, seeing, trying to maybe understand them better as, I mean, empathy, right? Because which is a maligned word nowadays, right? We don't- empathy's bad. I think empathy's fantastic. Um, and, uh. It reminds me too, of the, you know, Jesus, you know, take the log out of your own eye first. I mean, look at yourself first.
Putting yourself in different roles and seeing what, you know, might've been, I, I don't want to use the word responsibility. I don't think you had any responsibility in what happened to you as, as, as a, as a child and as a young man. I don't think he had responsibility. But there's still something of value, I guess, of looking at those different roles and putting yourself through that.
That maybe gives you, I don't know, is it the right way, right way to put it, a bigger vista from which to look at these, uh, experiences and maybe address them differently and maybe to give energy for forgiveness.
Jared: Well, what I like about the way we're talking about it is tying in that neuroscience, and I can't help but think about the, the amygdala, that fight or flight where you don't have that executive function.
So, and I, and I tie it to the idea of imagination. 'Cause that's kind of, when you talk about your five step program, it feels like one of the core skills is imagining. And if you can at first just imagine what it would that, imagine what it would be like to forgive someone if you can just do that, which feels like something you can maybe conjure up in that amygdala state, um, then, and it kind of feels good.
It kind of lowers that anxiety when it feels good to just imagine that then that prefrontal cortex can come online. And now you can do a little bit more of the heavy thinking, which would be imagining, like you said, the courtroom scene, which allows me to, to, uh, reframe the whole situation, which then maybe allows, uh, me to kind of reduce that attribution error and some of my own things that come up when I'm trying to defend myself.
I'm trying to protect myself in that amygdala state. But for me, I think the thing I keep hearing is imagination. If we can work to imagine it, it gets us into these brain states that help us to really, like you said, I'm not gonna try to take responsibility for how I could have behaved better or avoided the pain, or what did I do to grieve them?
I can't get there if I'm still in this fight or flight defense posture. Does that make sense?
James: Well, or uh, yeah, except, I mean, you know, the only thing I would, I would change there is I'm still in this craving for revenge, for the dopamine hit posture. Uh, but otherwise, I, I, I agree completely.
And what, what we, what, what it seems to be happening, trauma, psychiatrists and psychologists, uh, seem to say that to recover from trauma, uh, trauma victims, you know, need to be heard and they need, uh, a way to hold somebody to account for what happened. And in this non justice system, that five step, uh, method that I just described does, is it gives you all of that.
Um, it gives you the ability to be heard in a courtroom. Uh, it gives you the ability to hold to account because you're holding the person guilty. Uh, and then like methadone for a revenge addict. It gives you the ability to safely experience, you know, this revenge desire and acting it out and inflicting the pain you wanna inflict on that person.
And then when that's out of your way and that, uh, craving is now out of your way, you can then as judge of yourself, begin to look at the situation and go, oh, this didn't really help me at all. I don't want this anymore in my life. I want to be done with it and I wanna move on. Um, and so I think that that's, that seems to be what's happening in that process.
Jared: Well, as we, as we wrap up our time here, are there ways that people can get into this? 'cause again, I feel like there is, um, there are steps between, I feel, I feel these grievances and I do wanna retaliate and having the ability to, um, to forgive.
And is it this, uh, are there ways to get connected to this exercise where you can do that maybe on your own, where you can think through this courtroom setting and are there other exercises, like where would you point people who are saying, yeah, this is something that, because I, I can just see you talked about being online. I just see it online a lot where they're, the grievances are very easy to come by, like the disrespect and that they said this about me and they said this, and you know, Democrats are this way and republics like we're being hurt by entire groups of nameless, faceless people at this point.
Yeah. So is there a way that people who are saying, starting to notice, oh yeah, I get, I get, uh, triggered a lot in this way. How can I stop this addiction cycle? Like what are the first steps?
James: Yeah. Um, there is an online way and an offline way, as a matter of fact. So the online way is, there is an app called the Miracle Court App, and it's available at miraclecourt.com.
It's a free app. It doesn't have even have an in-app purchase. And that is the entire five step method that I just described as audio with me leading you through my, I'm the voice leading you through those, these five steps that I just described. Uh, so that's the Miracle Court app that anybody can use at any time, anywhere.
And in likewise, in my book, in the book, The Science of of Revenge, I have the complete script. So if you, uh, you know, if the app doesn't work for you, or you're, you're a person who'd rather read, uh, rather than, you know, get, jump on an app, um, in the book is that entire five step process in, you know, in the book and it's available for people to use.
Um, so there are two ways, uh, to get after it, you know, right away and experience it. Uh, and if that's not enough for you at that point, then seriously consider talking to a mental health professional. Um, but, you know, kind of come to them with this idea of, of I feel like I might be caught up in an, you know, in a behavioral addiction process that, you know, here's a book, it's called Revenge Addiction.
Um, and I want some help. Uh, because even if they haven't heard of revenge addiction, you know, most mental health professionals are trained in helping people manage addiction. And addiction is addiction. There's the same kind of methodology for helping people out of it in most cases. So that's the, that would be the third and more escalated way of handling it.
Jared: Well, thanks for coming on. I think for me, I just appreciate the courage. I mean, you have such a, um, a story that sort of sparked your interest in all of that, just the vulnerability to talk about that story and what could have been, um, as a great way to, to sort of couch this conversation. I just think it makes it very meaningful and personal.
Pete: And a lot of wisdom for our age too, I think. Right?
James: Thanks so much. Thanks for the opportunity to be on your show. I really appreciate it, Peter and Jared. It's, uh, been fantastic.
Pete: And now for Quiet Time with Pete and Jared.
Jared, I personally have never had any feeling of revenge for anybody my whole life, but you probably have. So maybe, do you, do you have a, do you have a revenge story to tell us?
Jared: Yeah. You may not have a revenge story, but you are a liar. So, or even, well, that triggers me. I'm going to have to kill you now. I know, but was you, you, you aggrieved me.
I grieved you back. Exactly. No, I, I mean, I think I was, we, you know, as we were reflecting on this episode, um, I was trying to think of what those triggers were. When I was a kid, I had a pretty bad temper and it would've come from this sense of, of, of a grievance. And I think for me, the trigger was when I was humiliated, if there was a sense of embarrassment and one thing came to mind immediately was, um, I had a starter jacket, which in the nineties, every kid had a starter jacket.
Every kid had a weird starter jacket. It was like the Charlotte Hornets, or the Orlando. It is like, not the teams that you liked. You didn't necessarily have, anyway, it was weird, but, um, somebody, we were playing like a game, I don't know, tag or football or something, and someone ripped the hood of my starter jacket and I was seeing red and I went up to him and I started wailing on him.
And it wasn't, I said it was because he ripped my jacket. Because it was too embarrassing to admit what it was, which was that it like, it like yanked me down and I got hurt and I felt vulnerable. Uhhuh, and like if I felt vulnerable, I was coming at you. Right. And so that immediately came to mind was that sense of, of a grievance is if you humiliated me, you were taking something really sacred to me, which is a sense of not, I didn't want to feel vulnerable.
And so I immediately felt like I had to pay you back to give myself a sense of, uh, confidence or invulnerability or something. I dunno. Yeah. I haven't done, I've been psychologizing this for all of one minute, so I don't know what it was. But for me that, that sense of, of a grievance and that dopamine hit whenever it would happen.
Pete: That’s just it.
Jared: That, for me was a, I can think of numerous examples like that, right.
Pete: From what I was thinking, and that's why what James was talking about is so helpful. It really, it really, it connected like two or three dots in my brain about why I do some of the things that I do.
And, um, yeah, I well, tell us about it. I have, I have many. I, I'll just tell the one that I keep coming back to in my life, but this was in 2008. I had just been, um, transitioned from a position I was at and I'm sitting in church and, um, not paying attention, not listening to the sermon.
'Cause I never do. So, um, and I just remember thinking to myself of fuming, I said, Lord, I just want justice.
Jared: Mm.
Pete: And he sort of had this God moment he talked about briefly, but for me it was like this inner voice said, okay, let's start with you. I said, uh, and I knew right away what was happening, the whole log in the eye thing.
But it helped me to understand the, um, I didn't want justice, I wanted revenge, and I wanted God to do it for me, you know? Yeah. And, and I think of, of also the overlaying of that dynamic onto the God of the Bible.
Jared: Yeah, I was gonna say, not to bring the Bible into this.
Pete: But we can though.
That's, you know, 'cause there, there are places where the, the, what we would call now, the, the, the God of the multiverse is sort of petty and sort of vengeful. You know, and not always, but it's there, you know, and that's this projection of our humanity onto the sacred and, and all that. But I just remember, um, and then, and then I have, I've had to ask myself this question, why did this make you that angry that you wanted to seek revenge?
And it's because my ego was wounded. It's as simple as that. I was, I was a big deal someplace and I was sort of pushed out and I didn't like it. And, and you know, I used to think, and this is from talking with people, um, who, who know things about this, but it's like, you know, I used to say, I just want to be respected.
And one, one person said to me, do you wanna be respected or adored? And I stopped about it and I thought to myself. I think it might be adored. And not just respected, see, all this stuff is happening that makes me react to certain things in certain ways. And that dopamine hit need that I have is really to fuel a greater addictions that I have.
Right. So, so you start thinking about all this stuff, not in terms of sin or not sin or righteous, or not righteous, but in terms of just our chemistry, our evolution as human beings. And then taking a step back, which is itself with grace. Take a step back and look at the bigger picture and say, how do I wanna live in all this?
How do, how do I want to be, how do I wanna show up every single day? And it's, and and, and I really, I'm glad we had James on because like I said, as I was going through his stuff before the interview, it's like, okay, that helps me actually process for myself what's going on.
Jared: Yeah. And, and I think the, the idea, I, I really, you can hear it in the episode, resonated with this idea of getting to that prefrontal cortex part of our brain. Getting to the thinking part. And, and for me, I feel like that's what I've spent a lot of years working on in my own kind of development as a, a human being to get to that place where I'm not reacting emotionally. But I can respond. And for me, the difference between reacting and responding is how much is the prefrontal cortex online? And how much is, is it offline?
And so working to create that space has helped me. And I think the number one thing I've realized that I think James touched on was it's not doing, it's not actually hurting the other person, and it's not helping me to have these feelings of revenge.
And so am I the kind of person who's just gonna act on them? Because then that becomes an action.
And maybe I think it's gonna do something right. If I'm not gonna do that, why even have the feelings of revenge? Work to let that go sooner rather than later. And for me, again, it only happens through working hard over years to not react to things, but respond to things.
Pete: Right. And, and for me, like the Venn diagram, the two circles, the one big one that's overlapping for me is, you know, Iain McGilchrist, the, the neuroscientists. We're not thinking beings who have emotions mm-hmm. We're emotional beings who happen to think. And that all this stuff is happening on that deeper emotional reptilian brain kind of level.
And it's true and it's there. And, and we're, we're giving into our lesser senses of self. And, and when we, when we act that way, and, and it's, and it's rife and, you know, I can't point the finger at other people 'cause I see it in myself, but, you know, on a national level, you know.
That's very much revenge. You know, even politically,
Jared: You know, as we're talking, I do think there's a sense in which we can name our hurt. There is legitimate times in which people have harmed us. And it's not to dismiss that or minimize it. And I think that's important. It's actually the opposite.
Which I think this, uh, app that he talks about, right. The process of going through the prosecution and the defense is a helpful process of naming it. 'cause I think a lot of times what happens is you just want to be seen and validated. Like, did you see that that wasn't right.
And I think even just having another per person witness that, and maybe sometimes even just you witnessing that is enough to let it go. And I, because I think sometimes we're so quick to maybe judge ourselves and say, well, I shouldn't feel this way. And that's not a good way either.
So it's not, uh, either give into this feeling of revenge or pretend that it wasn't prompted in some way. It's not like I just made this up. No. I was, somebody did offend me. And sometimes that's on a spectrum. Sometimes it's a legit hurt and harm.
And sometimes it's just an ego thing.
I think being able to, when it's a legitimate hurt, I think we have to be able to name that. And it's even better if someone can give witness to that. And say, yes, that was a wrong, they, they wronged you. They harmed you.
That allows me to, again, kind of get more out of that reptilian brain kind of that feeling space. Because my feelings are messenger, my feelings are trying to tell me something. And so if I can articulate what they're trying to tell me oh, I was hurt by that and you know what, I do think you wronged me. That actually lessens the sense that I now need to retaliate.
Pete: Well, I mean, one last point, one last question actually, I want to ask you. The, um, when people have been traumatized, forgiveness is sometimes a retraumatizing thing because they sort of do it wrong. But I think James was like,
Jared: -like asking for someone to. Like asking forgiveness from the person you've traumatized, that’s traumatized you?
Pete: Like, oh yes. Or it's like, well, it's not that big of a deal. I need to just forgive them. I'm wondering how, you know, James was legitimately traumatized over years by bullies, right. That then became somewhat even life-threatening. So I wonder how James, how do you think James forgave those people?
Was it a matter of saying, I'm not gonna live in that space of revenge? Maybe that's enough. It's a simple, that's, that's not like saying, well, it's okay, we're all buddies now. That's toxic forgiveness. And that's sometimes what people insist like in churches, you know? Or families, women who have been abused by their husband, they're told you, you need to disobey them.
Jared: Forgiveness means going back into a situation that's going to cause you further harm. Which is not forgiveness.
Pete: Right. Exactly. I just think it's important for people to hear that again and again. 'cause some people struggle with that for very good reason.
Jared: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I, I appreciate how James says it, which is forgiveness is about, is about you. And what's going on here in that, uh, he called it, I forget what he called it, there were two kinds of, what was it? Uh, decisional forgiveness. Where that's up to you. And emotional or mental or the other one, or, yeah.
Pete: Right, right.
Jared: Correct.
Pete: Yeah. So, yeah. Right.
Jared: Um, but yeah, I think that's exactly right. And I, yeah, we don't wanna conflate, and I think it's an important disclaimer. Because you're right, I think in churches and sometimes in families. There is this expectation that forgiveness means to go back to the systems and dynamics and relationships and patterns that we had before.
And that caused harm in the first right. That’s not what forgiveness is.
Pete: Well, I think, and I think we learned today, I mean, I did anyway, just more to think about when I think about the human experience. What am I doing all day, and to be appropriately introspective about that.
So yeah. I think that's, you know, it's a good interview.
Jared: Yeah. For me, that is the, one of the takeaways is thinking about the brain and how repetition creates deeper neural pathways that are hard to get out of. So if I'm in the habit of. Getting these dopamine hits, that's the addiction that can start to take over.
And it's harder to have a pathway of forgiveness. Because I'm so addicted to the dopamine of revenge thinking and seeking.
Pete: Alright. Alright folks, later.
Jared: Well, thanks to everyone who supports the show. If you wanna support what we do, there are three ways you can do it. One, if you just wanna give a little money, go to thebiblefornormalpeople.com/give.
Pete: And if you wanna support us and want an all access pass to our classes, a free podcast and a thoughtful community of people asking tough questions about the Bible and faith, you can become a member of our online community, the Society of Normal People at thebiblefornormalpeople.com/join.
Jared: And lastly, it goes a long way. If you just wanted to rate the podcast, leave a review, and tell others about our show. In addition, you can let us know what you thought about the episode by emailing us at info@thebiblefornormalpeople.com.
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