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Ep. 469 Revenge Addiction: What You Need to Know with James Kimmel Jr., JD

  • Team Cynthia
  • 2 days ago
  • 36 min read

Today, I am delighted to connect with James Kimmel Jr., a Yale psychiatry lecturer, a lawyer, and the founder and co-director of the Yale Collaborative for Motive Control Studies. 


In our conversation, we explore the science of revenge, examining how it affects the brain and identifying risk factors that could contribute to extremes in revenge activity. James shares his journey from childhood to law and academia and offers his perspective on the intersection of justice, neuroscience, and human behavior. We talk about forgiveness, exploring how it reshapes the brain, counteracts revenge addiction, and serves as a tool for healing. We also cover specific interventions, including the non-justice system and the warning signs for extremes in addictive behaviors.


This invaluable and insightful conversation with James Kimmel Jr. is an incredible resource for moms everywhere.


IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN:

  • How revenge impacts the brain

  • How psychological harm can lead to revenge cravings

  • The link between addiction and revenge-seeking

  • Why some individuals are more at risk for revenge-seeking than others

  • Some common forms of revenge-driven behavior

  • What does a revenge attack look like?

  • James shares how revenge motivated his choice to become a lawyer and how he came to do the work he does now

  • The benefits of forgiveness as an antidote to revenge cravings

  • How social media platforms exploit the addictive process of revenge-seeking

  • Interventions and support systems for managing revenge addiction

“With forgiveness, there's this instant feeling of miraculous relief that comes over you that is just so enormous.”


-James Kimmel Jr.

Connect with Cynthia Thurlow  


Connect with James Kimmel Jr.


Transcript:

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:00:02] Welcome to Everyday Wellness Podcast. I'm your host, Nurse Practitioner Cynthia Thurlow. This podcast is designed to educate, empower and inspire you to achieve your health and wellness goals. My goal and intent is to provide you with the best content and conversation from leaders in the health and wellness industry each week and impact over a million lives. 


[00:00:29] Today, I had the honor of connecting with James Kimmel, Jr. He's a Yale psychiatry lecturer, lawyer, and the founder and codirector of the Yale Collaborative for Motive Control Studies. Today, we spoke about the impact of revenge and what science says about how revenge impacts our brains, specific risk factors for extremes in revenge activity, the brain disease model of revenge and the specific anatomy and physiology of this. 


[00:00:58] We spoke about James' life story and how that has influenced his trajectory from childhood to attorney to now lecture at Yale, the impact of the prefrontal cortex with aging, how social media fuels revenge ideology, the importance of forgiveness and what research suggests about the power of forgiveness, what brain structures are involved in the impact of forgiveness itself and why it is the potent antidote for revenge and revenge addiction, specific interventions including the non-justice system and last but not least, warning signs to look for for extremes in addictive behaviors. This is an invaluable conversation, particularly relevant and one that I think will be an incredible resource for moms everywhere.


[00:01:52] I'm so excited to have you on the podcast. I found your book absolutely fascinating and I think it really speaks to the fact that I think revenge as a concept is really not poorly or well understood. And so, let's talk a little bit about what the science says about the concept of revenge and how it impacts our brains. Because after reading this book, it has completely shifted my perspective, I think about it on a continuum, revenge could be just poor interpersonal relationships all the way up to some of these, just incredibly violent things that have happened in society, especially in the trajectory of my lifetime. But I think that all of us have experienced, whether we've been on the receiving end or we've been witness to some degree of revenge-type methodologies and behaviors. But I think this science is really interesting and I'd love to start the conversation there. 


James Kimmel Jr.: [00:02:50] Yeah, I'm happy to do that and the new science on revenge is that your brain on revenge looks like your brain on drugs actually. And that's like an enormous discovery and movement forward for public health and for all of us individually. Because we also know recent science also explains that we're all wired to want revenge, that's part of our evolutionary genetic baggage, if you will. And so, when we're harmed by someone in any way that we perceive, and we're the sole judge, there's no universal judge of what hurts our feelings either or hurts us physically. So, either psychological or physical harm. And it turns out that psychological harm is far more dangerous for provoking revenge cravings than even physical harm actually and feelings of shame, humiliation and betrayal, things like that, insults, disrespect are such intense pain points in our brain, they activate the brain's pain network, which is in the anterior insula of the brain.


[00:04:06] And when that activates, the brain does not respond well to pain. It wants pain to go away. So, there's an imbalance between pain and pleasure at that moment when you feel wronged. And at that moment, your brain needs to do something to bring itself back into balance and evolution provides one path, not the only path, but one path. And that is to begin to want to hurt the person who hurt you or their proxy. And that's when the revenge process triggers. And we, at that point, begin to experience actual revenge craving that's similar to drug and alcohol or other substance use cravings. 


[00:04:48] And those cravings, if we don't have the resources to resist them, can lead us to nonviolent forms of revenge. As you said, revenge is very common and more often than not, it is nonviolent. It might just be a word or it might just be even a fantasy, something that we ruminate on and we enjoy inside our minds to try and release these cravings in that way in a more safe space or we might let them out in small acts of retaliation that are designed to hurt another person, but not by a lot or it can go far beyond that. And if we are unable to control violent revenge seeking and a perfectly normal person can become an incredibly violent person, not because they're overwhelmed by evil thoughts, but because their brain biology at that moment in time was such that their control circuitry in the prefrontal cortex, it's not able to slow down the ghost circuitry of those revenge cravings and this is the danger spot.


[00:05:51] The only way to gratify your need at that moment is to harm another person. When you take drugs, you're harming yourself, you're injecting the drug into your own body. To gratify a revenge craving, you've got to inflict harm upon someone else. 


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:06:06] And what does the research suggest? Are there particular risk factors. Because as I was reading your book, it struck me that it seems that it is widespread and diverse. I think about family members who have gone through a bad divorce, and for the entire rest of their lives, they are seeking out. It's this schadenfreude, they take joy in seeing misfortunes of others with regard to that particular previous partner. But in the research, does it suggest that there are risk factors for this revenge addiction or is it just one widespread, meaning that it's not unique to people of lower socioeconomic status, it's not unique to people that have perhaps experienced significant childhood trauma and events.


[00:06:51] I'm just curious in course of your work and your research, what is it suggesting or showing? 


James Kimmel Jr.: [00:06:58] Yeah, so the first thing that it's suggesting is that we all desire revenge. That we're-- as I mentioned earlier, that's part of our evolutionary genetic baggage. The question I think you're pointing to is, so is there a heightened risk for somebody to experience what I refer to as revenge addiction? And we should think about or explain what we're talking about when we talk about addiction at all. Addiction is the inability to resist an urge to do something that's in its simplest form, right? So, taking a narcotic or engaging in gambling, for instance, these two activities, if these urges hit you what we know about addiction in general is that about 20% of the population of people who try, for instance, an addictive substance will actually become addicted to the substance. 


[00:07:50] So, that's just 20% of the total population. And that's what we think is true with regard to revenge seeking. There are some studies with mouse models that reflect this, even in mice populations which mirror human behavior in some of these ways. Mice, it turns out, have some of the same brain circuitry that humans share. So, it's about 20%. Now, then you ask who's more at risk than someone else into falling into that 20%? And that's where things become more cloudy, because what we know about addiction is that addiction can be genetically driven for sure, genetics plays a significant role. So, if you have a family with generations of addictive behaviors and activities, you're at a greater risk for those addictive activities. And we also think that there's this idea of a vulnerable brain. 


[00:08:45] So, if you're vulnerable to one addiction, you may be more vulnerable to other addictions. So, you would find people who maybe have an alcohol abuse disorder who are also gambling abuse people. So that's not uncommon. Then the other thing that you mentioned, and it's very important, are socioeconomic and sociobiological psychosocial factors. And those can be things where you live and where you've grown up and your parenting and how your parents responded to grievances of their own, either internal inside the family, or external outside of the family. And the more often you're exposed to those things, and the more often in general that you're exposed to grievances at all in your life that may be the result of factors beyond your control, just where you live, that can put you at a greater risk. 


[00:09:39] So, that combined creates a picture of what this is like. But I think that most important takeaway here is that anyone can experience powerful revenge cravings and that those revenge cravings can become extremely dangerous under the right circumstances. And so, we need to think in ourselves about how do we manage the grievances that we experience in our lives, because we experience grievances daily. Sigmund Freud, in a quote that I really find very important and knowing, said, “We daily and hourly go through our lives doing away with the people who wrong us or get in our way.” And that's a paraphrase, but it's true. 


[00:10:24] We spend enormous amounts of our daily lives at the conscious and subconscious level thinking about something that has wronged us or someone who has wronged us, planning how to retaliate against them, and then getting over that entire process. And this is just going on day after day after day. And it's very hard to break through that cycle. But I think we now have a lot of hope. 


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:10:48] And one of the important distinctions that you make in the book is that we're not talking about sociopathy. We're not talking about sociopaths. We're not talking about psychopaths. This is completely different and perhaps for the context of this conversation, identifying that you're not speaking to the 2% to 3% of the population that are impacted by those particular disorders. This is the rest of us. And it is completely normal to have these. I look at it as a blip. You might get frustrated. You're driving. You're thinking about the person that just cut you off. I grew up in New Jersey and so you have this brief moment of scooch of road rage, and then it goes away. I mean, that is normal. That is part of the normal condition. 


[00:11:34] But we're talking about a spectrum, if you will, again, the interpersonal relationships or sometimes people don't have particularly healthy communication patterns all the way up to the extremes, which I'm sure that we will probably touch on because of beginning of our conversation, we talked about this shared experience with the university that my older son attends, presently. When you're thinking about the presumptions around, oh, you must be talking about sociopathy, you must be talking about psychopaths. Let's at least explain that there is a clear delineation. We are not speaking to those kinds of disorders and the impact that they have on individuals that are diagnosed with them.


James Kimmel Jr.: [00:12:16] Yeah, you're exactly right, Cynthia, on that. And it's important to keep that in mind and its comforting for us in hoping that, that we're true. That there are this special group of people in our society who are the violent ones. They're the ones that are evil beyond redemption. They're the other. And we don't really want to acknowledge what's happening inside our brains and some of the ways that we will retaliate against other people in small and in very powerful dangerous ways. So, a normal person can be provoked by a grievance and a revenge craving that is uncontrolled to do enormous harm all the way up through mass shootings and less and more warfare, street crime, intimate partner violence has shown multiple times to be the result of revenge seeking between partners. 


[00:13:14] So, it's family violence, it's like you said, road violence and road rage. It's workplace retaliation and workplace sabotage and workplace violence and psychological attacks on each other. So, it's very common and it's none of that, that’s revenge driven, is the result of, you're not a psychopath or a sociopath to have these experiences, but you may need help in managing your revenge cravings and how you deal with grievances and getting control over your life that way. 


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:13:49] As I was reading your book and understanding the trajectory of your life, your own experiences, the field that you went into and the pivot that you did. You're now, a professor at a major university. Let's speak to your own trajectory of your lifetime because I think this is really relevant and quite interesting. The trajectory of your childhood experiences, your choice of occupation for the first part of your life, where you are now and how all of these things have come together to delineate speaking to this revenge piece. 


James Kimmel Jr. [00:14:22] Yeah, sure. So, I was raised on a farm in central Pennsylvania, pretty nice place. I had a pretty good childhood for a long time until I was in a high school. And a group of other farm kids who lived near me, guys began bullying me. And it started as bullying often does with just verbal insults and things and got a little bit light physical and I was getting tripped getting on the bus or getting shoved around in the hallway and then that progressed to getting kicked and punched and things like that. This was in the early 80s and there weren't a lot of antibullying programs, certainly not in my rural high school. So, it just happened and it became a miserable existence for a while for me. 


[00:15:09] But one night we were all asleep in the house, my parents, my brother and I and just outside of my dream state, heard a vehicle come to a stop in front of our house and after a little bit of time a gunshot. And we woke up and looked out the windows and I looked out the window and I saw a pickup truck that sure enough belonged to one of the guys that had been picking on me. And I saw it tearing off down the road and we looked around the house to see if there was any damage and there wasn't. The next morning, one of my jobs was to go out and feed the animals and one of our animals was beautiful sweet beagle named Paula. 


[00:15:46] And I went out to feed her in her pen and unfortunately, I found her dead in her pen with a bullet hole in her head in a pool of blood. It was a horrific moment, shocking in every way that you can imagine that would be. So, my parents-- called the police. State police didn't really do anything about it. There's like, “Well, it's unfortunate for you, but no one else was hurt. So, we're moving on.” About a week or two later, I was home alone at night again and those guys came back in their pickup truck and stopped in front of the house. And just as I was looking outside to see what was going on, there was an explosion and they blew up our mailbox and shot it into the cornfield. And that was it for me.


[00:16:30] I had been through about two to three years of this bullying behavior and I couldn't stand it anymore. And I wanted retaliation, I wanted revenge and I wanted it bad. And I was raised in the country, I'd been hunting and shooting guns since I was about eight years old. We had plenty of weapons. My dad had a loaded handgun in his nightstand. I grabbed it and I raced outside the house. I jumped in my mother's car. I went after these guys through the middle of the night and I'm just shouting in rage as I'm flying down the road trying to catch up to them. 


[00:17:04] And it took me a little bit of time, but eventually I caught them, trapped them against one of their barns and they got out of their truck. There were about four of them looking, squinting back through my high beams, trying to figure out who had been chasing them. And they wouldn't necessarily know it was me. They might have recognized my mother's car. It was clear to me that they didn't have a weapon and they didn't know I had a gun. And I grabbed the gun and I opened the door and I started to get out of the car. I just wanted revenge so badly. 


[00:17:34] I wanted them to pay for what they had done to my dog, what they'd done to me, my dignity. They ruined my life by that point. But at the last second, as I was climbing out of the car to do what I had come to do, I stopped and I just had this flash of inspiration that if I shot them and it would have been so easy, I would have ended the person that I knew myself to be. Whether I lived or not through that event, I would always be a murderer. I'd be a killer. And that was just enough of a recognition to cause me to get back in the car, put the gun down, take a couple deep breaths, back down the driveway and drive home. 


[00:18:17] But it was clear to me in the hours and days after that I had been given an amazing gift because I didn't go through with it. And yet so many people do. We know this. The news is filled with it every day. And the words are another senseless killing. And the science shows us there are no senseless killings, there aren’t. There are revenge killings almost exclusively is what they are. And that is not senseless. That is the result of brain biology. And we can see it now and we can understand it and we can do something about it. But you mentioned, the life I chose after that. And I wasn't ready to give up my revenge seeking by any means at that point. 


[00:18:58] I just knew that I wasn't willing to pay the high price of becoming a killer to get it. So instead of becoming a killer, I became a lawyer. [laughs] And, that might feel like a shocking statement, but lawyers are the only people in our society who are licensed to prescribe, manufacture and deliver revenge seeking to people and for themselves. And to make a lot of money doing it. I mean, it's kind of like being a drug dealer in that sense. Revenge is drug in its behavior in the brain. And we have a profession that's out there delivering the drug. And I became one of those people. And that was my career for half of my adult professional life until I almost crashed and burned doing that. 


[00:19:47] And that's when I really got serious about researching what is behind revenge seeking. And a lot of fortunate, amazing turns later, I ended up at the Yale School of Medicine becoming a researcher to do what I'm doing now. And I'm just very lucky that I'm here. 


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:20:04] Well, I think your story, to me was certainly incredibly inspirational and also a testament to the trajectory of our lifetime. How many of us pivot and shift and take opportunities that would otherwise seem like you're mired in the muck. You actually reached out to several researchers, got things going and obviously this whole concept of this brain disease model of revenge is a large testament to the work that you are doing. And I think it's so important because I think many of us feel powerless, when there's another shooting or there's some mass casualty situation. 


[00:20:45] I know as a clinician, I was an ER nurse years ago in Baltimore, and every time there was some catastrophic event that would happen, we are right in the thick of it. And I feel like so many of us want to better understand this behavior. We want to be able to proactively support not just the science, but also public policy to feel like we are not powerless. And this is what I think is so important about your work. So, let's talk about this brain disease model of revenge. Let's talk a little bit about the physiology in the brain, because I like to geek out on the anatomy and physiology because I think it's so important. 


[00:21:22] And then let's weave our way, you even mentioned in your book, you talk about schadenfreude, which is my very favorite German word, more so because of the way that it describes behavioral patterns and the joy that people find in others misfortunes I'm not in any way, shape or form identifying that's a good thing to do. But I think it's a fascinating word. Let's talk about this model and how it applies to the research and the work that you're doing right now. 


James Kimmel Jr. [00:21:48] Yeah, happy to do that. And I want to begin that, I guess, by to try and bring it to the real world. Even toddlers experience revenge desires and grievances. So, this is a completely end to end of the human life from toddler years to senior years, we're subject to these revenge desires and we have to manage our grievances, whether we're a toddler and somebody just took away our ice cream cone or we're a senior and we just can no longer take-- managing our illnesses or our loved one who's got an illness, physicians and healthcare system that maybe isn't treating us the way we want them to be. So, it's prevalent in every direction but the way it works your brain on revenge looks like this. 


[00:22:39] You experience what you perceive to be a grievance. And as I mentioned, that can be anything from an insult to shame or humiliation, disrespect of any kind, that is activating the anterior insula, the pain network of your brain and your brain at that point wants to rebalance itself with pleasure. And we've evolved so that harming the person who harmed us or their proxy is amazingly pleasurable. It gives us a drug like high, and our brains will begin to seek that. It releases, it produces surges of dopamine, just the way narcotics or gambling or other addictive behaviors do that. This is happening, as I mentioned earlier, in this unique way in which the only way to gratify these cravings in order to experience the full pleasure of it is to harm another person instead of injecting the needle into your own body, you're injecting bullets into the body of another person or unkind words, right? It can be anything in that range. 


[00:23:41] That then leaves us with when do we become addicted to this process. So, at that point, the brain has its prefrontal cortex, the executive function center of the brain, and that's there to stop you from making bad decisions. If that part of your brain is impaired or hijacked. That's what we think happens with addictions of any form is that the prefrontal cortex is hijacked, so you're no longer able to make the quality decisions that you would want to make if everything was working well. 


[00:24:13] But if that’s hijacked or like I said, impaired in any way, then you may no longer be able to resist the drive of that craving and you may go for it. And that's when things become dangerous, particularly if the drive is leading you toward a violent act. So that's what occurs with revenge. And with revenge addiction, it is that your prefrontal cortex is impaired and you're no longer able to stop yourself from doing what you know you shouldn't do. And maybe we can talk a little bit about why would you not want revenge since we've been evolved to experience pleasure from having it.


[00:24:51] Well, when we evolved this way, these were early days in the ice age when humans were just beginning to live in social groups and we needed ways to cause people in the group to obey social norms. And so, there’s this notion of punishment and punitiveness that happens when the social group witnesses someone who's acting outside of the group rules. And that makes sense in the Ice Age, but it doesn't make nearly as much sense today. I mean, we all need to act inside of the rules, of course, and there is punishment. But we also have today in modern society, weapons of mass destruction and we have enormous ways, technological now, with the Internet and social networking even to experience grievances and to retaliate at almost light speed around the world and have millions of people having the same grievance and the same revenge desire at the same time. And that can lead to a lot of harm that we've experienced. 


[00:25:51] And we also have weapons that are able to kill many people fast, just like we have fentanyl, which can kill many people fast. So, when we look at revenge seeking, we realize that although it feels good at the moment, it is a drug like high that is short lived, it doesn't last very long. And what you're left with usually is feeling a lot worse and potentially in a much more dangerous and precarious situation than you were. Because revenge is the root motivation for all forms of violence. So, when you acknowledge that, then you can go, “Yeah, we've evolved to be violent, but we also have evolved control mechanisms to not be violent.”


[00:26:35] And like I said, the prefrontal cortex is there to remind you of that and to stop you from doing something that will harm you. My favorite analogy is that a hammer driving a nail cannot avoid the impact of the blow, it can't. So, when you're getting revenge against someone, although it feels good at the moment, you cannot avoid the pain you've inflicted because you are the instrument of that pain that you're inflicting, whether it's verbal and nonviolent or whether it's violent. 


[00:27:08] So that's what's going on inside the brain up to and through the point of revenge seek. We can then talk about how we're wired as well to stop that entire process in its tracks, which is great news, and take away the pain in a very healthy, immediate way and take away those revenge cravings and leave yourself in the most amazing position you could possibly be in already prewired, if we know it's there and how to use it well. 


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:27:38] And that really speaks to the beauty of forgiveness. But before we touch on that, I'm thinking, because I have all boys, none of whom are 25 years or older, I understand physiologically that our prefrontal cortex is not fully evolved, developed. And I think about and reflect on some of the goofy things that all of us have done as teenagers and young adults, most of which are fairly benign. But I also think on the other hand, if your prefrontal cortex is not fully developed, are you more susceptible to acting out on these urges and these uncomfortable feelings? Because it's ultimately what it comes down, you're having an uncomfortable feeling. And whether it's using a drug or drinking too much or gambling or porn or revenge addiction, it is all a way of working through these uncomfortable feelings. Our younger people more susceptible to acting on these impulses than, let's say, more mature adults. 


James Kimmel Jr. [00:28:37] Yeah, the answer is yes or another way of putting is they're less able to control these cravings, these impulses, because as you just exactly said rightly, they don't have a fully developed prefrontal cortex that's able to go in and intervene at that moment when they need it. And my personal example, with those bullies that night, it was a close call. And I know I met many men who are serving very long terms in prisons who at that moment in time, as a youth, pulled the trigger. And I believe that there's a significant portion of them who didn't have the resources available to stop that at that moment. That doesn't excuse at all what they did. They took a life. 


[00:29:28] But it does explain what happened and it does then empower society to do things to help support young men in particular also women, though, to control these powerful cravings. And that begins with education to help us understand-- we have health classes in high schools that talk about the dangers of drug and alcohol abuse and now gambling and also sex, things that are craving driven. And we warn them about, you're going to experience some powerful cravings as you age, and here are some ways to manage those, and here are the dangers if you don't. We don't take that opportunity to explain to our youth how to manage these powerful revenge cravings that can cause them to destroy their own lives and other people's lives as well. 


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:30:21] What do you think about the influence of social media as a fuel to driving some of these behaviors? I think it's very much a dual edged sword. I have boys, so, their experience on social media might be very different than a young woman's at this point. I mean, obviously when we were growing up, there was no social media. It wasn't something that we needed to contend with. But what has been your experience when you're looking at the research or talking to patients or individuals that have been impacted by these revenge behaviors? 


James Kimmel Jr. [00:30:50] Yeah, we can all witness exactly what's going on, on social media platforms and in the news, of course. So, social media platforms have become incredible infection systems. It's just like a COVID experience out there where instead of being breathed upon with COVID, we're having someone's rage going straight into our heads through our cell phones, like all day, every day and through our computers. And so, people are able to spread grievances that's the initial triggering event is this perception of being mistreated. Injustice, unfairness, political grievances, social grievances, grievances at a school, grievances at my workplace, grievances in my family, all over the place.


[00:31:43] So, we have that going on and then what social networking really does, and this has been brought out in a lot of the whistleblower actions, for instance, Facebook and other social media platforms have figured out is that they can tap into this addictive process and get people engaged in their platforms on an almost 24/7 basis by exploiting this weakness in the human brain. And that is to say by enabling grievance spreading with the tap of a screen and then also to gratify that revenge craving with a retaliatory tweet back. So, we're able to, spread the grievance and we're also able to gratify the grievance online for free as long as we keep engaging in this platform. And since it's an addictive process, we're extremely vulnerable as a society. And it's important to remember, we've only been exposed to this as a society for 20 or 30 years. We weren't prepared for it when it was created, and we're no better prepared for it really now. And we're all victims of it. 


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:32:56] No, I would agree. And it's interesting as I've navigate, I have personal and business accounts on many different platforms and how I feel like one in particular that I used to be very active on, which is Twitter/X. I feel like I personally have had to kind of muffle my voice there because in many ways I feel like of all the platforms is the one that can go sideways really fast. And I was saying to someone the other day, I think it just really depends on our personalities. I'm not an arguer by nature, which is probably ironic because I got into law school but decided not to go many years ago. And someone said to me, “But you don't like to argue. And I said, “But I was so intrigued by studying the law.”


[00:33:43] Having said that, as someone who does not like to argue, being on Twitter, it's like a minefield. You step in a mine, it blows up, then you're dealing with the repercussions. And I think when we talk about social media, I always think about, I have an avatar of the nasty person on Twitter. It could be on any platform. Let me be clear. All of us have experienced this. Someone is a keyboard warrior because they don't know you, they know nothing about you. They just viscerally respond to something. 


[00:34:12] And to me, I look at it as for the sake of my peace of mind and for being a positive person, it's just easier if I avoid areas and places that tend to be more divisive because that's just not in alignment with the way I like to live my life, which is not to suggest I don't disagree. I just don't go looking for it. Having said that, I think this whole discussion is so important largely because of the importance of forgiveness. In the book that was such a huge takeaway for me how powerful forgiveness is for dealing with these maladaptive reactions to revenge. And so, what does research suggest about the power of forgiveness and why it is so important? 


James Kimmel Jr. [00:34:58] I'm glad you asked that. That was one of the really joyful and perhaps only joyful experience of writing my book. Because for the first three quarters of the book, I had to explore human revenge seeking really, from the beginning of recorded human history forward and the research that exists that now explains it. And it's extremely painful for all of us and our ancestors. It's just been an enormous plague. I analogize it in terms of lives lost to very close to, The Black Death, in the 200 to 500 million people's lives who have been lost with these two misunderstood biological experiences. But what's amazing about forgiveness is that it turns out that forgiveness does not benefit and isn't a gift that you give to the person who wronged you. 


[00:35:54] It is for your benefit, and it is a gift that you give to yourself. So, here's what happens when you forgive. When you decide to forgive a grievance, you don't have to forgive the person who did the grievance. You can just forgive the grievance and you can just imagine forgiving it. You don't even have to do the whole thing. You can just imagine forgiving it, keep it to yourself. But when you do just that little thing, some things, amazing things happen inside your brain. So, the first is that that pain network work that I've mentioned, that is triggered with grievances, that becomes immediately silent. So, it goes silent, which is just what you want. You want the pain of the grievance to go away when the person cuts you off in traffic. 


[00:36:35] What you really want is that pain, that insult that invasion of your space and maybe putting you in harm's way. You want that to go away and that it shuts down the pain network. Second, it also shuts down the revenge craving network. So, in other words, the circuitry that is activated for all forms of addiction. So, this pleasure circuitry behind a reward or pleasure circuitry. And that's two areas. It's called the nucleus accumbens and the dorsal striatum. Those two areas of the brain activate when we're wronged and we're seeking revenge. Forgiveness deactivates both of them, which is a fantastic thing, because revenge cravings are our cravings, and cravings are never joyful. I mean, when you're craving ice cream, you're not comfortable about it, right? You're not happy to be craving it. You feel driven to go and get it. 


[00:37:27] And if you can't get it, you're in pain, right? So, we want that craving circuitry to stop, we want the pain circuitry to stop and forgiveness does both. And then the last thing that it does is that it also activates that prefrontal cortex. So, the executive function, good decision making, balancing, costs and benefits, that part of the brain is activated when you forgive. So, all these three brain biological, I would say experiences are within your control, not somebody else's. And that's important to understand is that you can activate the forgiveness experience at any moment for free. You don't need a doctor, you don't need a prescription, you don't need anything. And it is enormously freeing. It's kind of the miracle drug that works wonders. 


[00:38:21] And that's where I think the hope lies, is being able to get people to understand that it's not a gift. You're never, when you forgive, you don't have to endorse what somebody did or accept what they did. You don't have to stop engaging in self-defense if there's a real threat present in front of you, imminent risk of serious bodily harm is going to trigger a self-defense reaction from you. That's brain biological, it's automatic and it should happen or none of us would be around. We need that. We need to be able to experience self-defense. But forgiveness is something that is equally powerful, that prevents you from engaging in the next round of retaliatory violence so that you can stop it and you can live your life in the present moment and no longer in the past. 


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:39:12] Well, and it's so interesting because just as an example, I lost my father last year and prior to his death we had a couple of really amazing conversations and having a conversation with my father to say I'm in a place of peace and a place of forgiveness. And I think it was also helpful for him, but for me, when he then went on to have an accident this past year and fell and ended up, in the neurotrauma ICU. And the reason why I share this is to give everyone some context. Forgiveness is so powerful that when my dad got so sick and my brother and I were actively involved in making decisions based on what he wanted, we had tremendous peace. 


[00:39:55] As hard as that loss was, the beauty of forgiveness is that it provides you with the peace that yourself need. And as you astutely stated, it is not about having a whole conversation with the person that has wronged you or not done, right by you, depending on, whatever vernacular you like to utilize. I think on a very important level, when we're talking about calming that autonomic nervous system and we're talking about getting out of fight and flight and allowing yourself to have a point of acceptance, but also incredibly freeing when you're no longer encumbered by those uncomfortable-- Not that I wanted to hurt my father. I want to be very clear. 


[00:40:34] But, if there's been a perceived slight or there's been something that was done that maybe wasn't done the way that you wanted it to be done. And this is why I talk about this continuum that it can run the gamut and why I think forgiveness is such a powerful way of reaffirming those feelings. You mention in the book that forgiveness is the potent antidote for revenge and revenge addiction. The ability to swallow one's pride, overcome the insult, and take the unfair offer may involve active downregulation of emotional responses to unfair treatment. And that for me was like typifying that section, because I could tell as you were probably writing that book, it was tough. 


[00:41:18] There is tough information, processing things that have gone on in human history where there has been a great deal of revenge addiction and some mass casualties and unpleasantries that have occurred. But coming down to, let's find some methodologies, let's find some ways of addressing this proactively. And so, I love that, you take us through this forgiveness piece and then we talk about intervention. So, let's talk about interventions that can help support this forgiveness antidote to the revenge addiction and revenge addiction tendencies. 


James Kimmel Jr. [00:41:53] Yeah. So, American culture does not really welcome forgiveness very much. We want to be tough. We don't want to be a doormat for sure. We believe that forgiveness is a sign of weakness. It's what people do who can't really get revenge. I mean, that's what the received wisdom is about forgiveness. Not only is it a gift to the person doesn't deserve one, but it's probably means that you're being weak about it and you should just go full force revenge seeking. So, we have the legal way of getting revenge. That's why I became a lawyer, as I said. [Cynthia laughs] And that's one way of doing it. And then we also have street justice, which is another. 


[00:42:34] What I decided to do. I really wanted to empower forgiveness in a way that's truly satisfying and get down to the core of what's going on inside the brain and try and work with the brain circuitry that we have in the brain biology. And what that led me to is the idea that, we as humans throughout history have always engaged with, happily a trial process, and that is an archetypal way of resolving disputes. And what that means is from if you're a trauma expert, like a Bessel van der Kolk type of person, he said famously in interviews that “People who have experienced trauma have to continue to carry the psychological pain of it, often because nobody's around to say, “Hey, I saw what happened or I just heard what happened and that was wrong. And I understand why you're in pain and you should be in pain.” Who wouldn't be in pain? 


[00:43:37] So, people want to be heard, in other words, right? You want to be heard to get over your traumas of life. That's important. You also want to hold the person who traumatized you accountable for what they've done somehow. So, I created a way for all of this to happen inside the brain where A, it's safe and B, everything is already happening in the first place. Because if you think about trauma, it's always something that happened in the past, and things in the past do not exist in the present or the future. You can't experience them with your senses. You can only think you're experiencing them through a thought formation called a memory. But that memory is this painful memory. 


[00:44:19] And if you keep dwelling on it, you're traumatizing yourself over and over again. So, why don't we put this trial experience where you can put someone on trial inside your head where the pain is. You don't need a real courtroom. You don't need real lawyers and judges. You can do this all yourself and play all the roles or stuff. So, I've created this intervention called the Miracle Court System. The non-justice system is the formal name for it. And there's a Miracle Court app, that's a free app that you can also use, that's audio driven, that you can use for yourself. And the entire non-justice system is also available in my book The Science of Revenge that we've been talking about. 


[00:44:56] And what this allows you to do is put on trial any person who has ever wronged you for anything they've done at any time, but play all the roles yourself. So, you're the victim and the prosecutor. You're the defendant who testifies to their side of the story. You're the judge and jury finding guilt or innocence. You're the warden imposing the punishment. And then in the last step, you're the person who becomes the judge of your own life and your own self and how you want to live your life going forward. And you get to experience in that final step, you get to just experience it through your imagination what it might be like to actually forgive the whole thing rather than continue seeking revenge for it. 


[00:45:38] And what we found, we've studied this at Yale and used it in multiple settings for people that are in jails, violence interrupters who are trying to stop retaliatory, next round urban violence. Used it with women who've experienced serious rape. Really extreme and much gentler experience is less severe than that. And what we find is that by going through these steps, you're able to do what Dr. Van der Kolk was saying. “You get to be heard because you're expressing what happened to you. You get to hold somebody accountable because you get to hold them guilty if you want. You get to experience a level of empathy that you rarely get to experience because you have to play the role of the person who wronged you and testifying to what they've done and their excuses. “


[00:46:27] And sometimes we found that at that stage alone, some people will say, “You know what? My grievance is gone just by I have a deeper understanding of why this person did what they did to me, or I have a new understanding that what they did to me maybe wasn't intentional or it wasn't really intended to harm me as much as it did, or I understand why they did it, and I might have done it that way too.” So, there's that feeling and the feeling of finding guilt. Then there's the experience of we don't get to experience in our legal system what it's like to punish another person. 


[00:47:02] And when you really experience that, you're not there when somebody's in jail for 20 years or 30, or you're not there when somebody's executed, most of the time you might be a witness, but most of the time not. But when you become the true instrument of someone else's pain, it's not a pleasant experience. When you're there and you're really thinking deeply about what's it like for them, what's it like for me to be doing this to them. And in my non-justice system, the punishment can be anything. It's not just jail time. You can have it be something and I won't get in. I mean it's anything you can imagine is any punishment you're allowed to have. And when you're doing that and you get to do it, you often feel less comfortable than you thought you might. 


[00:47:40] But then in the last step, this imagining forgiveness step, you're just invited to imagine that you're the judge of yourself now. And you realize that the pain that you feel and that you've been trying to release through revenge seeking is completely inside your head. It's completely within your control and you can make it stop. And the way you can stop it is by simply imagining making it stop. I mean it's that simple. And when you do that and when you experience that by saying “I'm moving on, I'm forgiving this, which is what forgiveness is. It's really just I'm moving on, I'm not going to continue to dwell on this.” There's this instant feeling of kind of miraculous relief that comes over you that is just so enormous, it's so freeing, it's so joyful. 


[00:48:33] And if you just continue doing that, you're going to continue to experience joy until that pain is, it's moved beyond it. You've moved beyond it and you've almost forgotten it altogether. You can remember sometimes what happened, but you don't remember it with the same level of pain and vindictiveness that it used to have. And that is extremely valuable. So that's the intervention that I believe so far is the most effective in reducing revenge cravings because it marries all other interventions together. It has, you know, motivational interviewing and cognitive behavioral therapy types of addiction interventions built into it as well as the justice system that we all have an experience with either through entertainment or otherwise. And then it activates these parts of the brain that you need to draw on to heal yourself. And that's what it's all about, healing yourself. 


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:49:30] Well, and I think that is exactly the type of message to round out this conversation is there is hope, there are things we can do. I do find, and it could just be that because I'm a middle-aged person, I think the act of forgiveness in most areas of our lives allows us to live a much more peaceful existence. And I say that on a very deep level because I think that our experiences are what they are. How we choose to react to them is something different. And if I embed nothing else into this conversation is allowing people to feel like they have control of things. Some things we have no control over, some other things we do. 


[00:50:09] And I think that utilizing this non-justice system and it really draws upon your legal background, which I thought was so insightful and brilliant, to round out the conversation today, what are the things that we want to leave listeners with in terms of if they're concerned about a loved one, concerned about someone they work with? What are some of the warning signs? What are ways that we can get involved to help alleviate some of the issues that people are dealing with in a very protective and respectful way. 


James Kimmel Jr. [00:50:42] Yeah, thanks for bringing that piece of it up. That's really important. We have to think in terms of what we're seeing with people. So, I've identified and I have a website called savingcain.org that is a website that's designed actually to speak to people who might be planning a mass killing event or a shooting. That's at the one extreme and then the other are the everyday aggressions that we all live with. But let's talk about the most extreme for a second. The extreme should be addressed as we address other extreme medical events. And what we're talking about here are medical events. It's brain biological. So, we experience a heart attack. We all know the signs of a heart attack. It's chest pain in the left arm. 


[00:51:29] And you're a practitioner so you can explain it far better than I can, but in shortness of breath and a few other things and you ought to be calling 911 and not messing around with it at all because it's a medical emergency. We can and should be doing the same thing for a revenge attack. A revenge attack is fairly similar to a heart attack except that the victim experience is much wider. It's not only going to be the individual who's experiencing the attack, but potentially their targets, law enforcement and other people who are innocent bystanders in harm's way. What does a revenge attack look like? Well, it's somebody who is dwelling upon revenge seeking and their grievances without stop. They're ruminating on it, they're expressing it, they're not letting it go.


[00:52:19] On top of it, maybe they've begun to talk about how they want to retaliate and they're fantasizing about these retaliatory events. But the fantasies are becoming more and more violent. On top of that, maybe they're accessing weapons or they're talking about places where they would like to do something that is retaliatory to get back at the person or their proxy. I want to emphasize that revenge is never only against the person who committed the wrong. You can be getting revenge against someone that had nothing to do with it at all. But in your mind, it's still revenge seeking and the classic example is coming home and kicking the dog after your boss was mean to you. You've just gotten revenge by proxy, right? You didn't get revenge against your boss because you still want your job, but your dog can't do anything about it. And so maybe you kicked the dog. That's still revenge. 


[00:53:13] Well, going back to this revenge attack concern, when you see the evidence of a revenge attack, you should be calling 911 just like evidence of a heart attack. And if you're the person experiencing it, you should be calling 911 and not feeling ashamed about that at all. It's like you might be dying at that moment. You may be on a process in which you are going to commit suicide by cop. You may be going into a process in which you're going to harm other people. You can call 911. Someone who's witnessing it can call 911. 


[00:53:48] And a lot of these mass shootings that we've been experiencing in our society for the last 20 years, many of them could have probably been prevented if we taught this, if we understood it, if we looked for the signs and we had the courage to act on those signs. And we need to have that courage because lives are at stake and that's the extreme end there. At the other end, if you're living with someone or you are someone who is very vengeful all the time, who is constantly retaliating. You know, maybe it's just with their mouth but it's all the time and they don't seem like they can control it. That's a time when you might want to at a minimum start with some self-help techniques like accessing the non-justice system or the miracle court app as a way of understanding your own or their revenge cravings and helping them learn about forgiveness in a much more powerful, acceptable way. 


[00:54:44] And if that's not sufficient then you ought to be talking to a healthcare practitioner, mental health provider, maybe it's your family doctor, anybody about these feelings and about your inability to let these grievances go in your life and the cravings for revenge that they are generating. And you can get help that way as well. And since this is relatively new, a lot of addiction, mental health professionals won't necessarily know about revenge addiction. They don't have to understand revenge addiction per se to understand that they're always dealing with people with revenge crime. And a lot of mental illness is formed around and is carried out through revenge ideation and revenge seeking and not being able to get over grievances. 


[00:55:33] So, there is help available for you and for them and you don't just have to live with it and go, “Oh, revenge is natural. There's nothing I can do about this. I'll just live and suffer.” Not true. Definitely not true. There are many things you can do about it. 


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:55:46] Well, thank you so much for the work that you do and for this book. I think that it's a really powerful book and one that I'm going to encourage listeners to look into because it does help explain a lot of what we've seen societally over the last 20, 30 years. Please let listeners know how to connect with you by the time this podcast, and that'll be close to your publication date, how to purchase your book or connect with you outside of the podcast. 


James Kimmel Jr. [00:56:13] Yeah, thanks. So, the book is called The Science of Revenge and I'm James Kimmel Jr. And you can get me at my website, which is www.jameskimmeljr.com. Kimmel like Jimmy Kimmel. James like Jimmy Kimmel. 


[laughter]


So, it's an easy way to remember me, but I don't normally go by Jimmy. But that's the best way to find me. The other place to look for that Miracle Court app that I was telling you about is at miraclecourt.com that's the Miracle Court app and you can download it from that website. So, yeah. 


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:56:47] Great. Thank you so much. 


James Kimmel Jr. [00:56:48] Yeah, thank you very much, Cynthia. Pleasure being on your show. 


Cynthia Thurlow: [00:56:53] If you love this podcast episode, please leave a rating and review. Subscribe and tell a friend. 



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