How do Grievances affect Your brain?
JAMES KIMMEL, JR.’s research
A Violence Researcher
Studied the Role of Grievances and Retaliation in Violent Crime
“In fact, brain imaging studies show that harboring a grievance (a perceived wrong or injustice, real or imagined) activates the same neural reward circuitry as narcotics. Brain Biology Scientists found that in substance addiction, environmental cues such as being in a place where drugs are taken or meeting another person who takes drugs cause sharp surges of dopamine.”
These surges happen in crucial reward and habit regions of the brain, specifically, the nucleus accumbens and dorsal striatum.
They call it dope for a reason!
This triggers cravings in anticipation of experiencing pleasure and relief through intoxication.
Therapy or coaching with the wrong coach can lead to cues such as experiencing or being reminded of a perceived wrong or injustice — a grievance.
This activates these same reward and habit regions of the brain, triggering cravings in anticipation of experiencing pleasure and relief through retaliation.
To be clear, the retaliation doesn’t need to be physically violent—an unkind word, or tweet, can also be very gratifying.
What this suggests is that similar to the way people become addicted to drugs or gambling, people may also become addicted to seeking retribution against their enemies—revenge addiction.
This may help explain why some people just can’t let go of their grievances long after others feel they should have moved on—and why some people resort to violence.
This can be passed down for generations as well! The hallmark of addiction is compulsive behavior despite harmful consequences.
Also, like substance addiction, revenge addiction appears to spread from person to person. For instance, inner-city gun violence spreads in neighborhoods.
What can be done? When a friend or family member has an addiction, the first priority is to take care of yourself, and the next step is to encourage the addict to seek help.
Addiction interventions are often risky and can backfire.
There are no quick fixes with addiction. We’re in for a long haul.
Political parties and interest groups have come to rely upon inflaming grievances and stoking vindictiveness to generate donations and motivate voters. Media, entertainment and social networking giants also rely upon grievance and revenge-based content to attract viewers and users and increase advertising and sales. More people need to become savvy about how, why and for whose benefit they are being made to feel aggrieved and must decide to stop dealing in the drug of their own destruction.
We must also increase public education, from school age through adulthood, about healthy ways to process feelings of hurt or humiliation. The risk is not only political. The brains of millions of Americans have spent the past few years essentially being primed for revenge-seeking, and it can manifest in areas other than politics. Retaliation in response to grievances is the primary motive in intimate partner violence, youth violence and bullying, street violence, lone-actor attacks, police brutality, and terrorism. People and agencies interested in reducing murder rates, mass shootings, domestic terrorism, and other forms of violence should be focusing on revenge addiction.
Developing innovative prevention and treatment strategies for revenge addiction is essential. At Yale, we are studying a promising “motive control” (in contrast to gun control) method for preventing violence that allows people with grievances to put those who have hurt or offended them through imaginary but highly realistic criminal trials.
A Pilot Study of Motive Control to Reduce Vengeance Cravings
Violence is a serious public health problem in the United States, and a common risk factor for many forms of violence is the perpetrator’s motivation to achieve personal justice for past wrongs and injustices. Using a fictional transgression scenario to stimulate revenge feelings, we studied the preliminary efficacy of an intervention designed to mitigate revenge desires among victims of perceived injustice. The intervention consisted of a guided role-play of key figures in the justice system (e.g., victim, prosecutor, defendant, judge, etc.) in an imaginary mock trial of the offender. Study participants’ revenge desires toward the perpetrator decreased significantly immediately after the intervention and at a 2-week follow-up interview. Benevolence toward the offender increased immediately postintervention and at a 2-week follow-up interview. These results suggest that the intervention has promise to decrease revenge desires in people who have been victimized, and it potentially opens the door to behavioral health motive control approaches to violence prevention. Findings on the roles of vengeance and the desire for retaliation in relation to violent acts, as well as neuroscience research that suggests a connection between retaliatory aggression and the neural circuitry of anticipated reward and cravings, are discussed. Limitations of this pilot study are also discussed, and recommendations for future research are provided.
Violence is a serious public health problem in the United States. In 2015, 17,793 persons were victims of homicide, 44,193 were victims of suicide, and many thousands more were injured physically and emotionally by violence.1 The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has adopted a five-year strategic vision for achieving measurable reductions in violence. Rather than focus resources on understanding and preventing individual forms of violence (e.g., youth, gang, intimate partner, elder, etc.), the CDC’s strategic vision addresses violence at its roots by identifying and targeting shared risk and protective factors common to multiple forms of violent acts.2
A common risk factor for many forms of violence is the perpetrator’s motivation to achieve personal justice to avenge past wrongs and injustices.3 Retaliation against a partner for emotional harm has been identified as the most common reason for intimate partner violence.4 Retaliatory attitudes among assault-injured youth have been shown to fuel cycles of violence,5 and a systematic, multi-country review found that perpetrator desire for revenge was a primary motivation behind almost 40 percent of school shootings.6 Revenge has also been observed to be a primary motivation behind acts of terrorism.7
The role of retaliation in violent crime is also revealed in public health and criminological databases such as the CDC’s National Violent Death Reporting System and the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, which identify arguments in which one or more persons feel aggrieved as the single most common circumstance involved in violent death.8,9 Survivor-victims of violence have been shown to be at higher risk for engaging in violent behavior themselves.10 Within the military, veterans and service members who have experienced trauma (a form of victimization) have been shown to be at greater risk for aggression and violent offending than members not affected by trauma.11
Recent neuroscience research suggests a possible link between the neural circuitry of retaliation and strong cravings, especially in males. Researchers have found that the same reward-processing centers of the brain that activate for and are implicated in narcotics addiction (i.e., striatum, nucleus accumbens) also activate when people are meting out altruistic punishments, that is, willingly incurring a cost to punish others who commit perceived injustices or norm violations.12,–,14 A recent large-scale study by Chester and DeWall replicated and expanded upon this work, establishing a connection between nucleus accumbens activation and retaliatory aggression. The authors write that these findings have strong implications for treatment aimed at reducing aggression. If anticipated reward is a motivation for aggression, they argue, then addiction-treatment techniques might be adapted for treatment of aggression and risk of violence.13
Safe and Satisfying way of controlling Revenge!
This method is not only for preventing violence; anybody struggling with grievances can benefit from it. It can be utilized in group settings, too, and we’re hoping to develop an app so more people can access it.
People suffering from addiction tend to experience relationship problems and conflicts, display periods of euphoria followed by depression and restlessness, and fail to meet their responsibilities or fulfill their professional obligations.
They spend long periods of time obsessing over and planning ways to gratify their cravings and engage in the addictive behavior despite the physical or psychological harm it causes. Although I have no idea what Trump’s life is really like, from outside observation, many of these indicators appear to be present.
One of the lessons learned with substance addiction is that it is a disease, a brain and behavioral disorder, not a moral failure, and shaming and punishment do not work. We all have a role to play in halting the cycle of grievance and retaliation.
Forgiveness
The antidote for Bitterness, Retaliation, and Resentment
A very wise person has declared that, “At the epicenter of all healing is forgiveness”. Forgiveness is not letting the offender off the hook so they can hurt you again and again. You must set up personal boundaries to protect yourself from future offenses.
