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Should You Go Through With Petty Revenge?
If you’re seriously planning to take revenge on someone, you should ask yourself whether it’ll make you feel better. We often generate what seems to us evil revenge ideas just to irritate people we perceive as our enemies in work or personal life. It’s one of those urges that we feel quite often but rarely discuss, says the director and owner of the Dialectical Behavior Therapy Center, Karyn Hall, Ph.D.
“The struggle with revenge is centuries old,” she wrote for Psychology Today. “Shakespeare said, ‘If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?’ Shakespeare clearly thought revenge was as normal and predictable as the sun rising.”
“But what about the idea that revenge is self-destructive? Confucius said, ‘Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.’ Gandhi seemed to agree with him when he said, ‘An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.’”
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What Triggers Revenge?
Hall mentioned that revenge seems to be one of the deepest instincts we have, highlighting that uncontrolled revenge, attack, and counterattack can be blinding and destroy the lives of all involved.
“Maybe the purpose of revenge is in preventing certain hostile actions or the threat of revenge ensures people do not hurt you in the future,” she said. “But sometimes people act revengefully when no good can come of their actions other than to inflict suffering on others.”
“Those actions can go to unfathomable extremes. From lovers running over a beloved iPhone or destroying what their ex most values, to businessmen damaging the careers of those who have rejected them, to students opening fire in school hallways, revenge can be an act of anger, hurt, and power.”
Sleep On Your Revenge Ideas
So, how do we deal with the overwhelming impulse of seeking vengeance? Try to fight it for as long as possible. Eventually, it should subside. Analyzing an experiment by Kevin Carlsmith and his colleagues, Hall pointed out that the reason revenge increases anger rather than decreasing it is because of ruminations.
“When people don’t get revenge, they tend to trivialize the event by telling themselves that because they didn’t act on their vengeful feelings, it wasn’t a big deal. Then, it’s easier to forget it and move on. But when people do get revenge, they can no longer trivialize the situation. Instead, they go over and over it and feel worse.”
So, even if you have come up with some petty ways to get revenge on your colleague for constantly losing your stapler, think twice if it’s really worth it. Instead of wasting time on inventing revenge ideas, you could always just start placing your stapler in the drawer and maintain peace of mind. As they say, the best revenge to take on people who irritate you is to live an unbothered, happy life.