Someone Asks "What’s Your Best 'If I Go Down I’m Taking You With Me' Moment?" And 27 People Deliver

"Turn the other cheek" may sound great on paper, but as we all know from experience, it can be incredibly difficult to put into practice. Especially if other people consistently wrong or annoy you to a degree you just can’t stand anymore. Most of the time, it seems impossible to balance the scales of justice and get back at them for causing these problems. But sometimes, a perfect opportunity to get vengeance and put these people back in their place may reveal itself. Then, you're presented with only one question: is it really worth it?

To find out what’s going through our minds when we feel an overwhelming urge to retaliate, we reached out to Joshua Klapow, Ph.D., a psychologist and creator of Mental Drive. He started this initiative to help people improve their well-being and live healthier, more fulfilled, and successful lives by teaching them about psychological tools they can use every day.

Klapow was more than happy to share his thoughts on the matter, as he recently did a live TV interview on whether we sometimes go too far when it comes to calling out people who betrayed us. "Rejection, shame, and betrayal are extremely powerful, visceral, and survival emotions. They go right to our fight or flight physiological mechanisms," he told Bored Panda.

"As a result, when we experience them and have a person or persons who we identify as the 'cause', we are almost reflexively driven to 'hurt' them. It is a deep-seated, primitive response. One that we can override and don’t have to act on, but one, nevertheless, that we feel very intensely," Klapow explained.

As it turns out, we are wired to feel a universal thirst for retaliation in the face of a threat. When we are suddenly filled with a whirlwind of emotions, we also feel this instinct that pushes us forward to make seemingly irrational decisions that make complete sense at a time. But in the long run, we’re more likely to regret our actions.

When it comes to the "If I go down, I’m taking you with me" moments, Klapow pointed out that dragging people with us makes us feel better in the short run. "It’s the easier way to validate that we are not alone in transgressions, that it wasn’t completely our fault and that the responsibility for the wrongdoing lies with others, not just us."

"All of this is our emotional response," the psychologist continued. "Deciding to take action and bring someone down with us, is one that comes with consequences," Klapow explained there’s one disparity many of us fail to see before acting on our emotions. "There is a difference between letting a person know they have a responsibility and letting them know that you want them to take that responsibility, versus making them take responsibility."

"Dragging people down typically creates a new problem because now you become a person of blame for dragging them down. You are now the object of a transgression and they no longer have to take responsibility because you forced them into action," Klapow said, adding this is rarely a good short-term or long-term approach.

Many people believe revenge will make them feel better and help them gain closure, others report feeling worse and worse over time after retaliating and then ruminating on their deed. But studies have shown that, usually, the taste of revenge is bittersweet, as it's capable of evoking both positive and negative emotions.

"Getting revenge very often is a way to displace our own hurt," Klapow said. "It can temporarily help us redirect our intense emotions from focusing on ourselves to having an object of blame. It makes us feel like the world is right and stable."

Taking vengeance on someone, however, is different from looking for justice, he added. "Seeing a person be held responsible for their transgressions can help us heal. It does create closure."

"The difference is when we seek revenge, we seek to harm for what was done for us. This creates more anger and more distress. When we seek justice, in contrast, we seek for equality to be restored. Getting justice is not something where we seek to harm. And in that way, the toxicity of revenge is neutralized."

The next time you find yourself in a situation where you feel this profound desire to get payback, stop for a second and analyze your feelings. "Know, accept and even embrace that our natural desire to seek revenge, to bring someone down with us who has betrayed us, is how we are wired," the psychologist suggested. "It is not inherently bad. It’s okay to think about revenge, ponder it, play it out in your mind."

But thinking about retribution and actually committing to it are two different things. "Allowing the thoughts to emerge does not mean you will act on them. In fact, telling yourself it’s okay to think these thoughts of revenge and then allow them to pass without taking action is a way to help reduce the feelings of intense anger and distress."