Revenge, for our intents and purposes, is the interplay between our fantasies and our anger as a response to being hurt. That is the real issue here. Lots of people displace that anger, either by taking it out on someone else or themselves (as self-sabotage or guilt) to avoid acknowledging and fully feeling the hurt they’ve experienced. It’s almost like the emotional equivalent of argumentum ad hominem.

But, sooner or later, that hurt and that anger resurfaces. Where do you carry your stress? If it makes you feel ill, does that mean you carry yours in your gut? When I was trying to avoid dealing with my last breakup, I couldn’t get rid of small knots in my upper back, no matter how hot the water in the shower was.

Philosophically, guilt serves only the person who feels it. Camus argued, in The Stranger, that there was thus no point of guilt because it didn’t benefit the thing we were feeling guilty about. I think it’s more complex than that, because most people have emotional responses to provide a bulwark against feeling weak. Perhaps guilt, here, then awkwardly serves to make us feel that we’re not bad people, that we know that whatever twisted fantasies of revenge we may have are not morally right. Perhaps there is a way of re-framing your guilt in a more positive light?

No matter what happens, you have to know that it’s okay to feel these things. In fact, you must feel these things or this could prove a major hangup in your life.

But one thing to remember: The human mind is not rational. We do and feel things, even while thinking to ourselves that it doesn’t make any sense. That was one thing that tripped up most people in Psych 1 and it was the first sentence of the text.