Is turning the other cheek a good alternative to exact revenge when you end up full of hatred?

there’s so much wrong with this question I don’t know where to start. Hatred? Really? That don’t sound right.Can you add some to it? it’s pretty vague.

You need to forgive your enemies if you want to get past a desire for vengeance. In person, if possible. And then let it go.

by writing about it… or use it constructively to help the next generation

You are obviously being eaten up by whatever has gone on in the past and the truth is those you are wasting energy on hating probably don’t even know or care that they upset you. I agree with the other comments here, you need to forgive. I like the idea of writing. Write to each of these people who you are feeling so angry at and tell them exactly what it is they did and how you feel. You don’t have to send the letters but you do have let all that emotion out and then let it go.

I think it would be worth seeing a counsellor too. Someone you can talk all this through with.

Sometimes karma takes too long, so I like to speed up the process…

Think forward, not backward. If you dwell on the past it’s like trying to drive a car forward on the expressway with by only looking in the rear view mirror.

About all you can learn from the past what you did to enable the situations to happen? Assume that people would act as you would? Make bad choices in relationships? Not be clear about boundaries?

It’s almost impossible to ‘Turn the other cheek’ on your own strength. So if that’s the route you choose/chose to go, you need Jesus to help you do it. On our own it’s very, very hard. Even with Jesus it’s hard, why lie? A tactic that’s worked for me: I gently confront the person on the issue. That way I don’t pretend like it hasn’t happened, which is just irritating. If the offender is reasonable I get an explanation and an apology and that helps me move on. But sometimes you’ll be dealing with a total IDIOT. In which event you make the choice to forgive. Forgiving is not about them, it’s about you. Getting rid of the pain and anger and bad memories for your own sake; your own peace of mind. Good luck!

Try feeling compassion towards those that wronged you. They are fellow humans with their own issues to deal with. You may even consider that whatever they did to you shows their frailty.

It is easy for some people to say forgive and move on because they haven’t been seriously wronged in such a way that they cannot forget it. Some people were wronged so horribly that they cannot forget or forgive the person for what they did to them. Forgiving is the best way but it can be very hard to do. Forgiving is a great way to bring closure to an incident but that is easier said than done. Some people wrong those who are willing to forgive because they don’t have to worry about consequences. Whatever choice you make, make sure it doesn’t negatively effect you. The best course of action is not to trust many people. make them earn your trust. Some people put on a good show to earn trust and then turn against you. Have people earn your trust and surround yourself with those people. Cast out those who are bad and surround yourself with the good. A good person all alone is useless and defenseless. They can’t really achieve much in this world that favors bad people.

I must also add that if someone wronged in a severe way then you must make sure they know that there is a severe consequence. If someone rapes your daughter then I think that it is completely justified to kill that person. If someone tries to turn you into a social pariah then it is completely justified to beat the crap out of that person. If somone is hatefully harassing you then it is completely understandable to beat this person to a pulp. If someone is just nasty towards you it is best to dust it off and walk away before it gets any worse.

I always had a hard time with the statement forgive them for my own good, than I had this epiphany, I couldn’t remember or feel obligated to recall times when I offended, act selfishly, or outright hurt anyone, and I wasn’t so delusional to think I hadn’t. So, doesn’t it make your anger feel futile if they don’t even remember they did it.

Also let me recommend two books, Bold Love and How to Cope with Difficult People. Bold Love tells us how to deal with hurtful people in our lives and talks about how the “forgive and forget” mantra set us up for pretense and we need to deal with it in the way @Tumi describes, and How to Cope with Difficult People is along the same lines giving actual non confrontational techniques to question these people about their actions. I have fought these same issues in life, Good Luck.

Exacting revenge doesn’t make you any less full of hatred. It just satisfies that primitive urge to hurt back. The hate will still be there; probably even more so because you will have to make the case to yourself that your hurtful action was justified.

And how often does the “enemy” actually “learn their lesson” from your act of revenge? If anything, it just makes them feel more justified in having screwed you over in the first place and more likely to do it again.

Our core of our brain is a dark place of raw, primitive, reactionary impulse. Fortunately for us, our species has the neurological tools to override those impulses. We have the capacity to understand that carrying around old wounds and nursing enmity just toxifies our own lives. The more we exercise those more evolved parts of our brain, the stronger they become.

Why not,in the future,just call them out on their bad treatment of you instead of wasting time wishing bad things for them?
It is much more satisfying than revenge, ;)

Settling scores right there and then is the best way for me that way you don’t have to harbor negative thoughts and feelings and can skip merrily away.

You need to stop this behavior because of this:

“Hate is too great a burden to bear. It injures the hater more than it injures the hated.”
—Coretta Scott King

In order to hold on to these grudges, you must be dwelling on past injuries, nursing them. This is very corrosive. It blinds you to life in the present. it locks out love and the possibility of love from your heart.

I think you would be best served working with a therapist on these issues.

It really is true that forgiveness is for you, not them. They have no idea you are sitting around hating them. They are just living their lives without giving you and the past a second thought while you are the one being consumed by dark feelings. Do yourself a favor and work through it, probably with a therapist, so you can see just how inconsequential these people really are. You could be living a wonderful, full life.

Obviously, if anyone has seriously harmed you, it will be a lot more work and your feelings may never go away completely. Try not to pile all of the minor slights on top of the real ones, though.

It doesn’t sound like you were turning the other cheek at all, but rather being so passive-agressive when you were being screwed around with that you just bottled it all up to the point where your emotions have become toxic.

Vengeance is a lot like an alcoholic taking a shot of liquor. it’s a temporary and fleeting sense of relief that ultimately solves nothing and does nothing for the true deeper suffering going on. Say you get vengeance, then what? it won’t change what happened in the past, it won’t make you feel any less angry. You’ll feel empty, and hollow because what you were obsessed with before and now have gained has left you with nothing to show for it but more negative emotion. And now, you’ve wronged someone else and it’s likely that person is going to want to make you suffer in return, thus the cycle of suffering continues.

There is a lot of truth in Ghandi’s saying that ‘An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind’.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean you forget what happened to you, but rather that you accept that bad things happen with the good and there is no point in dwelling on the shortcomings of others. it’s not important for them to know or care about your forgiveness, it is more for you to self-affirm that you are taking a burden off your heart and will no longer let it hinder you.

That way all this energy that you have is not wasted on what can’t be changed, but rather on things you can change and do to make your life and those around you better and make new memories and connections that will allow you to move on from your past.

Obviously if they felt like they could move on and just forget about it, they would. I mean really, who the fuck wants to be consumed with hate?

All of this has to do with the condition of your heart. If you are full of hatred, you must figure out why, and if it involves another person, you must forgive them for whatever you feel it is that they have done to you. This is as much for your own benefit as it is for theirs.

You have to let go of all your negative feelings about them or those feelings will corrode both your emotional and physical health. When you have truly forgiven them, then you can drop your need for revenge and your vengefulness. Retaliation only serves to perpetuate the cycle of revenge.

Why expend energy on the past when taking revenge does nothing for you? Use your energy and time and creativity to help people and, in the process, improve yourself.

Let karma do it’s job. There are a few people I wouldn’t mind smacking around right now but honestly – I have too much going for me right now, sacrificing even a granule of my attention on some idiot seems silly to me.

In my opinion and experiences, the world has it’s own way of balancing things out. If someone is truly a bad person, they’re going to do wrong to the wrong person someday… then they’ll be the one crying in despair and you’ll likely be off somewhere 10 steps ahead, worrying about something more important.

There is a place in this world for retribution. I don’t agree with “turning the other cheek”.

Forgive the person even if you don’t forgive the action. Don’t carry baggage because of them just think if they have done you wrong then they are messed up in some way which they have to deal with. Karma will determine that there is justice even if its not in the way you expected or if you never witness it.

@gorgeousgal3 I don’t believe in Karma. People get ahead in life and stay there from wronging people.

@gorgeousgal3

That’s far too cynical for my taste. I got on rather well in life, and yet was very scrupulous about my relationships with others. Yes, I got blind-sided a couple of times, but I learned how to avoid that and overcome. So can you! : ))

To me, turning the other cheek is to invite the person that wronged you to do so again. It is perfectly acceptable to tell them what you feel they did wrong and how you feel about it.
On the other hand, if you carry that hurt around with you, it will fester like an infected sore.
Make your case and then let it go. Do it for your own sake and sanity.

@Dr_Lawrence Contextually, ‘turning the other cheek’ is presented as being the opposite of walloping the other guy, and is supplemented by exhortations to settle your beefs before the day is out so that you won’t both sit and stew over them. The terminology is, I suspect, synecdotal.