How to help a kid obsessed with revenge?

Answer 1

I would do my best to help them understand why they were so bent on revenge. Revenge only breeds more hatred and evil. It makes your heart heavy and will bring you so down and depressed. I know because I spent about two years of my life doing this. Until I finally realized that the person I was obsessed with getting revenge on didn't even care about what they had done to me and my family and had moved on to another person and another family to hurt and destroy. That person is now paying themselves and I didn't have to do one thing. It is like the Golden Rule taught us so many years ago, Do unto others as you would have them do unto you! And as my beloved Mother used to tell me before she passed away, "what goes around, comes around" and it sure did. Whoever, this person is that is obsessed with revenge must learn the art of patience. Good luck and God be with that child!!

Answer 2

get them a gun.

Answer 3

The best gift you could give this young adult is a true listening ear and validation of his emotions. (I chose 'he' instead of him/her, for simplicity) Validation of his emotions and experiance surounding what occurred is vital in assisting him past his stage of rage.

Something occurred which has hurt him deeply. Anytime we are harmed we go through grief. It can be a slight grief or a immense grief, but grief is grief and it has five stages.

Grief is the result of any negitive occurance in our lives. It could result from a disapointment such as the loss of a sought after job, or being betrayed by somebody we trusted, the loss of a mate, friend, child, or any number of small to great losses in life.

Grief is also the end result of any trauma we suffer in life, regardless of how small or large. We grieve over the loss of an arm, or our health, or a vacation long awaited, not being able to attend the concert we have tickets for, or our dream home from our mortage deal falling through. Life is filled with little griefs, and with a lessor degree of larger griefs such as mentioned above, a loved one dies, etc.

When we are wronged and the person who wronged us is not held accountable we grieve. We grieve the iinjustice of it, the unfairness. We grieve our helplessness to aid somebody we love, or our lack of courage, or any number of things.

Grief has five general stages. First is denial, we just refuse to believe it occurred. It is too much to take in, the pain unbearable, so we compensate with stages to hold off the pain. Our brains are programmed to protect us and do so through these stages. After denial comes rage, anger. Rage and anger are the number one emotion of holding off other intense emotions. We sometimes get stuck here as feeling rage and anger is extremely hot and it burns away all other emotions. Anger and rage are far preferable to the other incapacitating emotions.

In dealing with anger and rage we must find a healthy outlet or it will wind up consumming us and everyone around us. While the anger/rage innoculates us against other more painful emotions it does nothing to protect our loved ones from itself. Anger/rage is so hot if allowed free reign without checks it will burn all around us, even when that is not our intention.

However, after we have found a way through the anger and rage we are left with the emotions of soul shattering sadness that it had protected us from. This grief is so intense it can knock us out for the count. It can drag us under the waves of sadness and depression and drown us in tears. While the heat of anger and rage can give us unbelievable energy, encompassing sadness saps our energy leaving us tired, feeling listless, takes our enjoyment in all the good in our lives, and puts us in sleep mode.

Following grief is acceptance. Acceptance will elieviate some of the sadness and give back a portion of our lives. It allows us some breathing room, at least enough to allow in the tiny stiring of the final step: Peace and Healing

Each of these stages is filled with emotions. Emotions are neither right nor wrong, they simply ARE. It is what we DO with the emotions which we have control over and choices.

As I said, each stage is filled with emotions. It is also true that these stages are all dealt with differently by different people and there are not right or wrong ways of dealing with grief. If you ARE dealing with it that is and not allowing it to just consume you whole.

We do have a degree of control over our own grief process. We also have all choice over how we choose to allow the event to affect and shape us. We can allow it to ruin us or to help us grow in a positive manner.

We also have the ability to change our emotions. That's right, we can change them. We can change bitterness to acceptance, jealousy to true happiness for the one who has what we wished to have, we can change ungratefulness to appreciation, or gratefulness, change meaness to protectiveness, or support, or any number of emotions. We have the power to pick and choose which emotion we will hold as our own.

We can't choose which emotion we will feel initially, but we can choose to change it to something more positive. We can also choose to change a positive emotion to a negitive emotion. I said there were no right or wrong emotion, but there are positive and negitive emotions. We all know that is true. We can tell which one is by how it affects us. Does it bring positiveness or negitivity? How does a certain emotion feel? How does it affect us? It is either positive or negitive, just as an electric charge is positive or negitive.

This kid is currently is the stage of anger/rage. He is obsessed with revenge because of that anger/rage. There are many reasons why we would wish to see somebody who harmed us harmed in return. It is normal and even acceptable to fantasy about revenge and do so in very violent and graphic imagery. Sometimes this fantasy can bring relief and help us along the stages of grief.

Who among us has not fantasized horrible violent things happening to people who have wronged or harmed us? I think it is human nature to do so. The only time this becomes wrong if somebody actually chooses to act out the fantasy or another form of violence upon the person who harmed or did them wrong.

Kids are difficult at best to communicate with. Kids and young adults think in black and white. Somebody has to be right and somebody has to be wrong. There isn't any room for agreeing to disagree. Everything has a right and a wrong attached to it, sometimes several wrongs attached! lol

It is only as we age do we begin to see some of the many shades of gray in the world. Some of us never lose this black and white thinking patterns. These folks never grow in wisdom, are stuck in this stage their entire lives.

I am not saying that there isn't right and wrong in this world, because there obviously is. It is wrong to kill, to rape, to rob, to lie, to dishonor your parents, or anyone, to use physical violence to get what you wish, or make somebody else do what you wish, it is wrong to covet, and to take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.

Of course, these are my Christian morals and ethics. However, in every country, community, society, regardless of race or religion, murder is wrong, stealing is wrong, rape is wrong, lying is wrong, etc. There are universal wrongs which span the globe regardless of what religion you belong to our if you belong to none at all. Atheists believe murder is wrong, that rape is wrong. They may not call it a sin, but they still know it is wrong.

Anyway, as we grow we begin to see the shades of gray in the world and we stop viewing the world in black and white. However, trying to communicate with somebody who does view the world this way is difficult, as there isn't much room for discussion of options. There isn't any such thing as a mitigating factor.

The young also believe they have learned everything there is about the world. At least by the time they are eighteen they firmly believe this. At least most of them do. There isn't anything wrong with this as it is a normal stage and life itself will teach them differently. The older we get the less we know! That education is a humble experiance which lasts a very long time.

There is solace in believing you know everything you need to know and think in black and white. This stage innoculates the young against some of lifes most hurtful years. It empowers them and they are beautiful in their beliefs and in how passionatly they fight for what they believe in.

This is also the age the military wishes to get a hold of them because they can break them down and then build them up into what they need them to be. Sadly, this is also what the terrorists of the world do, take them young and then send them out to kill innocents.

In helping a kid or young adult to get past the obsession of revenge, if it is even necassary, is to listen to them, validate thier feelings and experiance, and then "remind" them that they are better than the person who hurt them, and acting out in violence will reduce him to that level. Remind him that this behavior gives power and control to the one who harmed him and it is being given away, not taken. It continues the harm only this time willingly.

The main thing is to just listen, really listen, hear him and validate him. Let him vent, and vent, and yell, and scream, and threaten, and pour out his fantasy of maiming and death. Most usually this is just talk and it is a healthy release of all the rage and anger bubbling inside him.

Only you know if you know this kid well enough to know if he is capable of actually acting on his threats. However, you are not responsible for what this young person does. I do believe that if you think he is in imminent threat of behaving rashly in a manner which will ruin his life and his loved ones lives you need to act. Go to somebody he trusts, or his parents if they are not he ones he trusts. If there isn't anyone you will need to try an talk him down.

However, the only way you could talk him down if he first fully believes you have heard him and understand his position and do not judge him for it. If he feels validated he will be less inclined to do violence. It is when kids feel invalidated, unheard, unimportant, over looked, looked down on, or any other of the things young people dispise so much, that they become increasingly hostile and volatile.

Because of his black and white thinking, and the fact youth are often ignored and looked down upon, and the rigidity that results from such thinking and the belief they know all they need to know, he is far more likely to act out his fantasy of retaliation than somebody who is older.

Age brings those pesky shades of gray, and allows for a more deeper understanding of consequences than for those who are younger. The younger crowd is more rash, quick to action without thought, than the older groups. This can be a positive trait in some situations, but not when dealing with unresolved grief while in the stage of anger/rage.

After you validate him then you can remind him of the things he already knows. Such as how this anger spills out into his daily life and affects it negitively. How it hurts those he loves and himself, while doing nothing to the one it is directed towads. He needs to find a healthy outlet for his rage and let it run its course. He has a choice in this and he "knows" that. It is up to him to find a healthy outlet, talking with you or somebody else is a start, and could even be the finish. If he truly feels validated, understood, and not judged. He knows this is normal, remind him of that. Remind him that it isn't the rage which is wrong but what he does with it.

I use the word "remind" because he already knows everything. lol So, you need to approach him as an equal who is simply letting him know that you know these things too and are simply reminding him of them in the midst of his justified anger/rage. He won't appreciate or take in anything anyone says which is presented in a "I know things you don't know and I am smarter and older and wiser than you" attitude. It won't be your true attitude, but it will be how he perceives it and all which matters in a converstation with a young person is how he perceives it, not how it was intended.

So, validate him, hear, him, don't judge him, and let him know you know all these things too and commiserate with his experaince. Don't let him think you have had anywhere near the same experiance unless you have had one exactly like it. Nobody wants to hear about somebody elses pain when they are trying to express their own. People mean well when they "share" but this is not the time to do it. This is about him, and if somebody "shares" he will think the person is taking the attention off of him and putting it onto them. It is not what is intended, but it is how it will be perceived and perception is key here.

If and only if you really believe he is about to commit a violent crime you need to report it. It is better to tell on him and lose him pre-crime than lose him to life in prison or the death penalty. Be careful though, because kids can have very active and graphic imaginations and be very passionate about what they can do or want to do or will do and the lines can be very blurry. I know my own boys, and even my girls have said expressed some very graphic ideas on what they wished to do to some people who harmed them or a loved one over the years! They never acted on it but then they were validated and really heard too.

Anyway, validation, giving a true listening ear, not judging or acting horrifed, not givng any strong emotion back while he talks will go a long way in helping him work through his rage and anger. Be prepared for the deep bone chilling sadness which will follow though when he crashes from the rage/anger stage. The next stage can be more frightening than this one as he is at the age when suicides are the highest.

These are my ideas on how to help a kid get past an obsession with revenge. I know they work as I have used them with my own children, friends of theirs and dozens of young relatives. I hope this is a hypothetical question, but for some reason I don't think this one is. :-(