The Learning Lab hosted by Frank Anderson, MD • with Special Guest James Kimmel, Jr., JD
From Grievance to Healing
Understanding the Cycle of Hurt, Retaliation, and Recovery
A Two-Part Learning Lab with
Frank Anderson, MD
Host
James Kimmel, Jr., JD
Special Guest
Teaching Session
Monday,
July 21st
9:00am – 12:00pm PT
12:00pm – 3:00pm ET
Integration Discussion
Friday,
August 14th
9:00am – 10:30am PT
12:00pm – 1:30pm ET
Early Bird — Save $50
$199
Price will increase soon to $249.
Reserve your place now while early bird pricing is available!
Recording available to all registered participants.
When Hurt Gets Stuck
After betrayal, humiliation, injustice, or loss, the mind can start circling: How do I make this right? How do I make them understand? Why can't I stop thinking about this? Why can't I let it go?
In that loop, thoughts of retaliation can feel relieving, even clarifying. For a moment, there may be energy, direction, certainty, or a sense of control. But the relief often doesn't last. The mind returns to the injury again and again: replaying what happened, holding onto the hurt, imagining the other person finally understanding what they did, or wanting them to feel what you felt.
This is the grievance cycle. And for many people, it can be hard to step out of.
James Kimmel, Jr., JD is a lawyer and the author of The Science of Revenge: Understanding the World's Deadliest Addiction and How to Overcome It. He has developed a research-based model explaining how unresolved grievance can intensify emotional pain, while retaliation-focused thoughts or actions can provide a short-lived sense of relief. Over time, that relief can reinforce the urge to return to the grievance, sometimes creating a self-reinforcing loop that some researchers describe as "revenge addiction."
In this special two-part Learning Lab, James and Frank Anderson turn this framework into practical insight you can use, whether you're a clinician working with high-conflict dynamics or someone trying to understand your own responses after being hurt. Instead of judging anger, pathologizing revenge fantasies, or pushing people to "let go" before they're ready, they focus on what helps restore clarity, groundedness, and choice.
The work is not about excusing harm, minimizing pain, or forcing forgiveness. It is about understanding what keeps people stuck in cycles of hurt and retaliation, and what helps interrupt those cycles before they take over.
You'll leave with a clearer way to recognize when hurt has become a loop, understand why it keeps pulling you back, and begin responding with more steadiness, choice, and self-trust, without minimizing what happened or abandoning accountability.
About the Program
This Learning Lab introduces participants to James Kimmel's framework for understanding grievance, retaliation, revenge addiction, and recovery, including:
- How grievance activates pain and threat states that narrow perspective and intensify the urge to retaliate or "make it right"
- Why thoughts of revenge can feel relieving in the short term, and how that relief can become reinforcing over time
- How rumination, fixation, and revenge fantasies can keep people organized around the original injury, for example, replaying a conversation for days, mentally arguing with the person who hurt you, or feeling like your day is shaped by what happened
- How escalation can build, including retaliation aimed at the wrong person or situation, and what helps prevent harmful urges from becoming harmful words or actions
- How to tell the difference between protecting yourself, asking for accountability, setting a needed boundary, and acting from the wish to make someone else hurt
- How trauma, relational wounds, and nervous system activation can shape the way people respond to harm
- How healing can begin when justice, repair, or acknowledgment are not available, and how forgiveness may support reduced suffering and restored clarity without requiring reconciliation or condoning what happened
As host, Frank Anderson brings an integrative, trauma-informed lens to the conversation. He helps connect these ideas to real life: how early experiences, relationship patterns, and stress physiology shape the way people respond to injury, conflict, betrayal, and perceived injustice. His role is to make the material useful across everyday conflict, family dynamics, workplaces, clinical settings, and community life.
Key Themes We'll Explore
- How the grievance cycle shows up in thought, body, and behavior
- Why people can feel pulled toward retaliation after betrayal, humiliation, injustice, or loss
- How revenge fantasies, rumination, fixation, and the feeling of being completely "right" about the other person being wrong can keep people stuck
- How to tell the difference between repair, holding people accountable, healthy boundaries, and retaliation
- How cycles of hurt and retaliation can intensify over time
- What helps the nervous system settle enough for choice to return
- How to understand revenge addiction patterns as signs of pain, activation, and unresolved hurt, not as proof of who someone is
- Forgiveness as an internal process, separate from reconciliation
- Clinical and real-life implications in families, workplaces, legal settings, and high-conflict systems
This Program Is For
This Learning Lab supports reflective practice and applied conceptualization rather than prescriptive techniques. It is designed to deepen understanding of grievance-driven behavior and provide grounded, ethically informed pathways for interruption, accountability, and recovery.
Teaching Session
(James Kimmel, Jr., JD & Frank Anderson, MD)
Understanding the Cycle of Hurt, Retaliation, and Recovery
Hosted by Frank Anderson, MD
with Special Guest James Kimmel, Jr., JD
Monday, July 21st, 2026
9:00am – 12:00pm PT · 12:00pm – 3:00pm ET
Schedule in Pacific Time
| 9:00 – 9:15am PT | Welcome, Orientation & Opening Reflection with Frank |
| 9:15 – 10:45am PT | Special Guest Teaching with James Kimmel |
| 10:45 – 11:30am PT | Teaching Dialogue with Frank & James |
| 11:30am – 12:00pm PT | Community Q&A & Closing |
James shares his research on the science of revenge and what his model reveals about grievance, retaliation, revenge addiction, and recovery. He introduces revenge addiction as a self-reinforcing regulation loop, where retaliation-focused thoughts or actions can briefly relieve pain and become difficult to disengage from.
Frank supports integration by mapping these ideas to trauma, attachment injury, relational pain, and nervous system activation, helping participants connect the theory to lived and clinical realities.
Integration Discussion
(Frank Anderson, MD)
Integration Discussion: From Retaliation to Restored Choice
Hosted by Frank Anderson, MD
Friday, August 14th, 2026
9:00am – 10:30am PT · 12:00pm – 1:30pm ET
The Integration Discussion is dedicated to integration, application, and reflection.
Frank revisits key insights from the Teaching Session and helps participants integrate the material at clinical, relational, and personal levels. This includes differentiating retaliation from accountability, identifying when "letting go" language is premature, and exploring how the urge to retaliate can be understood and worked with without minimizing injury, bypassing anger, or abandoning accountability.
Between sessions, participants are invited to submit written reflections and case-based questions. Frank will review and synthesize these submissions to help shape the Integration Discussion, ensuring the conversation is grounded in real-world dilemmas rather than abstract theory.
Program Access & Integration
If you are unable to attend either live session, a recording will be available to all registered participants following the program.
Participants are also welcome to submit questions, reflections, and feedback between sessions. These submissions will be reviewed by Frank and thoughtfully integrated into the Integration Discussion, allowing the conversation to be informed by community experience, even for those engaging asynchronously.
This Integration Session Is Designed to Support
- Consolidating the grievance-to-retaliation framework for practical use
- Distinguishing repair, justice, accountability, boundary-setting, and revenge
- Recognizing revenge addiction patterns as signs of pain and activation rather than fixed truths about who someone is
- Exploring forgiveness as an internal process of reducing the pull toward retaliation and recovering clarity
- Applying the model in conflict-heavy clinical and relational environments
- Identifying realistic next steps for ethical, sustainable change
Meet the Host & Special Guest
Frank Anderson, MD — Host
Psychiatrist • Trauma Specialist • Educator
Frank Anderson, MD is a psychiatrist, trauma specialist, and educator known for an integrative, depth-oriented approach to healing. Drawing from neuroscience, developmental trauma theory, relational psychotherapy, and contemplative practices, Frank helps people understand protective patterns with nuance and compassion. As host of the Learning Lab, he serves as the integrative anchor, framing, contextualizing, and guiding participants through complex material with clinical clarity and practical relevance.
James Kimmel, Jr., JD — Special Guest
Lawyer • Author • Yale Faculty
James Kimmel, Jr., JD is a lawyer, author, and Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine. He is the founder and co-director of the Yale Collaborative for Motive Control Studies and is known for advancing a behavioral addiction model of revenge and a neuroscience-informed framework for forgiveness. His work focuses on grievance recovery, motive control, violence prevention, and pathways for interrupting cycles of harm.
About the Learning Lab
The Learning Lab is designed to offer both depth and digestion: focused teaching, interdisciplinary dialogue, and a structured return for integration. Rather than rushing toward behavior change, this format supports careful understanding, reflective inquiry, and realistic application over time.
Frequently Asked Questions
This Learning Lab is designed for a wide range of participants — mental health clinicians, coaches, helping professionals, and individuals interested in understanding grievance cycles, retaliation patterns, and recovery. Whether you're grounded in somatic therapy, attachment work, parts-informed approaches, or you're simply looking for insight into your own lived experience, the program offers thoughtful, accessible teaching that can support both personal reflection and professional growth.
No prior familiarity is required. While some attendees may know Frank's writing and teaching, each Learning Lab is structured to be fully accessible whether you're new to his integrative approach or looking to deepen your understanding.
Each Learning Lab includes a live main session with Frank and a featured expert — with teaching, dialogue, and community Q&A — followed by a dedicated integration session led by Frank to revisit themes and support realistic application. Participants are also invited to submit optional written reflections between sessions to help shape the integration discussion. All sessions take place live on Zoom and are recorded.
Not a problem. All registrants receive access to the full replay of both sessions and are welcome to watch and rewatch at their own pace.
Yes. Teaching segments include lecture, dialogue, and reflective prompts. Each session also includes time for live Q&A, giving participants the chance to bring forward questions about the material, their work, or their lived experience.
Absolutely. The Learning Lab is educational, reflective, and supportive. Many participants attend because the material resonates with their own history. You are encouraged to move at your own pace and seek personalized support outside the program if needed. Please note: this program is for educational purposes and is not a substitute for therapy.
The Learning Lab offers clinical insight, case-informed discussion, and neuroscience-informed framing, but it is not a step-by-step clinical certification program. It supports reflective understanding of integrative concepts and relational ways of conceptualizing grievance, retaliation, and recovery. Clinicians often find the material directly applicable to their work, while lay participants value the clarity and validation it brings to their own experience.
After you register, you'll receive a confirmation email with your Zoom link(s) for the live sessions, instructions for how to join, and any relevant program materials. After the program ends, you'll receive a link to the replay portal where you can watch the recordings at any time.
Yes. You're welcome to submit questions or reflections between sessions using the written integration form. Frank reviews all submissions and incorporates themes into the Integration Discussion, so asynchronous participants remain part of the learning process.
You may request a full refund up to 7 calendar days before the first live session begins. After that point, all sales are final. Refunds may incur a nominal processing charge of approximately $25. Registration covers the entire program — we are unable to offer partial refunds or prorated adjustments. You will retain access to the recordings regardless of live attendance.
Please reach out anytime at support@frankandersonmd.com — we're happy to help with questions about registration, access, or program expectations.
You can honor the injury without becoming organized around retaliation.
You can interrupt the cycle, and recover your capacity to choose.
Reserve Your Spot Today
Join Frank Anderson, MD and James Kimmel, Jr., JD for a program that can change the way you understand hurt, retaliation, and the path toward genuine recovery.
Early Bird — Save $50
$199
Price will increase soon to $249.
Reserve your place now while early bird pricing is available!
For support with registration or access, contact support@frankandersonmd.com