Karma May Be Real
We’ve all heard someone say it: “Karma’s going to get them.” Whether it’s about a backstabbing coworker, a cheating ex, or a manipulative family member, the idea that the universe will eventually deliver cosmic justice is deeply comforting. But can karma really come back to bite you? Is there actually a force in the universe that tracks our wrongdoings and ensures we get what’s coming to us?
The answer is more complex—and more psychologically interesting—than you might think. While there may not be a cosmic accountant tallying up our sins and virtues, the concept of karma points to something very real about human behavior, relationships, and consequences. Let’s explore what karma actually means, what psychology tells us about consequences for our actions, and why treating people poorly often does come back to haunt us—just not always in the mystical way we imagine.
What Is Karma, Really?
In its original Buddhist and Hindu contexts, karma isn’t quite the revenge fantasy we’ve turned it into in Western popular culture. The Sanskrit word “karma” simply means “action” or “deed.” In Eastern philosophy, karma refers to the principle that our intentions and actions have consequences that affect our future experiences—sometimes in this life, sometimes in future lives.
The traditional understanding emphasizes personal responsibility and the natural consequences of our choices rather than divine punishment. It’s less about the universe “getting” bad people and more about the inevitable ripple effects of our behavior.
In contemporary American culture, we’ve simplified this into a kind of cosmic justice system: do good things, good things happen to you; do bad things, bad things happen to you. While this simplified version lacks the philosophical depth of its origins, it does capture something psychologically true about how our actions create patterns that shape our lives.
The Psychology Behind “What Goes Around Comes Around”
Even if you don’t believe in mystical forces, there are very real psychological and social mechanisms that ensure our behavior tends to circle back to us. Here’s how:
1. Reputation and Social Consequences
In an interconnected world, your reputation precedes you. When you consistently treat people poorly—lying, manipulating, betraying trust—word gets around. Chicago may be a big city, but professional communities, social circles, and neighborhoods are surprisingly small.
People talk. That colleague you threw under the bus? They have friends in your industry. That person you ghosted after three dates? They know people in your social scene. The pattern of behavior you establish creates a reputation that follows you, affecting job opportunities, friendships, romantic prospects, and community standing.
This isn’t mystical—it’s social consequence. But it certainly can feel like karma when opportunities evaporate because someone heard about how you operate.
2. Psychological Patterns Repeat Themselves
Perhaps the most powerful way karma manifests is through psychological repetition. The patterns we establish in relationships—how we treat others, how we handle conflict, whether we take responsibility or deflect blame—tend to repeat across different contexts.
If you habitually manipulate people to get what you want, you’ll likely attract others who do the same. If you’re quick to betray confidences, you’ll struggle to build trustworthy relationships. If you blame others for your problems, you’ll surround yourself with people who do likewise.
This is where relational therapy becomes invaluable. Relational approaches to therapy recognize that our patterns of interacting with others are formed early in life and tend to repeat unless we become conscious of them and work to change them. When we say karma “bites back,” often what we’re experiencing is the inevitable result of our relational patterns coming home to roost.
3. The Mirror Effect in Relationships
Relationships tend to function as mirrors. How you treat others often determines how they treat you—not always immediately, but eventually. This isn’t because people are consciously keeping score, but because relationships are reciprocal systems.
If you’re consistently critical, others become defensive or withdrawn around you. If you’re unreliable, people stop depending on you and may become less reliable in return. If you’re generous and trustworthy, people generally reciprocate those qualities.
The “bite” of karma in relationships is often just the natural result of the relational dynamics we ourselves create.
4. Cognitive Dissonance and Self-Sabotage
When we behave in ways that conflict with our values or self-image, we experience psychological discomfort called cognitive dissonance. To resolve this discomfort, we often unconsciously sabotage ourselves or create situations that “punish” us.
Someone who cheats on a loving partner might unconsciously create circumstances that expose the affair. A person who succeeds through unethical means might sabotage that success because deep down they feel undeserving. This isn’t cosmic justice—it’s psychological self-regulation.
5. Stress and Health Consequences
Living in a way that requires constant deception, manipulation, or aggression is exhausting. The stress of maintaining lies, watching your back, and managing the fallout from poor behavior takes a significant toll on mental and physical health.
Chronic stress from interpersonal conflict—much of it self-created—contributes to anxiety, depression, cardiovascular problems, and weakened immune function. In this sense, karma “bites” through the very real health consequences of toxic behavioral patterns.
When Karma Doesn’t Seem to Work
Of course, we’ve all witnessed situations where karma seems to take a holiday. The ruthless executive gets promoted. The narcissistic ex finds a new relationship immediately. The manipulative boss who seems to coast through life without consequences.
This is where our popular understanding of karma falls short. Life isn’t always fair, and bad behavior doesn’t always result in immediate, visible consequences. Sometimes people get away with terrible things—at least in the short term and in ways we can observe from the outside.
But a few important considerations:
We Don’t See the Full Picture: That successful person who seemed to skate by on unethical behavior? We don’t see their empty relationships, their inability to trust, their internal sense of hollowness, or the toll their behavior takes on their mental health.
Timescales Vary: Consequences sometimes take years or even decades to fully manifest. A pattern of burned bridges might not matter in your twenties but becomes very isolating in your forties and fifties.
Internal vs. External Consequences: Some consequences are internal—guilt, shame, inability to form genuine connections, persistent anxiety. These may not be visible to observers but are very real to the person experiencing them.
The Relational Dimension: How Our Patterns Shape Our Lives
One of the most powerful frameworks for understanding how our behavior comes back to us is through a relational lens. Relational therapy in Chicago and elsewhere helps people understand how their patterns of relating to others were formed—often in childhood—and how those patterns continue to shape every relationship they have.
If you grew up in an environment where love was conditional and achievement-based, you might develop a pattern of constantly proving your worth through accomplishment, never feeling secure in relationships. That pattern doesn’t just affect romantic partnerships—it influences friendships, professional relationships, and even how you parent your own children.
When people say “karma caught up with them,” often what’s really happened is that long-standing relational patterns have reached a breaking point. The person who never learned to be vulnerable finds themselves alone. The person who controlled others through criticism finds their adult children cutting off contact. The person who avoided conflict has relationships that implode when problems inevitably arise.
These aren’t cosmic punishments—they’re the natural, predictable outcomes of relational patterns playing out over time.
Creating Positive Karma: Breaking Destructive Patterns
If karma is really about the consequences of our patterns rather than cosmic scorekeeping, that’s actually empowering news. It means we can change our “karma” by changing our patterns.
This is where therapeutic work becomes transformative. Through approaches like relational therapy, people can:
- Identify their relational patterns: Recognize the ways they habitually interact with others and where those patterns originated
- Understand the consequences: See how their patterns create predictable outcomes in relationships
- Develop new skills: Learn different ways of relating that create healthier, more satisfying connections
- Process past experiences: Work through the early experiences that shaped problematic patterns
- Practice new behaviors: Gradually build new relational habits that lead to better outcomes
When you change how you relate to others—becoming more authentic, more accountable, more trustworthy—the “karma” you create naturally shifts. You attract different people, create healthier dynamics, and experience different consequences.
The Bottom Line: Karma as Natural Consequence
So can karma really come back to bite you? Yes—but probably not in the way you imagine when you’re hoping for cosmic revenge against someone who wronged you.
Karma, understood as the natural consequences of our patterns and choices, is very real. The way we treat others, the patterns we establish, the reputation we build—all of these create ripple effects that shape our experiences. Sometimes those effects are immediate and obvious; sometimes they take years to fully manifest. Sometimes they’re external and visible; sometimes they’re internal and known only to us.
The person who lies habitually will struggle with trust—both trusting others and being trusted. The person who manipulates will find themselves surrounded by manipulation. The person who’s generous and authentic will generally—though not always—experience more genuine connection and support.
This isn’t mystical; it’s psychological and social reality. Our patterns create consequences, and those consequences shape the texture of our lives.
If you’re recognizing patterns in your own life that keep creating painful consequences—relationships that always end the same way, conflicts that always escalate similarly, a sense that you keep ending up in the same difficult situations—that’s not cosmic punishment. That’s information. It’s your psyche telling you that something in your relational patterns needs attention.
Working with a therapist trained in relational approaches can help you understand these patterns, trace them to their origins, and develop new ways of relating that create different, healthier outcomes. You can’t control what others do or whether the universe is keeping score, but you can absolutely influence the “karma” you create through the patterns you choose to maintain or change.
If you’re ready to explore and change the relational patterns shaping your life, learn more about relational therapy in Chicago and how it can help you create more positive outcomes in your relationships and life.
