The feeling we get from focussing on regrets is much like this — one of great sadness and disappointment about something. It is strongly linked to remorse.
So when we have remorse it is as if we are biting away at ourselves, gnawing at our insides. Clearly it is beneficial to our emotional health that we deal with our regrets.
Our feelings serve a purpose — they are not there just to make us feel pain for no reason. So feel the feeling, acknowledge the inner ache. Ask yourself what is it trying to teach you; where is it directing you? Maybe it is a signpost for you towards working on such as self-confidence, self-esteem and self-belief. Perhaps you will conclude that you have to get out of your comfort zone.
One of the things about being human is that we all make mistakes. So perhaps what you are regretting is just a mistake you made at the time. A million or more mistakes are being made right now! But this is not always so. Bestselling book The Midnight Library by Matt Haig tells the story of a young woman who is so consumed with regrets that she ends her life.
This library contains an infinite number of books. She starts to realize that in fact she has plenty to be grateful for in her life as it is, and she has the choice to continue living it. What it is guaranteed to do though is ruin the present moment.
Basically we all make the best decisions and choices we can at the time. They can even be functional if they propel you forward, determined not to make the same mistakes again. Intuitively, though, we know that left to fester, regrets can control your mood to ill effect and make you miserable.
Psychologists have theorized as to why this asymmetry exists. In their paper, which was published in the journal Emotion, Davidai and Gilovich note that action-related regrets spur reparative work, which allows us to deal with them and let them go.
If you moved to Chicago for work and regret having left your extended family, you can vow to fly home for every holiday. We also process these two types of regrets differently. Selling your house at the wrong time becomes a lesson learned, or ultimately reveals a silver lining. So, according to their theory, there are regrets of inaction related to your ideal self, and regrets of actions related to your ought self.
The reason for this is rooted in a basic premise of self-discrepancy theory. Its creator, Columbia University psychology professor E. The cognitive behaviour therapist Windy Dryden says that, when we are trapped in this cycle of regret, characterised by rigidity and inflexibility, we only seem able to blame ourselves for what has happened, rather than seeing our behaviour in a wider context and understanding why we took the path we did based on the information we had at the time.
Under these conditions, regret will become toxic. Yet, strange as it sounds, there are people for whom this kind of regret can become a safe haven, because it can protect them from the pain and risks of living a full life.
Ready to make a fresh start, she signed up on various dating websites, and began going on first dates. She was very preoccupied with getting into the right relationship but, unconsciously, she was doing all she could to protect herself from getting into one at all, because she was terrified of repeating the disappointment and the hurt she had already endured. Amy was in danger of falling into another trap outlined by Dryden: if you avoid doing anything that you might regret later, you will disengage from relationships, opportunities and eventually life itself — and the irony is, there is no more powerful source of regret than that.
Once Amy could make a shift towards allowing herself to get it wrong, she was able to move beyond the first date with a man, even though she was not sure he was entirely right for her — this was the only way she could get to know which men she liked and which she did not. We have to open ourselves up to the possibility of making mistakes and regretting them, in order to learn from the experience. But regret does not only serve as a defence against the risk of loving — it can serve a darker purpose, allowing people to hide from the deeper pain of remorse.
That is the beginning of becoming aware of how one behaves and wanting to do something differently. Something authentic starts to happen. What does it take to move from using regret as a stick with which to beat ourselves to experiencing remorse as a way forward to a better future? With that goal in mind, think about how much of it is in your control and what actions will get you closer to the things that matter most to you.
Can you set a reminder to check in with three of your friends or family members every week when you take a lunch break? Can you make an effort to tell your parents and siblings more often that that you love them?
The slight silver lining of these unforeseen tragedies is that we have learned not to take for granted those special relationships. And now that we know, we can do something about it.
I felt more assured after my conversation with Amy. And one thing was clear, whether we can reason away our regret or not, we have to remember to hold ourselves accountable for only those things that are in our control.
I hope this can help you make peace with your regrets. You have 2 free article s left this month. You are reading your last free article for this month. Subscribe for unlimited access. Create an account to read 2 more. Managing yourself. Learn to leave things in the past — where they happened. Regret, like all difficult emotions, is neither intrinsically good nor bad. It is the actions we carry out in response to feeling regret that impact our long-term wellbeing.
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