Learning to Embrace the Wisdom of Regret
“No regrets.”
“Fear is temporary. Regret is forever.”
“Live life without regrets.”
“Regret is a useless emotion that will only hurt you.”
“Feeling regretful is a waste of time.”
You’ve likely heard variations on these admonitions countless times—in conversation, films and television, books and magazines, social media…even music. Looking at the rather dour-sounding statements above, it seems that popular culture has a fraught relationship with regret.
Indeed, I recently encountered a rather clickbait-y headline, brashly announcing that regret was a form of self-sabotage. It hit a raw nerve, admittedly. I’m not the only mental health professional who feels that regret doesn’t deserve this slander: “Regret is an important psychological experience that is often misunderstood,” writes psychologist James Tobin, Ph.D. “The old adage ‘live life without any regrets’ and the corresponding mantra ‘let it go’ suggest, in my opinion, an oversimplified and negatively biased approach to regret,” Tobin explains.¹
As a depth therapist, when it comes to emotions in general (not just regret), I’m wary of writing entire feelings off. Instead, I see emotions as vital sources of information on our inner state, our needs, and how the world is affecting us. (So yes, I will go ahead and confess that I felt irritated when I spied that clickbait-y headline. There, I said it!)
As much as we may wish to simply dispose of regret when it shows up, it can’t be tidily put away.
We need the guidance of our emotions to help us make choices on the daily. On one hand, it’s true that, in many circumstances, we don’t want to get stuck in any feeling for too long, and we need to be mindful of our responses to our emotions. However, being able to experience the full spectrum of emotions over the course of our lives is important for our development and well-being. That means we need to learn to surf the waves of regret, anger, sadness, awe, jealousy, love, joy, grief, and more throughout life.
According to the tenets of depth psychology, opening to the breadth of our emotions is also vital to the flow of our creativity and life force. If we avoid experiencing or even just acknowledging an emotion because we deem it “unacceptable” or “unspiritual,” it actually impedes our overall creativity and vitality.
Therefore, all of this is to say, when an emotion like regret gets a bad rap, it piques my curiosity. How did regret come to be so misunderstood, maligned, and pathologized? If all feelings are information, what kind of information is regret trying to communicate to us? How can regret serve us? How can we engage with regret thoughtfully—even embrace its wisdom? And how do we know when we’re just too mired in it and it’s not serving us anymore? What can we do then to support ourselves?
“If you want to live a life free of regret, there is an option open to you. It’s called a lobotomy. But if you want to be fully functional, and fully human, and fully humane, I think you need to learn to live not without regret but with it.”
—KATHRYN SCHULZ
Defining regret
At its core, regret is when we feel that we could’ve done something differently in the past to yield a more desirable present. Regret comes in two basic forms³: regret for actions taken (such as mistakes, less-than-fabulous choices, unseemly kneejerk reactions, hasty decisions, etc.) and regret for inaction (including not taking advantage of opportunities or letting fear hold you back from trying new things).¹
According to Kathryn Schulz, author of Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error and self-described “Wrongologist,” regret also has two components. First, regret requires agency, or making the initial choice. Second, it requires imagination, or doing mental time traveling. When we feel regret, we first time-travel to the past, where we imagine making a different choice. Then, we fast-forward in time to fantasize about a different outcome based on that alternative choice imagined in a parallel universe.²
I suspect that the term “regret” actually describes an interplay of feelings, including but not limited to sadness, anger, yearning, shame, and grief. Uncomfortable feelings such as these can certainly be challenging to sit with. This is especially the case in an era that has a fair amount of toxic positivity, spiritual bypassing, and what Schulz refers to as “Control Z culture” (i.e., undo, unfriend, unfollow). According to Schulz, since many things aren’t erasable or easily controlled, the experience of regret can be particularly challenging for those who are focused on perfection and control.²
Looking at it from this angle, it becomes easier to see why an aversion to regret has developed in much of popular culture. As much as we may wish to simply dispose of regret when it shows up, it can’t be tidily put away—at least not without causing significant disruptions to our emotional ecosystem. In other words, when we suppress a single feeling such as regret, it can actually affect our overall emotional well-being. (This is another fundamental belief of depth-oriented psychotherapy.)
Instead, like other challenging emotions, regret humbly requests our acknowledgement, compassion, curiosity, and presence. When we receive regret with grace, it can serve its evolutionary purpose of helping us to reflect on and learn from our past mistakes—and to carry that hard-earned wisdom, clarity, and self-knowledge forward so we can make better choices here on out. We can also take what we’ve learned and share it with others for the benefit of our communities.¹,³
“Regret serves as a source of insight and learning, and supports the development of an increasing sensitivity to the value and worth of opportunities, relationships, and the fragility of life.”
—JAMES TOBIN, PH.D.
Levels of choice, levels of regret
We have different levels of choice to make over the course of our lives. Some choices are small and relatively easy to make. Other choices are pivotal, irrevocable, and life-defining. Just as there are different levels of choice, there are different levels of regret.
Some regrets are small and easily forgotten, like eating a piece of delectable cheesecake (even when you know you’re lactose intolerant) and dealing with a stomachache an hour later. Other regrets are major, and their reverberations can be felt for years or even decades.² These regrets can be the consequence of intense, difficult choices made in complex arenas such as relationships, family, education, health, and work. Because we have considerably more choices available to us in modern life—as well as more pressure to make decisions quickly—we may be navigating an increased potential for regret than our forebears did.³
“Mistakes are the portals of discovery.”
—JAMES JOYCE
Stages of regret
In Schulz’s compelling TED Talk, “Don’t Regret Regret,” she lists the four main stages of regret as defined by researchers on the topic. (Incidentally, this list has some echoes of the stages of grief as defined by psychiatrist and end-of-life researcher Elisabeth Kübler-Ross.) The stages of regret include¹,²:
Denial: Disbelief about what happened and wishing it would just go away.
Bewilderment. Asking oneself how it could’ve happened. According to Schulz, in this stage, we feel alienated from and often lack empathy for the part of ourselves that made the regrettable decision.
Punishment. Feeling angry, contemptuous, and punitive toward oneself.
Perseveration. Ruminating on what went wrong in the past as well as the feelings in stage 3.
Moving through these stages is a natural part of processing regret. However, sometimes people get stuck in an unhelpful feedback loop between stages 3 and 4. This is when regret can stop being generative and start to really adversely affect mental health.¹
According to Tobin, the less opportunity someone has to correct a negative situation for which they feel responsible, the more likely they are to get stuck boomeranging between stages 3 and 4. When this regret feedback loop occurs, it can lead to significant depression, anxiety, and a very negative view of oneself. In this instance, it’s vital to plug into inner and outer resources such as practicing mindfulness and getting support via psychotherapy, support groups, friends, family, community, and helpful media such as books and podcasts on the topic.
“I should be hoping but I can't stop thinking
Of all the things I should've said
That I never said
All the things we should've done
Though we never did
All the things I should've given
But I didn't
Oh, darling, make it go
Make it go away”
—KATE BUSH, “THIS WOMAN’S WORK”
Now that we’ve established what regret is, why it’s such an “edgy” emotion, and what happens when we get stuck in it, I’ll leave you with some food for thought on not only how to be with regret—but how to embrace its wisdom, too:
Tips for being with regret²,³
Accept your humanity. Accept that mistakes are a part of being human and regret is a universal human experience.
Use mindfulness. Bring in tools such as meditation, tonglen, and deep breathing to mitigate overly harsh and unnecessary levels of self-shaming or perseveration.
Allow time to pass. Let time apply its healing balm. Simply giving a regrettable matter some time can make the pain feel less raw and allow perspective to arise.
Soften with laughter (when appropriate). Schulz advocates using humor when possible to soften the blow of the regret, as well as your heart.
Welcome the guidance that regret provides. Let regret be your guide to making new and improved choices going forward.
Acknowledge the good. Even in circumstances that you regret, allow yourself to note the good choices you did make in the situation.
Make amends. If your choices brought others pain or difficulty, apologize or make efforts to repair the situation (within reason).
Summary
Regret is the heartache we feel when we wished we could’ve done something differently in the past to have a better outcome in the now. Often misunderstood and pathologized, regret is a universal human emotion that evolved to help us learn from our mistakes. Processing regret involves moving through four stages. Sometimes, people can get stuck between the last two stages, punishment and perseveration. When this happens, it can be particularly helpful to practice mindfulness and seek support. Since regret is inevitable over the course of life, and it can be a powerful teacher, allow yourself to learn how to sit with it and embrace the important jewels of wisdom it has to offer.
References
1. Tobin J. The psychology of regret. https://jamestobinphd.com/the-psychology-of-regret/. Published August 31, 2020. Accessed July 26, 2022.
2. TED. Don’t regret regret | Kathryn Schulz [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ka8L1YMR88U. Published December 2, 2011. Accessed July 26, 2022.
3. BBC Radio 4. Why it is good to feel regret. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/53rh7sYP8rRLWqSXXx6Tkkd/why-it-is-good-to-feel-regret#:~:text=Feeling%20regret%20reminds%20us%20to,we%20truly%20want%20for%20ourselves. Accessed July 26, 2022.