Dealing with Regrets

Regrets are part of the human experience.  I think that they are part of the reflection that people do at Christmas and Advent that is part of holiday depression, but I also think that on any given day people will think about many different regrets. 

While this is not a perfect definition, I think that regrets are depressing and sad thoughts of self-blame in response to a past situation.  (You do not have regrets about the present nor the future.)  The past situation may or may not have current implications or value.  However, in a typical regret, a person believes that they could have chosen differently.

Regrets vary in severity and meaning.  Regrets can be as simple as feeling you should have taken the chicken instead of the beef for dinner, or feeling guilty that you let a word or comment slip out when you should have held your tongue.  Maybe poor judgment in sexual activity led to an out-of-wedlock child, or HIV or Herpes or divorce due to infidelity.  Maybe a crime has made someone a convicted felon with limits on what you can do for work.  I admit that coping with these regrets are tough and there is no easy answer to dealing with them.  

But at the holidays, people regret that family members are not going to be together.  Maybe the separation at holidays is because of past conflict and pain, and so people dwell on the causes of the family conflict and separation.  In this kind of regret, people analyze what went wrong, or what should have been said and done.

I also think that people think about their regrets because they are supposed to be happy and merry and jolly.  Something must be wrong and so they analyze and explore regrets.

Regrets are not that useful

I think that for the average person, it is the rare regret that actually proves to be useful and helps us to choose differently the next time a similar situation comes around.  People will sit and shame themselves for something that may or may not have actually been their responsibility, but they feel they could have done something.  The average regret is over something that has no solution in the here and now.

When I was working with geriatric patients, a common regret was that they should have done things differently when their adult children were little children.  The average patient expressing this regret was saddened over the way adult child turned out.  It was not something that was going to be changed.

I do remember a much younger adult man in his forties expressing regret over his teenage son getting into trouble with the law.  His regret was that he and the son’s mother got divorced and that he drifted away from his son.

Assuming the truth

In the process of regret, many people assume the truth.   By this I mean that they believe that if they had acted in a different way in the past the particular problem or unsatisfactory situation would not have happened.   The feeling that comes from this is what John Bradshaw calls toxic shame.  People can dwell on this assumption to the point of anxiety or depression or worse.  

With guilt, we can usually recognize that we were wrong and we can make amends.  With the shame of regrets, we can do nothing but feel emotional pain and physical pain if the emotional pain goes on long enough.  Regrets of the past again have no solution, but people will dwell on them looking for it.

Turning the corner

While I do think reflection on regrets is part of the human experience, dwelling on them can be disruptive to the necessary activities of the day.  Dwelling on them at night before bedtime also leads to insomnia because of the distress one feels.

When it comes to turning the corner and feeling better, I think that beliefs have to be changed when it comes to regrets.   Understanding what a regret is can have some power so we can make changes.

What you and I think in the moment matters—we can choose to stop thinking about a regret and think about something else.  There is also a time to be in prayer and surrender your regret to God (as you understand God) because the regret can feel bigger than you.   It is also a time to maybe think about what we are thankful for in the moment—it is not all bad.

Forgiving yourself may also be called for.  I think people will have to continue to forgive themselves for things throughout life.  For example, I think it may be necessary for an 80-year-old to forgive himself or herself for regrets from ages 8 and 18.

Looking at things rationally can also be of help. The rational thought is—you will never know what would have happened, and there are no guarantees that it would have turned out the good way and that the undesirable situation would have be prevented.  Dwelling on a regret from the past can lack any real worth in making you a better and happier person.   

A disclaimer is in order here.  Dealing with our regrets is work.  It is too easy to dwell on the regrets of our past.  Furthermore, if you have been a perfectionist, you are going to have a lot more perceived regrets (lots and lots of little things).

Hope

I think that long enough over time, we see bigger pictures.  I look back at some situations in my life where I had regrets.  As more time was put between me and the events, it became clear to me that it had indeed worked out for the best.   I strangely was thankful that the former desire did not come true to reality.

In this world full of sin and suffering, I think that regret is part of the consequence of Adam and Eve creating original sin.  Regret will happen without respect to day or time of the day.   Jesus Christ came to the world to give us life and more of it. While the presence of God in a life it does not wipe out the memory of the regret, the gift of the savior who loves us despite how bad we have been is something to be thankful for at Christmas.