Regret is a common complex emotion felt by many. All of us have made choices in our lives that we wish we could somehow undo…and the pain of those choices (that were sometimes made impulsively) are what cause us regret. I’m sure you can quickly bring to mind at least one thing in your life that you regret and the hours of toiling it has caused you.
So how do we live with regret, or at least mitigate the damages it does to our psyche? It depends on what has caused the feeling in the first place. Did you hurt someone else with your action or non-action? If so, you must make amends for that event. If the other party is unwilling to forgive you, you MUST still work on forgiving yourself.
I’m sure you’ve heard the famous quote by Maya Angelou, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” As we age, we gain experience, maturity and wisdom. Choices we made even a year ago might seem outdated and infantile, depending on how quickly you are able to grow and adapt.
Regret can be particularly heavy in the situation of the death of a loved one. You may have regret for things left unsaid or undone, or perhaps you regret the way things were left at the time of death. This is an incredibly common aspect of the grief process. There are many things that we WISH we could have done differently, but we simply didn’t know. Perhaps you weren’t speaking to someone when they passed suddenly and you wished you had reached out sooner. Perhaps you didn’t know that the person was terminal. Perhaps there was abuse in the relationship and you have complicated feelings around the loss. Whatever the scenario, the regret of not being able to go back is one of the most painful experiences one can have.
Some steps that I recommend when working through feelings of regret are; journaling, a letter writing exercise, EMDR therapy, EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) or hypnotherapy. All of these modalities can assist with the processing of events or words left unsaid and emotions that are trapped within the body.
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