How Regrets Can Actually Help You

Today in America the dominant opinion on regret is essentially to get over it and let it go. However, as we all know, it is simply not that easy or straightforward.

By definition, all regret is?retrospective—whether it’s an eBay purchase you made a few seconds ago (as in, instant buyer’s remorse), or the ill-advised decision you made to drop out of college some three decades ago. And it’s generally accompanied by the thought that your life would somehow be better now if only you’d chosen differently in the past.

One fascinating feature of the adversely self-evaluative emotion of regret (which is rarely recognized) is that it also encompasses?another?emotion—whether that’s self-directed?anger,?embarrassment, humiliation, sorrow,?depression,?grief,?guilt, shame, or remorse—or even some combination of these distressful emotions.

An additional aspect of regret is that it’s based on the unwarranted assumption that at the time you did something you later lamented, you actually could have done otherwise—that there were other, superior choices you could have made. After all, regret presumes personal “agency,” or?free will. But ask yourself: given your level of impulsivity—or risk avoidance (partly determined by your biological heritage)—as well as the meaning back then you'd attributed to each of your prior experiences,?could?you—in that decisive moment—have acted any differently from how you felt compelled to?

As a neuro-psychologist, I frequently emphasize to clients that their past behaviors, however bad about them they may still feel, can best be understood on the basis of their “inner programming” up till that point. And, in all likelihood, this “patterning” was?adaptive?in their family of origin, and so became part of their sense of self—or “how to be” in the world. Unfortunately, though, all children tend to universalize (or rather, “absolutize”) their early experience, such that belief structures —which seemed pivotal to their emotional survival—become, if not regularly “updated,” misguided, maladaptive, and self-defeating. Sometimes, even malignant.

And that’s why, if you’re to permanently move beyond your regrets, the assumptions, ruminations, and misgivings that tend to go with them need to be critically re-examined.

If you undertake a review of past behaviors you still regret, what’s key is to learn as many useful things about them as possible. Otherwise, you’ll continue to remain burdened by these old, still-irksome feelings. But creatively “processing” your regrets in order to get them resolved, though certainly not without a certain pain, is yet one of the best paths I know that can lead you to valuable self-insights—and to?self-forgiveness.?And?to personal?wisdom. For wisdom is never a direct result of experience as such. It derives from devoting the time and effort that allows you to “evolve” an accurate, deeper?understanding?of that experience.