Managing Chronic Regret, Misattuned Regret, and Moving Forward

Regret Used to Suffocate Me

Photograph by M.T ElGassier on Pexels

Regret used to suffocate me. My mistakes were all I thought about. I was forever beating myself up for something I said, or didn’t say, and cursing love lost.

It took up a lot of mental energy, kept me stuck in the past, and drove self-sabotage actions.

Nowadays, my approach to regret has changed.

It doesn’t consume me, though I don’t ignore it, either.

In this article, I wanted to talk about why many of us have difficulty managing regret, why some of us regret things we shouldn’t (misattuned regret), and why, ultimately, regret can be painful, but a valuable source of growth.

---

Regret: A Source of Potent Validation, For Some

Looking back, my chronic regret was matched by chronically low self-worth: I valued myself through the mistakes I made; they were the evidence that I wasn’t good enough and couldn’t hold love.

Sound familiar? It’s how many of us relate to regret.

When we hold beliefs that say we aren’t good enough, aren’t lovable enough, or are in some way “broken”, our brains will overtly attach and place meaning onto our mistakes through confirmation bias.

In the face of regret, a lightbulb goes off in our mind that says, “Aha! I knew it: See how terrible you are?” triggering all sorts of messy, horrible and uncomfortable emotions.

A negative feedback loop then ensues: We believe ourselves unworthy, we judge ourselves harshly, and regret clouds our minds.

---

Misattuned Regret As A Result of Overthinking

Some of the mistakes I’ve made were genuine mistakes that warranted a healthy dose of regret, but many were small and insignificant moments that I blew out of proportion and regretted when I shouldn’t have.

In some cases, I’d curse myself for making a “mistake” when I hadn’t truly made one, like one time where I called off a toxic situation only to go back on what I said when someone walked away.

What I’d done initially was a good thing: I’d set a healthy boundary in the face of mistreatment, but after the relationship ended, suddenly I thought I’d done the worst thing ever.

If we suffer from low self-worth and overtly desire approval from others, regret can play all kinds of games with us. It can stop us from setting boundaries (or revoking them once set), it can keep us in harm’s way with people who aren’t good for us, and it can keep us perpetually stuck in self-hatred, guided through life by our wrongdoings (or supposed wrongdoings, in many cases!).

---

Managing Regret Now

Regret, like any uncomfortable emotion, is there for a purpose.

Whilst painful and sometimes costly, it can be a potent fuel for growth.

Is your regret telling you that you made a mistake when in reality, you only set a healthy boundary? If so, your regret might be telling you that you need to get more comfortable with standing up for yourself.

If your regret is chronic, it’s good to also question how realistic you’re being with your standards. Are you a moral perfectionist, with rigid beliefs that say if you make any mistake, you’re a horrible person who should suffer a lifetime for your mistake? My therapist said this to me once, and we soon realised I did, in fact, have extremely lofty expectations for myself. In my world, being human wasn’t allowed — if I made a mistake, I would come down on myself like a ton of bricks.

This level of perfectionism is unhealthy and unrealistic.

If your regret is valid, and you have indeed acted or spoken in a way that has hurt someone or cost a relationship, it will be a tough pill to swallow, but mistakes happen. This doesn’t mean we need to ignore regret and continue doing what we’ve always done. We learn, and we move forward.

I like to remember that past me never would have made the mistakes they did with the information they have now. They were doing the best they could with the information, or lack of information, they had. While it is still painful to look at some of my mistakes, I can at least have compassion for that version of me. Despite the pain, I learned some valuable lessons.

Sometimes we have to hit rock bottom and make a mistake to realise something needs to change. The important thing in all of this is seeking that help, doing the self-inquiry work, and taking proactive steps to ensure mistakes don’t happen twice (but they may happen a few times before we come to this realisation).