Letting Go of Regret

So many people seem to struggle with regrets about their lives.  On any given week in my office I will encounter someone struggling with a decision they have made for their life that they know was wrong for them, yet they made it anyway.  Regret about the decisions we “should” have made are at the foundation of our guilt and shame.  While I do not believe that it is possible to live a life completely devoid of regrets, it is possible to live one without the debilitating guilt and shame associated with those regrets. 

Throughout my years of practice I have come to realize that while it is easy for people to say (with all good intentions) that you will never do something (i.e., drugs, an affair, etc.) that they will regret, the reality is typically much more complicated.  People do not just wake up one day and decide to make destructive decisions that ruin their lives.  Those decisions usually result from the culmination of complicated situations and many minute decisions that lead them to a place where they thought they would never be.  If it was just a matter of making amends for poor decision making, I do not believe that so many people would harbor guilt and shame.  Instead, the hurt and shame often derives from the realization that the poor decision has caused pain to others in your life for whom you care.  It becomes difficult to reconcile the good person you believe that you are with the person who hurt others in a way of which you never imagined you were capable.  The truth is that good people sometimes make bad decisions when they lose perspective and we have all been there in some way, and to some degree, in our lifetimes.  Whether it is a matter of something we said that we wish we could take back or developing a problem with addiction, we all have regrets.

The question becomes: how do we move past these feelings of shame and guilt caused by our actions?  My answer is forgiveness.  Moving past shame and guilt comes from forgiving yourself.  You must acknowledge your own humanity and forgive yourself for being fallible.  I have been providing therapy long enough to know that regret is a loop that will continue to play over and over in your mind until you let it go.  So change the way that you talk to yourself about it.  Acknowledge your mistakes and take responsibility for them.  Make amends.  Learn from them and move forward.  You cannot change the past, all you can do is honor those that you have hurt by not repeating the same mistake.  When you do finally get to a better spot in your life, accept that we are made up of the sum of all of our experiences.  Therefore, every negative experience in which you’ve been involved has contributed to the good person you are today.  Whether an experience teaches you an important life lesson or provides you a new perspective on yourself or relationships, it changes you in some way.  Own it, but don’t let it control the sum of who you are.  Be patient with yourself as it may take weeks or months of forgiving yourself regularly when it comes up before positive effects are noticed.  Repeated refocusing of your energy toward the future is the best way to move past it and shed the guilt and shame that you are experiencing.  Ultimately, life will throw difficulties in your path and you will be more adept at traversing them without guilt and regret holding you back.  Use these experiences to make you a better person and you can turn that regretful decision into a tool for personal growth.