Have you ever had this feeling of regret? If you are a human then the answer is “Yes”. I had regrets for a very long time. That wasn't very good. I thought that I missed plenty of opportunities and that I made mistakes that slowed me from being who I wanted to be and having what I deserved to have. I did not know what to do, how to escape from that life, or move forward and make changes. Finally, I decided that maybe I am not smart enough or perhaps I was raised in circumstances that had a lot of constraints so the effect is that I am capable of doing it but I just do not know how.

So for a long period, I was sure that the control of my life was outside me. That all I can do is just live a miserable life and wait for some kind of miracle to happen and completely change my life. And this was not so smart to believe. I was lost, I did not know what to do, or where to go. What is my plan for life? I must have a plan if I want to be successful. That is what all these CEOs, millionaires before their 30s, coaches, etc teach us. So I made plans and did not follow them. Then I regretted it. I spent more time analyzing and regretting than I should have (small regret again :).

So what IS a regret?

Based on Google “regret” is a negative mental or emotional state where we hold ourselves responsible for an undesirable outcome, experience feelings of loss or sadness over what could have happened, or wish we could reverse a decision we previously made. It also could be painful to experience regret. Eventually, there is a good thing about regrets. You can analyze your past mistakes, change your actions, and have a different outcome. But I experienced the deep dark side of it. Day by day I thought about what was wrong with me and how I could change the situation. I see no options around me. My ruminations led me to chronic stress. Most of the time I felt deeply depressed and I did not what to do about it. Or should I? Maybe this is “the real adult” life and all that people who smile and enjoy exist only on TV and the Web.

Maybe there is something good about regretting. Based on Davidai & Gilovich (2018) “Regret informs us of a failure to live up to our ideals, over and above the mistakes we have made”. And we regret more things that we did not do rather than did. The same was inside me. Maybe I should do something different? Maybe I should be someone else? Or behave in a certain way to achieve my goals. But I did not know how I should do it.

There is a cognitive process called “counterfactual thinking” which is involved in the assessment of an outcome compared to what would have been gained or lost had we made a different decision (Zeelenberg et al., 1998). So from one side this analytical thinking can be advantageous for our future decisions and change our behavior to gain more desirable results. From the other side, regret can harm both the mind and body when it leads to unproductive rumination and self-blame, preventing individuals from moving forward in life. This cycle of repetitive, negative, self-focused thinking is a common feature of depression—and may also contribute to the development of this mental health issue.

Chronic stress can also lead to negative hormonal and immune changes. In short, regret is a negative emotion that can be beneficial if it encourages taking action to learn from mistakes and grow. However, dwelling on regret in situations where nothing can be changed can be harmful to both mental and physical health. Regret is a genuine response to a disappointing event, an unchangeable decision, or words you can’t take back. It’s a persistent, overwhelming negative emotion that can linger for minutes, days, years, or even a lifetime, making it hard to let go.

How does our brain process regret?

There was an interesting experiment. Scientists used MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) to scan the brains while participants did simple tasks on the computer. They should choose how to invest money. After they were shown the possibilities of making better strategies and gaining more rewards decreased activity has been observed in a part of the brain called the ventral striatum. This area is associated with processing rewards.

The ventral striatum also takes part in motivation. So this is an important part of the brain. That is why it relies very much on dopamine. The increased activity of the amygdala was also observed. The amygdala is a part of the limbic system and is responsible for emotional responses to threats. It is almost in the middle of the brain and is a neighbor to the hippocampus (responsible for memory).

How can we deal with regret?

Coping with regret is especially challenging due to the additional negative emotions it brings, such as remorse, sadness, and helplessness.

The good news is that regret can be managed through interventions like therapy and proven strategies. Like other negative emotions, trying to avoid, ignore, or suppress regret only intensifies it and prolongs the suffering. Instead of remaining trapped in it, individuals can address these emotions by following four key steps.

• First, acknowledge that you're experiencing these emotions. Regret, like all emotions, serves a purpose for survival. It's the brain’s way of prompting us to reassess our decisions, signaling that our actions may lead to undesirable outcomes. This is what I also did. I became kind of comfortable with these feelings and thoughts.

• Second, try to think about why you are feeling them. Very important step. Sometimes you are good where you are and who you are. There are a lot of distractors also which show you what you must have to feel good and successful, how you should behave and if you are not like this you are probably not so good.

• Then allow yourself to feel them and try to learn from them. The hardest step. For me, it was hard to reconcile that many years gone for nothing (that is what I thought at the beginning). I was sure that I should have learned all this stuff faster.

• Release them and move forward. You should find a way to forgive yourself and go forward.** For my brain, it was the easiest step. Either you say "goodbye" and go forward or stuck in the past and make your present miserable. But deeply inside I still was not able to say “goodbye”.

Easy to say, hard to make. Just think that you forgive yourself and after that life is beautiful. No. But you need to make small steps every day, take action to cause the change. There is a lot of info about planning, thinking, analyzing, etc, etc. But the clue is action. Every day make one thing that makes you proud. Let it be making the bed in the morning. You can not just stop regret when your actions are the same.

Dan Pink says that regret, when we treat it right, is useful, it can help us. So it is also important to take these lessons from the past but leave the past in the past.

xxx M.