In this post, in order to speak more authentically to the topic of regret, I’m choosing to share a personal moment of regret from my life with you. My hopes for this post is to help you unpack your relationship with an emotion that can be very painful and hard for many of us to digest.

For me, that’s what regret has been. A really hard emotion that I haven’t wanted to feel. I’ve avoided, for a long time, the reality that some of my life choices have resulted in a delay or denial of things my heart truly aches or ached for.

I suppose until very recently, I would be a person who would say “I don’t believe in regrets.” I didn’t want to be a person who “lived with regret.” Hell no, I wasn’t going to be that. In order not to be that, I’ve protected myself by pushing regret away and making it a BAD emotion. In a nutshell, I’ve avoided feeling the emotion at all costs, for years. Pretending that it doesn’t exist for me. Pushing it right back down when it has tried to surface up.

Of course I’ve questioned decisions of mine over the years. Of course there have been times where I could’ve handled a situation with much more grace and tactfulness. I’m only human and I’ve messed up. I’ve said things that have rubbed others the wrong way. I’ve been inconsiderate. I’ve been selfish. I’ve been many things that have not been my best self at times, for sure. (Haven’t we all? Whether we’ve wanted to admit it or not? Isn’t that human to some degree?)

The difference is that I know I’m not a selfish or an inconsiderate person. Inconsiderate or selfish is not who I am; It’s how I acted in the moment. That’s a very important distinction to make.

Lately, I’ve been paying more attention to those areas within that have been hard to look at. As we all know, when things are difficult to swallow, we tend to push them away so we don’t have to feel the discomfort that those “hard” emotions bring.

Intentionally looking at the topic of regret has helped me develop a more neutral relationship with it. My hope for this post is that my new found perspective can help you release any heavy emotions that you might be resisting around the emotion of regret as well.

One recent morning on my beach run, my sweaty self came face to face with a man I dated briefly years ago. The interaction was just as enjoyable as my brief time being courted (old school word choice, i know) by this intelligent and respectful gent. We had a brief exchange where he shared about his life NOW. Parting left me thankful for the run in and happy for him truly.

……….It also left me feeling regretful.

Regretful of what I didn’t allow to unfold further between us years ago. Call it dwelling on the past. Call it feeling nostalgia for the story I was making up in my head about the “what if’s” of our short lived dating experience years ago. As murky as the memories were since our time together was so brief and was so long ago, I walked away feeling regret. It’s true. Thoughts were going through my head of the future that I, potentially, missed out on. I questioned if I made the wrong choices years ago when it came to our brief dating encounter.

Should I have given it more energy and attention back then? Did i blow my future? Did I miss out on a man who seems to have so many of the qualities that I’m looking for in a future partner? What the F did I do 7 years ago!

I felt regret for what I could have chosen to be more intentional about when HE was in my space and eager to date ME years prior. Again, there’s a fine line of being swept up in the story of what may have been. However, the point with this post is to acknowledge the regret that was on the beach with me that morning.

In that moment, on the beach, I just felt regret. It was real. It was with me as my toes were immersed in the sand. Instead of doing what I normally do, which is counter attack the regret with a quick positive twist, “everything is as it should be” “everything happens for a reason….”

In that moment, I did something different…….

I just let myself feel it.

I’m so used to quickly pushing the emotion away with notions that I do believe in such as, “everything is meant to be” that I’ve actually never really let myself feel any sort of regret. So, that day, moments after our encounter, I allowed myself to feel it.

I let myself feel regret.

Please don’t hear me wrong. I’m not sitting here dwelling on the “what could’ve been” with this particular person. I’m truly happy for him and his life that he has created with someone else. I’m not stuck on that.

However, what this “run in” allowed me to witness was my unhealthy relationship with regret. I’ve made regret “bad.” An emotion with a negative charge. I’ve judged it. I’ve been scared of it. I’ve not wanted to see it and I certainly have not wanted to feel it. I’ve wanted to be a person with no regrets in life. Thinking of having regrets made me sad for myself, so I was going to do my damndest to not be a sad story.

The truth is that regret is just a feeling and a valid emotion. The second I allowed regret in, I began to learn from it. I learned what I could do in the future to make sure I pay attention to when a legit, healthy and positive person, place or thing is on the receiving end of me. I will be paying way more attention to that because I want too. I know the value in doing so with reflection of that particular experience on the beach that morning.

The trick is to use what you feel regretful of to work for you; not against you. If you can refrain from going down the rabbit hole and getting eaten alive by the “what if’s” and “I should have’s” you will find a lesson.

Q: How can you reframe regret so you can learn from it?

I believe that all of our emotions, especially the more difficult ones, are major teachers for us. Where there is discomfort, there is often a lot of learning to be had. I’m melting into this perspective with regret. What I’ve decided to do is shift my relationship with regret and see it on a neutral playing field.

After all, it’s just that; a feeling; an emotion. It’s not bad or good, it just is what it is. It’s neutral until we put our “story” on it and make it either an angel or a devil.

When we allow any emotion to be felt and worked through, it can then lose its charge. In other words, it can be processed. There’s no difference when it comes to the emotion of regret. This insight has helped me begin to lean into regret so I can learn from it. I no longer want to resist the wisdom that this emotion tends to bring.

If you’re a “no regrets” person, I’m not here to tell you how you should see that emotion in your life. I’m just here to share my experience with an emotion that I’ve had an avoidant relationship with until recently.

What I can offer you is that when I finally allowed this feeling to come up, I really questioned why I’ve been avoiding it for so long. With surrendering to it, I learned that it’s just a feeling that wants attention from time to time and if I give it that, I can learn from it.

Allowing regret to be a teacher allows me to feel and process the difficult emotions that regret triggers so they can then push through and dissipate. It may take time for hard emotions to rest peacefully within, but ultimately, that’s how the monkey will get off your back. Meaning, the heaviness and constant suffering that holding onto hard feelings bring will lose charge overtime if we keep working through them.

Cheers to this recent discovery and shift that I’ve experienced with an emotion that tends to get a bad rap. I hope this helps you look at your own relationship with this emotion, that at the end of the day, is just there to teach you some good lessons if you allow it too.

*Above image is by Photographer, Renata Amazonas.

Below is a quick video that I did on the topic of regret. If you haven’t yet, feel free to check out my YOUTUBE CHANNEL. I share quick videos on a variety of mental health topics to support you on your self growth journey.

Blog | Licensed Therapist | Self Discovery | North County San Diego, CA