How Can We Deal With Regrets In A Way That Makes Them Less Painful?

Lisa HW Hub Author 6 months ago

Paradise7, thank you. I know what you mean about some regrets being like pain, but one thing I've run into is those regrets that aren't particularly something I did and was in the habit of doing anyway. :/ The few I have (the "biggies") were more the result of my reaction/response to circumstances/people in isolated instances. (I could have lived without any lessons from them. LOL )

.

SusieQ42, thanks for contributing here. I generally agree with the thing that today is all that really matters, when it comes to me and regrets I may have that affected only me.

Where I've found the challenge is that my today is my today, but the today of (hypothetically) someone I may have inadvertently but seriously hurt forever is being affected while I'm going along and being fine with my own today. Worse, and this isn't hypothetical) is when someone has been hurt, we haven't had the chance to at least make things a little right, and then they never got the chance to have a tomorrow (that would become the present today).

It's not easy for the person who sees not hurting anyone else, especially those they love deeply, to live with knowing they've either hurt the other person permanently; or else hurt the other person without having the chance to make things a little more right. Reminding ourselves, "Oh well, they aren't here and hurting any longer," doesn't do much when we're heartbroken and sick over having hurt someone under those circumstances.

Ironically, it's often those people closest to us we're most likely to "accidentally" hurt; because they often love a lot, but also love so much that they, themselves, step out of a line a little bit as a result of their own emotions. :/

Lisa HW Hub Author 6 months ago

jenubouka, I've always liked that song because, no matter what regrets I may have had before each of my three children came into my life; the song very much says it all when it comes to those regrets (which I've pretty much put in perspective and processed).

My probably with regrets has been, though, with those that came after my children were in my life. There's a regret or two that involves ways my children have paid for something I did, and that kind of regret isn't as easy to process; especially for the person who pretty much thinks, "When it comes down to it, I don't care about much else in life than seeing my children be happy and healthy," - and when, instead of being able to protect them from loss and sadness, I contributed to it as a result of being put in a position of having only two unacceptable (for them) options.

While I don't live with guilt as far as why I made some choices goes, I do live with (and probably will always live with) serious regrets that are hard to deal with.

.

Dave Mathews, thank you for sharing your own approach to reducing the chances/eliminating living with regrets. I know that your approach is one that a lot of other people share, and I know it can work for people who are able to use it. (So I'm not at all disagreeing with your approach, or suggesting that it's not one that can work for some people.)

What I've found though is that regrets aren't always the result of things we choose to do, mistakes we make, or not having some moral, spiritual, or "good-sense" compass to follow.

My problem with the most serious (few as they may be) regrets has been (continues to be) this:

Regardless of what compass I've always used all my life, I've always been someone very tuned into doing things in a way that will decrease the chances of regret. I'm someone who has always had a lot of good sense and has been able to see the big picture, as far as immediate choices/actions go. I've also always been someone who has one main "rule" by which I live, and that is to never intentionally hurt anyone or anything else.

I can usually make peace with those times when I may have unintentionally hurt, or caused problems, for someone (and done so for no reason other than my own way of handling something, rather than having anyone else be at fault). Being as careful as I've always been to try to hurt someone, though; those times have been relatively few, and the hurts have been fairly small.

Preventing regrets seemed fairly easy to do, and dealing with any minor ones that cropped up was just about as easy. What I do or don't believe about God is one thing; but even at those times, or in those ways, in which I lean toward calling upon any belief I may have; while I can be at peace for "putting in the hands of God" things over which no humans really had/have any control, I'm can't be at peace "putting in the hands of God" things that result from my choices or actions in life.

Even in those times when I've gone with the thing "everything happens for a reason", I've always believed in free will. With that comes taking responsibility for one's own actions. In my thinking about those few, big, regrets; I've even gone as far as to ask whether the hurt caused for someone was "God's way of punishing that person for his less-than-ideal" way of handling something; but I can't help but believe that if there's a God, He wouldn't punish perfectly good people for handling things in a way that put me in a position of "no-other-options" but my choice/actions; when that person's way of doing something was the result of his caring too much and/or not knowing any better.

Before I ran into the things that led to my present-day regrets, I saw life as simple; and preventing regrets as something anyone could do if he tried. I learned, though, that while a lot of people never find themselves in the position of having someone else have enough "power" in their life that their options become limited; there are times when others can find a way to "inflict themselves into" one's life and pretty much change the picture when it comes to available options.

To further complicate things, those people who manage to "cease power" in the lives of others can be people we wouldn't want to exclude in our lives, or else people we have no choice but to allow into our lives.

So for someone like me, who always worked so hard to follow my own compass and stick with my main principle of never intentionally hurting anyone; it can be particularly difficult to have essentially be forced into the position of choosing between the only options available to me, as a result of someone else's inflicting himself and inappropriately "ceasing the power to affect the circumstances of my life".

Basically, with those few rare (but overwhelmingly awful regrets), someone else caused me to do something/say something I never would have chosen to, but had no choice (as not doing so would have meant consequences to someone else I never wanted to hurt or relinquish my responsibilities to). In the end, everyone was hurt - and hurt "big". And, that "everyone" was most often made up of the people who least deserved to be hurt, and who I never would have hurt if it I'd not be put in that position by others.

Do I feel guilty? No. Does knowing that people I love/loved so much were so seriously hurt by whatever choice(s)I made as a result of other people's screw-ups bother me less because I know they, not I, were the real cause of the hurt? No. The fact is, whatever choice I mad would have hurt someone; but the fact that I "had" to choose who I'd hurt doesn't ease the fact that I was forced to go against my core of always caring so much, and always aiming not to hurt, still means that what I did/chose resulted in hurting some of the people I love/loved most.

While a person or two may have brought on his own hurt as a result of what he chose to do in my life, some of the hurt people did absolutely nothing that should have brought on "punishment" or even just the negative consequences that resulted.

My point here is that we can think we can live our lives in a way that eliminates, or at least reduces, the chances of ending up with regrets. Some people (lots of them) even discover that things turn out to be as simple as they've always believed them to be.

Some of learn, however, that preventing regrets isn't always as simple as our just "doing the right things", and can be become complicated if/when others find a way to rob of us of the "luxury" of a life not complicated by people who have no right to inflict themselves into the lives of people who DO do that "right thing" but are then forced to go against their very core as a result of the misguided thinking, stupidity and/or deceit of others.

What "God" sends to people that's beyond human control is one thing. People who believe in God will say, "It's God's will." Some people who believe in God stop believing (at least for a time). Some never have believed in God, and they think things out their own way.

Either way, I can't come around to thinking that someone else's exercising of his free will to create circumstances for me that resulted in my essentially going against my own "real" free will, and having no choice but to choose who I'd hurt as a result of someone else's actions/words, can be "placed in the hands of God".

I see what people did as as "people's doing" - not God's. I see the role that I played in hurting people I'd never, in a million years, have chosen to hurt as "my doing" (whether I had a choice or not) - not God's.

Of course, we all see this kind of thing differently, and deal with things differently. I can appreciate and respect that.

As for my own particularly challenging few regrets, sometimes the most painful and overwhelming of them, apparently, can just kind of get old and lose their edge after the first, say, fifteen or so years. Some stay as fresh and awful as they've always been.

Lisa HW Hub Author 6 months ago

Zooloot, as my length "discussion" in reply to another comment points out, sometimes other people rob of us of that freedom-of-choice that you mention.

Lisa HW Hub Author 6 months ago

Zooloot, thank you for contributing such substance to the discussion here; but I have a feeling, based on at least some of what's in your most recent comment, that some of what you've said about other people's bad decisions was directed at what I've said, or at least could be seen as "applying to me".

Although my "regret situation" isn't particularly rare (at all), it's not what would be considered "usual" either.

In my case (as I'm assuming may be similar in a lot of people's cases, even if not in a majority of lives), I found that it's completely possible to live, and make choices, based on absolutely "impeccable" integrity and yet have other people's involvement in a situation lead to that "no-good-options" thing (and, in turn, to lead to regrets, even if not to guilt).

Here's a really bizarre, extreme, example: but it may clarify the kind of "other people's involvement" I've mentioned:

Imagine a guy ("Fred") who thinks he's having a heart attack. He doesn't want to die, and all he's thinking about is how his wife will manage if he does. He calls an ambulance for himself. Wanting/needing to save his life, Fred has done the right thing and the only sensible thing.

When someone shows up at the door he lets him in. It's a sicko who is posing as ambulance driver.

The sicko ties up Fred and blindfolds him. Then the individual sets Fred's home on fire. Fred's wife was locked in the basement by the intruder. Fred begs the intruder to let his wife leave and not make her a victim. He is ignored, and it turns out the wife perishes in the fire. Somehow, someone puts out the fire and rescues Fred before he's too seriously injured.

Fred doesn't really feel guilty about his wife's dying because he knows he couldn't do anything to stop it. He knows he tried to free himself. He knows he begged. Maybe he tried to bargain. Maybe he called out all kinds of ideas that he thought might help her get herself out.

In any case, he doesn't feel like he's to blame for what happened to her. He has serious regrets for the rest of his life, though, that he wasn't able to fight off, or keep out, the intruder. He regrets that he couldn't put out the fire even though he knows he was tied up and blindfolded. He regrets that he couldn't figure out a way to get untied and freed, even though he knows that it would have been impossible for anyone to free himself under the circumstances.

Before she succumbed, Fred's wife had been calling through the door and saying how she was counting on Fred to get her out. She talked about how she'd always trusted him and was trusting him then. She also said, "Fred, if you love me and care about our children you'll find a way to get us both out of here." She didn't know how well he'd been tied up, so she wasn't thinking how impossible it was for him. In the meantime, she was asking the impossible of him (obviously, not the best thing, but she didn't know any better).

So Fred, overpowered by a deceitful sicko, and placed in the position of having too much expected of him, but also of being able to save his wife's life; had all all kinds of regrets associated with the horror of it all - and none of those regrets had anything to do with Fred's lack of integrity or bad choice. (Calling an ambulance was the normal and only thing to do.) (By the way, I may as well throw in that Fred only had indigestion - not a heart attack. LOL )

Fred now lives with the regret that even called the ambulance at all. He regrets that he didn't take his chances with what he believed was a heart attack. He knows he didn't, at the time, think there was the option of not calling for help; but he still regrets that he did. He regrets that his wife's last thoughts of him involved his failing her. He regrets that, misguided as it was of her to think if he loved her he'd save her, she died believing he didn't love her the way she believed he should. The point for Fred isn't that she expected too much of him. The point was that he did love his wife, and her last minutes were spent believing that he didn't.

On top of it, Fred lives with the regret that his kids won't have their mother around, and that he couldn't save her for them either.

Fred knows who is to blame, and he knows that he really can't blame himself for someone else's crime; but he knows that he's the one that called the ambulance, and he's the one who let the sicko in. His kids will have to deal with losing their mother that way for the rest of their lives. He regrets that he just didn't let himself take his chances with the heart attack symptom, because he knows it would have been better if his kids lost their father through natural causes than what happened as a result of his calling the guy to the house.

This may be a bizarre and extreme (and make-believe) example, but this is how the kind of regrets I've mentioned can happen (even if they don't involve something physical) - and they can happen to people who have the most solid integrity and good sense possible.

End of Fred story and back to what I've seen in my own life: There are times in this life when doing everything right backfires because of someone else's being deceitful or stupid or otherwise not being trustworthy when we trust them. Disastrous consequences can result, and so can regrets that come in the form of the kind that the make-believe Fred had.

Going back to Fred for a minute: Imagine now that Fred's kids are all dealing with depression (or plain, old, sorrow) over what happened. Now he's not only seeing the consequences to his wife but to them. His regrets keep growing, and his own sorrow at being the one who didn't take the chance and not call an ambulance worsens. As time keeps going on, he keeps seeing more and more reason to feel regret. What happened isn't something that happened once and that is now in the past. It's something that happened once and led to years of increasing consequences in his kids' lives.

The exponentially increasing consequences and mess in his and his kids' lives is like a road ahead that comes up and knocks him in the head with every step he takes on it.

Fred has processed the fact that it was reasonable and normal for him to call an ambulance. He is sick, however, at what that one action has done in his kids' lives. He doesn't blame himself. He does, though, deeply and fiercely regret his choice.

Some people would say Fred ought to just say, "Oh well, that's God's will." Other people who didn't know Fred's real story may suggest that if Fred had had better integrity or good sense he would have done things differently. Still others, not being aware of how some things can happen in life, would bring up the old rule (that generally applies, but not in all circumstances) that we can't blame anyone else for our regrets.

I wrote this Hub for the real "Freds" out there (but, of course, less extreme and bizarre versions of the fictional Fred).

Lisa HW Hub Author 6 months ago

zooloot, thank you for taking the time to contribute so many useful and sensible points/approaches about regrets. Your generous contribution to the discussion here will offer readers lots of good points to keep in mind about regrets.

I don't disagree with, or question, any of what you've said except for one thing: "Regret is a product of not being prepared for the unknown which none of us can ever truly be prepared for." I think that's over-simplifying SOME kinds of regrets (particularly those in matters of the people we love most).

There are "run-of-the-mill" or "regular" regrets that can so often either be prevented or processed. Even some of regrets associated with those we love most can, a good part of the time, be among the "run-of-the-mill" variety.

Then there are those that just can't. We've all heard (too many times) the phrase, "outside the box", applied to thinking. Thinking style aside, "outside the box" could be applied to some kinds of the most serious regrets.

As I think about regrets and "Fred", I realize that Fred is a man; and that my own "outside-the-regret-box" variety of regrets are heavily "colored" and rooted in my fierce maternal instinct toward my own children; but also within the context of the mother/daughter relationship I had with my own mother at the time the cause of regret took place. I'm also aware (always have been, long before this particular discussion) that my being a woman played a huge, huge, role in the fact that the source of my regret ever existed at all. (Yes, I'm apparently playing the "woman-and-mother card" here, but I think it's worth mentioning because I know that one reason my own regret is "outside-the-box" regret is that "maternal-instinct type" regrets can be their own kind of thing and just aren't as simple as the kind of regrets that both men and women share, whether or not they're parents or even as parents who have some emotions/wishes for their children/responsibilities to them in common.

I don't know how much you, or anyone else feels like reading about the "Fred thing" and regrets, but I'm addressing the second-scenario you raised below the line here.

_______________________________________________________

Fred probably would regret saving his wife's life, but there's a difference with the two situations. If Fred were a mature, well adjusted, person with integrity and even solid skills for processing things like regrets; he'd probably know that he only had so much responsibility for anyone else's life. So, even if he'd saved the wife's life he probably would have then "mentally returned" to her (within himself) the responsibility from her own actions once he'd saved her life. He'd most likely still deeply regret having saved her life, but there would be that "space"/time inbetween the fire-event and the wife's later actions. That, alone, and the fact that her responsibility for her own actions had been "put back on her" might help reduce at least some of Fred's regret (as compared to the first scenario of his not saving her life).

There's the thing that he may not be thinking that his kids had the opportunity, either, to think, "You failed us, Dad, when you saved her life." His role in the event (of her killing herself and the others) would be removed, or distanced, so any regret (while it would probably be there) would be watered down with time, new factors, "indirectness", etc.

In the case of his not being able to save her life, Fred's regret would be based on knowing some of her last thoughts had involved her believing (inappropriately or realistically or not) that he'd failed her and disappointed her. Since one of the most important, if not THE most important, things to Fred was the his wife really know how much he cared about her, and that he never fail or hurt her; the fact that someone else's actions "caused" him to fail her, at least in her eyes, is made worse.

Another difference in the case of his saving the wife and the stuff that happens later is that Fred is the one living without the wife or the kids. His loss and grief are the big things for him, and although he may regret that his kids aren't even around to live with whatever consequences life might bring them from one thing or another; he's not watching them llive with consequences every day. That might make the event of the wife's later "event" at least not be a "road ahead that keeps coming up and knocking him in the head as he takes each step into his own future".

"Ordinary" regrets are something we largely prevent (as you've pointed out), or they might include a situation such as our quitting a job at one company in order to get into a higher paying, seemingly better situation, at another - only to have things change and cause the new company to fold. That kind of regret is usually very manageable and "process-able". We think, "Oh boy, do I ever regret having done that", and then we figure out what we'll do next and move on.

I think regrets that involve the most important people and values we have are so different. I'd more compare those more serious, deeper, regrets to something like having a serious leg injury that will leave one in severe pain for the rest of his life. A person will need to learn to live with the pain, but won't ever be able to make it go away. Maybe he can find a way to keep his mind from "paying attention" to it, but it will always be there. Maybe he can find a pain-killer that will ease it, or maybe he'll have some days that are better than others. The pain isn't going away completely, though, because there's some very real and unfixable damage to the leg.

I think any sense of guilt that could potentially be associated with such regrets can be alleviated by copying techniques, such as keeping "mitigating circumstances" in mind. The sense of failing in one's responsibilty that can come with regret can also be alleviated with similar "mental processing". When all the other surrounding factors/issues have been dealt with, though, if the damage caused was awful enough, the pain will always be there to manage; and when time has dulled a lot of the other pain that resulted from an event/situation, but that we've processed and gotten mostly past; that pain of regret will be there to be managed or put out of one's mind as much as possible, but it will always be there.

The make-believe Fred isn't "supposed to" regret anything - not in the first scenario, not in the second one. What he's "supposed to" do, though, and what he can't help but do can be very different things. Like that person with the horribly damaged and painful leg injury, Fred's going to have live with the pain and manage it. It's going be there, and neither he nor anyone else can make it go away. He may not dwell on his regret, and he may keep it perspective; but he can't help but have the fundamental, "no-frills-of-guilt-or-any-other-extra-stuff" kind of regret for not doing anything else but what he actually did when he decided to call for help.

Fred's strong and sensible and has developed some great "pain management" skills (that don't involved either drugs or alcohol). He keeps going. He lives his life. He can still be happy for the most part. It's just that he does have (most often stashed at the back of his mind) that huge regret that will always be there. Sometimes in matters of emotion and love there can be no reasoning away such heartsick regret - only ways to make it less painful.