State of Mind: Say no to living life with no regrets

It’s become a common expression in the lexicon of today’s culture to live life with no regrets. Some version of the phrase can be found on social media declarations, inspirational materials or even misspelled tattoos in commercials and movies. But like many trendy, albeit well-intentioned, sayings, the underlying meaning can carry unintended implications, particularly for mental health.

Fundamentally, regret is a negative emotion surrounding past events. It can mean feeling sorrow for something that occurred beyond our control, accepting blame for a bad outcome, being remorseful for a mistake made, feeling distress at an action we chose not to take or generally wishing we could do or undo something in the past.

It’s often said that everything a person has been through made them who they are today, thereby inextricably tying admirable self-acceptance to having no regrets.

However, this leaves out important considerations. Humans, on average, make around 35,000 decisions every single day. While many, perhaps most, of those decisions tend to be mundane in nature, at least some have the potential to be more impactful. No one is perfect, so we can be sure that we’re all making mistakes on any given day. So, while we might be happy and proud of the people we are and what we’ve accomplished, believing regrets to be exclusively negative is naive, at best.

Instead, we can acknowledge that mistakes were made and things happened even beyond our control that could have led to better outcomes had they been done differently. Most importantly, we can use that understanding to make the best possible decisions along our path forward.

In other words, rather than convincing ourselves that having regret is a bad trait, it can be beneficial to accept that feeling regret is part of the human experience and to use the insights we gain from it to improve our present and future.

Like most things, though, too much of anything can be a bad thing. When you find yourself ruminating on or blaming yourself for past decisions or events, regret can become repetitive and all-consuming. When it becomes chronic, research has shown that regret can lead to increased stress, lower self-esteem and confidence, decreased motivation, negative changes in hormonal and immune system functioning and potentially lead to mental health concerns like anxiety and depression.

Knowing that it’s natural and can be both healthy when managed appropriately and detrimental when not, it becomes important to understand how best to cope with inevitable regret. First and foremost, it can be helpful to reframe regret entirely, accepting that it isn’t unhealthy and you aren’t a failure if you aren’t living up to the unrealistic mantra of living life with no regrets.

Instead, regret can be a valuable, functional emotion that can help inform future decisions. Forgiving yourself and apologizing to others might be necessary and can be helpful in moving forward. This requires the acceptance that we’re all imperfect humans on a journey with no script in which we’re all trying to do our best with the circumstances and information we have at any given time. Thankfully, we can use the experiences and insights we gain along the way to try to make even better decisions as we continue that journey.

So while past decisions, events and circumstances certainly play a role, they don’t exclusively determine your future. So, practice compassion and go easy on yourself. And when you need support, remember that therapists can be valuable allies, and hopefully, we can all encourage one another on the journey to better mental health and well-being.

Bryan Busch is a licensed mental health counselor in Cedar Rapids. He also works at Folience, the parent company of The Gazette. He can be reached at bryan.busch@thegazette.com.