The Emotional Consequences of Regret and How to Manage Them
The problem with the pandemic, is that it’s given me, I think it’s given all of us, a lot more time to think than we used to have. The missed holidays, and birthdays, and weddings, and funerals, trigger a natural tendency to reminisce. While reminiscing can be wonderful, we all know how quickly memory lane can turn into the Avenue of Regret (I apologize for the bad pun, but there it is. I apologize for it, but I do not regret it).
Regret is a familiar feeling for most of us, I imagine. It’s the emotion triggered when we think about the job we didn’t take, when we think about the guy or girl we turned down many years ago, or a decision we agonized over that turned out poorly. It is often associated with other emotions, like disappointment, guilt, and shame. If left unmanaged, regret can have significant impact on long-term health, including increased depression, anxiety, chronic sadness, difficulty making decisions, and anger.
Like most things in life, however, the concept of regret is a bit more complicated once you delve into it. Psychologist Shai Davidai published research on Regret that divides it into two roads: actions we have taken that we view as mistakes versus actions we never took at all. Interestingly, the research supports earlier work that theorized people by far have greater regret for actions they did not take versus actions they view as mistakes. In the short term, the guilt and shame (what Davidai describes as “hot” emotions), may seem overwhelming and intense, perhaps to the point of being unbearable. But mistakes of action, like hurting someone’s feelings or taking a job that did not work out, also offer a chance for reparative work. You can make amends with someone, you can find another job, you can basically throw up an “Oops, my bad,” and be able to learn from the experience. Eventually, even if reparative work is not successful, the intensity of the guilt and shame will eventually fade. Even the worst “action-related regret” can be viewed as a learning opportunity, a chance to reflect on poor behavior and grow from it.
Contrast that with a time in your life you were presented with an opportunity or path and chose not to take it. You said no to a job because you felt underqualified, you declined drinks with a potential new friend because of social anxiety, you turned down a date from that person who always seemed so nice because well, we always turn down dates from nice people, don’t we?
These specific moments of inaction tend to breed sadness and disappointment, or “cool” emotions. Since these emotions do not demand our attention the way hot emotions do, and since there is rarely a chance for reparative work to be done, we are often left holding these emotions in our hand but unsure how to deal with them. Eventually we just put them away in some corner of our brain and there they sit, gathering dust. What else can we do with them? Eventually, over time and if this pattern is repeated often enough, those cool emotions feel like lead within us and are exhausting to carry.
So what is the difference? Why do studies show that people overwhelmingly hang on to regrets related to moments of inaction? It builds on an earlier concept that says we are divided into three selves: our actual self (who we are in this moment), our ideal self (the person we want to be, goals we want to achieve, traits we want to embody etc.) and the ought self (the person we believe we should be to meet obligations and responsibilities).
Of these three concepts, the ideal self is the most complex and vague; after all, how can we fully answer the question of “Who do I want to be?” The ought self is much more straightforward. We know how we should behave at work. We are (probably mostly) aware of society’s rules and expectations. To that end, it is easy enough to know when we have made broken a law, made an error in judgment, or caused offense. But is it possible to answer the question of “What is the best version of myself? What would it mean to be the best parent/partner/employee/friend?” Is it possible to have a specific plan to manifest your ideal self?
The answer is no, by the way. So ice cold regret fills gap between our actions (or inactions) what we wish we could be. Essentially, we are disappointed in ourselves, disappointed in realizing that we will never reach that idealized version of ourselves. That is a very difficult fact for many people to accept.
For some individuals, fear of regret can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more you avoid the possibility of regret, the less likely you are to take risks, the more you reinforce a false sense of security. If this behavior is repeated enough times, over the course of months and years eventually you look back and realize your life has been a series of inaction.
There is nothing inherently evil about the feeling of regret; like all emotions it is neither good nor bad. Rather, it is your soul’s way of telling you that something is off kilter and needs course correction. It is your idealized self or your ought self telling you what you need to do to realize that identity. Regret can actually serve as a wonderful wakeup call, if we have the openness to respond to it. The key is to turn your gaze forward to the road ahead, and resolve not to let history repeat itself.
References
Davidai, S., & Gilovich, T. (2018). The ideal road not taken: The self-discrepancies involved in people’s most enduring regrets. Emotion (Washington, D.C.), 18(3), 439–452. https://doi-org.arktos.nyit.edu/10.1037/emo0000326