#2: The light and dark side of REGRET

Regret haunts us all at some point. In this episode, I break down the ways regret hurts and helps us. Plus, some tips on how to reframe your perceptions so you can live a fuller and happier life. 

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*This is not a substitute for therapy nor is it therapeutic advice. If you would like to find a therapist in your area check out psychologytoday.com, goodtherapy.org, or therapyden.com

Transcript

0:14

Welcome to the Therapy Alchemist podcast. I'm your host, Katrina Austin, a therapist in Colorado. I'm here to talk not only about the science behind mental health, but the magical process of transformation.

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Welcome back to the therapy Alchemist podcast. On this episode today, we're going to talk about regret one of the emotions that brings us a lot of suffering in life. Not only the regret that we experienced, but also the regret that we're trying to avoid. So before we dive in, let's get a clear definition on what regret is. So Bernay brown in her book, Atlas of the heart talked about. The research on what we all consensus really believe regret to mean. So it says in her book, both disappointment and regret arise when an outcome was not what we wanted counted on or thought would happen. With regret, we believe the outcome was caused by our decisions and actions. So an example of this would be. It didn't work out how I wanted, and the outcome was caused by my decisions, actions or failure to act. I think this is one that we can all resonate with. Especially as you continue throughout life. There are more and more regrets that we seem to encounter. So I want to talk about. My thoughts on if regret is helpful or not. And I think it's a two-sided coin. Sometimes regret can be helpful. The fear of regret can. Right. It can encourage us to step outside of our comfort zone. It can push us into new adventures. It can. Help us get down onto one knee. All of the things. It can also help us to change. Right. When we experienced a deep. Loss in something. Sometimes that rock bottom helps us to get up. But other times it's extremely paralyzing. Which leads. Sometimes to the feeling of resignation. And so the definition of resignation, this is one that really stood out to me when I was reading Atlas of the heart. Because I think a lot of times we confuse depression with resignation. And in Alice at the heart. The example that Bernay brown gives is. I've lost my confidence and enthusiasm about any future effort. I've lost the motivation and confidence to persist. And, you know, when we experience a deeper gret and we feel. Like we are never going to achieve. That thing that we really want again, whether that's a failed marriage. Uh, career choice. Uh, health choice. Relationships with our friends and our family. It can lead to resignation, which leads to deeper and darker places. And that's where the paralyzing feeling comes from. You know, I think that resignation mixed with shame. Often leads to a lot of suicidal. Thoughts and feelings. And sometimes actions as well. And this is just from my personal views of things. It's I don't have research behind. Y most people attempt suicide and what the belief is on that. But. I think that that mixture of regret. And resignation and shame all combined into one creates this monster of a beast where you are. Now tortured in life. And so sometimes regret can be helpful to really kick us in the ass. And give us a wake-up call. You know, maybe we're not appreciating our spouse. Because now they have left us. Maybe we didn't appreciate our health because now it's gone. Maybe we didn't appreciate time. Because we can never get it back. And so in that way, Regret can be beautiful. But. When we have that negative view on regret in it. Hits us in the chest. Like a bus. Man regret is a hard, hard pill to swallow. You know, I have clients who come in and. I go with them through the journey of divorce. And. Sometimes divorce is a really beautiful thing. And I don't mean that the process of divorce is beautiful. I just mean that. It was time. For the relationship to end. And other times. I go through the process with people where. Relationships ending. Turn out to be their biggest regret. And that's something that I can personally relate to as well. My divorce was. Extremely painful for me to go through and. Regret has definitely. Kept me in a state of grief for many years. And I think that. Having gone through that really helps me to understand the process of grief. In multiple ways. cause I don't think we often view. A breakup or divorce or the end of a friendship or disconnecting, uh, or. Setting boundaries with a family member. As. Grief, but it totally is. And with grief comes a lot of regret. And that even means grief with the death of someone that you love, the things that you didn't get to say. It's hard and it hurts.

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Which leads me to the four noble truths of Buddhism. And so the first truth is that suffering exists. What's interesting about this is that. Uh, suffering exists because we attach to a specific desired outcome. And the second truth. Is that suffering has a cause. Right. Which is that we are attaching. When. We want things to stabilize and yet everything. Is. Changing. Life is consistently. Unstable. It never stabilizes. And the third truth is it suffering has an end. And that happens. When we let go. And I think what regret is. To me, it kind of feels like that stage of grief. Where we are in denial. And we bargain. We bargain for things to get better. It's kind of an all consuming. Set of grief minus the acceptance. But if there is acceptance in it, it's, it's a negative acceptance of like, I will never have this again, it comes with this heavy story that. His most likely not true, but sometimes is. And it's really hard when that thing that is true. It's true. And when we don't flow with life. When we. Seek stability. We suffer. And it is so hard to let go. Because our brain. Love's consistency. It loves predictability. It loves patterns. It loves things that we can do without even having to think about, because that's not dangerous. The unknown is dangerous to the brain. Even if the unknown is guaranteed to be better. Like leaving an abusive relationship. It's guaranteed to be better, but happiness is unknown. And that's terrifying. To the brain. One of the things that helps overcome regret is. Radical acceptance. It's whenever you finally decide to say. I'm going to stop comparing. My life to the life that I thought I was going to have. And I'm just going to radically accept. Where I am. But without. Resignation. In fact, I'm going to try to lean into motivation and see that like, okay. This is the reality. This is where I'm at. This is what. It has happened. This is what. Decisions I have made and everyone else in my life have made that have led me to this spot, to this place. And. When you're at rock bottom. The only way to get out of is to go up. I mean, some days you got to stay there. And sometimes. Staying at rock bottom last for a years. And for some people, it can last a lifetime. They don't change the story that they. Have with their regret. You know, we all have a relationship to pain and we create a story around this pain. Right. That's where the suffering comes in. It's that, it's that story? That attachment to. This dream that we have of how things should be. How we want things to be. But when we can create a story. That says. I am a drop in this ocean of life and I'm going to go with the flow. Because you don't know. Where you're going to be any year. In five years and 10 years. Most of the time we can look back and say, wow. I did not. See that coming. And that can be good things and that can be bad things, but. When we shift the lens through which we view the world. And we look intentionally. At the good. Then most of the times when we look backwards, it's like, wow, I did not know I'd be here. Like for me. I did not know. I would be in Colorado. I didn't know that I would start my own private practice. I never even imagined. Having a podcast. I never imagined I moved to Colorado alone. And yet I'm here and I've had. A lot of really, really hard days. And a lot of really great days. And a lot of motivation and a lot of resignation and. All of the things. And it's, it's all a mix. You know, in, in that aligns with. The Buddhist philosophy. Um, even union psychology with everything has a light and a dark, right? That's what the yin and the yang or it's. Everything has an equal and an opposite all the time. And what we focus on. Is what we're going to experience more of. And so the people. Who live joyful lives. They focus on the gratitude. They focus on the, the newness. They lean into change. They don't resist it. And so if you are on your shadow journey, And you are experiencing. Regret or resignation or grief. Or all of the above. It's important to ask. Why they're all here. Regret and itself. Can be beautiful. As we already established at the beginning. It can motivate us to really step into our authentic self, give us the strength that we need. And I think it's really important to focus on that. Some days we can't. Some weeks, some months in some years we can't. Because. Maybe it doesn't hurt enough or maybe it hurts so much. That we can't deal with it. But that's all part of the process of life. And acknowledging. Acknowledging that is so important. I actually saw. Uh, drawing today on Instagram. And this illustration. Is of a girl. Who has this swirl? Of thoughts above her head that start out very small. And it gets a little bit bigger and there's a tear drop coming from her eye. And the next is this cloud of swirls. Is now causing her to cry. So many tears. And then she looks up. And this worlds. Have a face. And they're sad and they're looking down at her. And she reaches up. To this cloud of swirls. And this worlds are now crying. And in the final drawing. She is hugging this whirls. As she in this world's cried together. So. When you're in that space of regret. And I've lost. In a fear about the future. That's when it's time to look at that shadow of yours. And hold it. Because I think there's something so beautiful. About. Knowing that that part of you understand that part of you. It's going through it with you. You know, one of the things that. I've said to my clients who are. Going through. A breakup or a divorce. Is something that I experienced with my divorce and it was the. Anniversary of the divorce date for me. And. You know, the second year after that everyone else in my life had basically forgotten that I was divorced. They didn't know. The day was coming up. Nobody mentioned anything to me on that day. I just remember thinking. How beautiful it was that my ex-husband. Knows the. The depth of that pain that I wasn't in it alone. And then nobody else is going to get it. But me and him. And that's kind of beautiful too, that sometimes endings. Can be something that you had to share with someone forever. And that's something that only YouTube will know because the relationship that you had. Voice just between the two of you. It was something you created together and it was something that you ended together. And I think that this is true with our shadow side as well. That, that part of us, that we are afraid of, that we run from that part that hurts. It's also the part of us that gets it. Because often we look to others to understand us. And we want them to cry to the level that we cry into the depth that we cry, but they can't. Because they're not part of it. And so what I love about parts work is. That we get to befriend those parts of ourselves. And know that, Hey, I was there. I remember. And we can look back at ourselves and our lives. And know that the one person who has always been there who has always felt everything. Is you. You get it. And in this world of isolation. And loneliness. I mean, there are so many things out there about the loneliness epidemic. And it's real. But. We are never alone. Because we have our one human. The has been there for every single moment. Who knows. How deeply we have hurt. And can actually empathize with that. It's ourselves. And we're also always going to be there. We don't even have to die alone because. My human's going to be there with me. She's going to go through it with me. And you know, that first year. After my divorce was the worst year of my life. My family and friends tried really hard to support me and they did an incredible job. Because I was inconsolable. And yet I somehow managed to. Graduate grad school. And I think it kind of helped save my life in a lot of ways. But. Those times when I would sit. When I would sit under the table. In. The bedroom that I stayed in at my mom's house. And just cry. Just, just completely hugging my legs as tight as possible, trying to become as small as possible. I felt so alone. And I felt like nobody would get it. But now. When I look back. I get to say, huh? I was there though. And so even though there is regret. And even though we get upset with the past version of ourselves. For decisions that they made that old version of us. We were also there to pick ourselves up. And an example that I like to use that. I learned when I was on a retreat. Matthew Hussey's virtual retreat actually. He said. You know, imagine that. You get a brand new iPhone. And, you know, for those of you who are iPhone users, it's like, A glorious day. I think I phone or apple has just like the best marketing ever because you walk into their store and like everybody's shifts, you know, you feel like you're walking into heaven or something. And you get your new iPhone and it has that thick, white case. And you. You take the case off and there's your shiny new foam. And he turned it on and the pixels are beautiful and it's bright and colorful. It's new and exciting. just imagine that you hold that iPhone. And you begin to yell at it. For the things. That your old iPhone couldn't do. that doesn't make any sense. Because this is the upgraded iPhone. And so when you look into the past, And you experience regret. You can't beat yourself up for what version? 3.0. Didn't know. You can't beat up the version of 5.0 for what? 3.0. I had a glitch of that is now fixed in 5.0. You can't know what you don't know. So when you look back with regret, And you start to beat yourself up for decisions that you made or for the things that happened to you. You can't beat yourself up. Because you didn't know what you didn't know. And oftentimes I hear people say this all the time. I should have known. I should have done better. Um, You don't know what you don't know, you can't upgrade into something that hasn't been invented yet. It's like yelling at your car for not flying. Because we don't have flying cars yet. Nice that I know of. The technology's not there yet. You haven't learned. What you needed to learn in order to be able to do things differently? And so when I look back. On my marriage. And the decisions that I made. I have moments of regret and I remind myself, I didn't know what, I didn't know. Because now, now I know so much more. And moving to Colorado has taught me so much about myself. And about relationships and about. All of these different things. And I would not have learned it. Back then. Because I didn't meet the people that I had to meet here. In order to learn those things. You know, I had to go through all of that deep, dark pain in order to realize that I needed to change and I needed to face. Some really dark things inside of me that I was desperately running from. I didn't know what, I didn't know. So. I encourage you. Too. Lean in. To self-compassion. So when you experience regret, Remind yourself. I am version 5.0 now. I know different I've upgraded since and tomorrow. I'm going to upgrade again. maybe next week I'm going to upgrade again and maybe there's a new glitch. That I will have to work on and fix later, but I will also know more than, than I knew today. Because we are always upgrading. So. Give yourself some peace. And use regret. As a way to motivate you. To learn and to dive deep into those places that you've been afraid to go. To lean into vulnerability and authenticity. Just try it. It's worth it.

23:05

Thank you all for joining me on today's episode. Hit that follow button to stay up to date with all the new episodes coming out. As a reminder, this is not a substitute for therapy or therapeutic advice. If you find that you are needing professional therapeutic services, there are several therapist directories, such as psychologytoday. com, goodtherapy. com and therapyden. com. Again, thank you for joining me. Hit that subscribe button. I'll talk to you soon.