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One of the more difficult emotions to deal with is regret. The sense of having lost something, or done things we wish we had never done. Regret instils in us a harsh reality: that we cannot undo the past. It forces us to face the passage of time, the loss of what once was or could have been. It is a feeling that merges, often, with guilt or anger or despair. Regret can be difficult to experience because of how debilitating it can seem. Regret can leave a person feeling hopeless — that too much has gone wrong or too much precious time has been wasted to ever change things now.
Regret is so agonising because it is often our own personal failures looking back at us, forcing us to comprehend the past from the vantage point of the future: it lets us look back on ourselves from a place of knowing, and that knowing bites painfully into us as we realise what went wrong or what we might’ve done instead.
Regret and loss are common companions. They can come from the same source, mingling with one another, creating a truly depressing emotional world. These emotions often signal that something has gone wrong, and they tend to crop up when we’re in a vulnerable state: ones of loss, or shame, or guilt. When we’ve lost a relationship with someone, or when we feel we’ve chosen the wrong career path, or we look back and realise we’ve never really…
