Regret is an interesting and (I believe) under-examined experience. People often say they have no regrets or a lot of regrets, are doing things now so they don’t regret not doing them later, “Do it [whatever “it” might be], and you’ll regret it,” and so on. Many of us have regretted things we’ve done or said, or we’ve regretted not doing or saying certain things (missing opportunities). I’m having memories of the Seinfeld episode, where George was at a meeting being ridiculed for eating a ton of prawns, regretted that he didn’t come out with a great retort at the time, and then showed up later on, only to be foiled by a witty counter-retort. Sometimes, I think we fear that we might regret missed opportunities more often than we need to. I was recently invited to give a talk in Ireland, a place I’ve always wanted to visit, but it would be at a very busy time, and I knew it would be wise to decline. Nevertheless, I went back and forth for a good couple of weeks, mainly because I was afraid I’d regret missing my chance to go on the trip. I ultimately declined, and I don’t regret it. At other times, I think we keep going along as if we won’t regret what we’re doing or not doing. I lost a family member not too long ago, and I sometimes experience strong regret (and sadness) that I didn’t see or call this person as often as I should have.
What is regret? Is it an emotion? A thought? Some combination of both? I think regret is a complicated experience, but one that primarily involves thinking. Regret is not really one of the primary emotions that have been identified as universal across cultures. The experience of regret can come with emotions of sadness, disappointment, frustration, guilt, or others, but I believe thinking is a key ingredient of regret. The thought process usually involves considering how things might have been different had we done or not done certain things. There’s also an element of comparison: Comparing how things are to how things could have been had we acted differently. So, regarding the invited trip to Ireland, to regret saying no, I’d have to think about how things could have been had I gone on the trip and compare that to how things are. Viewed from this perspective, I believe one reason I don’t regret declining that invitation is that I’m pretty satisfied with how things are. I’ve traveled a fair amount already, and I like my everyday life at home; thus, when I compare my life with and without the trip to Ireland, both seem pretty good. In contrast, regarding the family member, the comparison comes out more negatively: I think things would have been better had I stayed in touch more often – better for me and possibly better for my family member. At minimum, I think I probably wouldn’t be dealing with as much sadness and regret. That said, we could always regret not having done enough, so I’d probably need some yardstick by which to measure whether I’d done enough, or I’d probably still whatever I didn’t do. As another example, if you were to say harsh words to a friend, you might regret it, because things (e.g., your life, your relationship with your friend, etc.) seem worse than they would have been had you restrained yourself. You might also feel guilty, because you don’t believe in hurting your friend’s feelings. In DBT, we usually think of guilt as an emotion arising when we act against our values, such as when we say or do something that hurts someone else. In contrast, regret seems to be more of a thinking process, where we take the further step of comparing how things are to how things could be. Some people call this “counter-factual” thinking – considering alternatives to the way things are. I’ll come back to this in a future blog, but for now, I’ll probably regret not getting up and moving on to other work. ~ Alexander L. Chapman, Ph.D., R.Psych.