Healing Regret
How to be free from regret with spiritual practices and the Twelve-Steps.
Regret is an emotion that every human being encounters at some point in their lives. It is a natural response to our perceived mistakes and missed opportunities. Regret can be defined as a feeling of sadness or disappointment over something that has happened or been done, especially a loss or missed opportunity. It is a reflection on past decisions and actions, often accompanied by the wish that things had been different. However, regret is more than a simple reaction to the past; it is a complex emotion that intertwines with our identity, sense of self-worth and hopes for the future.
Unaddressed regret festers. It can lead to a sense of paralysis, where we become trapped in a cycle of self-recrimination and hopelessness. It may lead to the habitual numbing of our feelings. It will toxify relationships. It can decrease our ambition and pursuit of goals.
When I was young, I determined that I would live my life with “no regrets.” Doing so was all the rage at the time. I grew up part of Generation X. Living to the extreme without fear of consequences was in our cultural DNA. We wore “No Fear” t-shirts and grew into young adults who embraced the YOLO movement. The illusion that we could live lives without regret was the result of youthful naivety and the cultural zeitgeist. Twenty years later, I confess that I have failed miserably at living a life with no regrets.
I first noticed the acute pain of regret as both of my girls grew into adulthood. Like many parents, I looked back and thought “Where did the time go?” I regretted all the times I chose to work instead of spending time with my daughters. I regretted all the times I said “no” to their requests for playtime instead of doing my own thing. I regretted all the times I was present in body but not present in mind and spirit because I was carrying the burdens of work and ministry. Those are just a few of my regrets. There are so many parenting decisions I wish I could take back or have a “do-over,” but that is not how time works.
“We must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons.”
Jim Rohn
I have come to believe that regret is equally avoidable and inevitable. That may seem contradictory, but I have found it true. There are instances in our lives when we are making the best decisions we can at the time only to look back and see that we should have done things differently. Our past decisions were made at the level of spirituality, emotional intelligence, and maturity we possessed at that time. On the other hand, living disciplined lives and making wise decisions help mitigate the risk of doing things we will later regret.
As inevitable and crippling as regret can be at times, it does not have to be a source of endless suffering. On my journey of healing from regret, I have discovered a few things that have helped. The first thing that helped me was talking about my regrets with people I knew and trusted. This was helpful for many reasons, not the least of which realizing that I was not alone in my feelings. I learned from my friends that we shared many of the same regrets about parenting and finding work-life balance. I learned that celebrities and people I look up to had regrets, many of them like mine. While this did not help me do the emotional and spiritual work necessary to heal from crippling regret, it helped me see that there is hope for healing. Another important step to take before deep diving into the necessary work of healing is to embrace it with compassion. This means acknowledging our feelings without judgment and allowing ourselves to grieve for what has been lost. It is important to recognize that regret is a universal human experience; it does not make us weak or unworthy. By treating ourselves with kindness, we create an internal safe space to explore our regrets and learn from them.
“Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.”
Maria Rilke
The Work of Healing Regret
So what is “the work” we must do if we want to heal and move forward without the heavy burden of regret? For me, the work involved spiritual practices in combination with intentional actions that could be observed at the intersection of Christian discipleship and Twelve-Step recovery programs. Most twelve-step programs begin with a confession that there are forces greater than us and that we can turn our lives over to some form of transcendence. Alcoholics Anonymous identifies this transcendence as “God as we understood Him” and all twelve steps have a spiritual component. Here are the practices one must undertake to do the work of healing from regret.
Repentance
Repentance is reviewing one's actions and feeling contrition or regret for past wrongs, which is accompanied by a commitment to actual actions that show and prove a change for the better. In church, we often talk about repentance as turning from one direction and heading in the opposite direction. When you are suffering with regret, you are already halfway to repentance as repentance begins with contrition. It is the next step of repentance that is usually the hardest to take, especially when we aren’t treating ourselves with the necessary compassion. That step is committing to actual actions that show and prove a change.
“Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance.”
John the Baptizer, Matthew 3:8
Once we are contrite and realize that we need help to overcome the pain and symptoms associated with regret, the next tangible action of repentance is confession. The action of confession is described in steps 4 and 5: We must make a searching and fearless inventory of ourselves and our actions and then admit to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed.
James 5:16
This is a difficult but needed step. This will look different for everyone. The goal is to get everything out of our internal closets and into the light. Repentance is an act of detaching ourselves from the paralysis of regret. It forces us to get out of our heads and into reality; to stop playing that “what if” game and play the “what is” game. Then we are ready to move forward and find a new direction and meaning for our lives.
Restitution
Steps 8 and 9 instruct us to make a list of all persons we have harmed and become willing to make amends to them all, and to make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. Restitution as a spiritual practice was central to the teachings of John Wesley and early Methodism and became a central feature of the process of salvation in Holiness and Pentecostal churches.
Meanwhile, Zacchaeus stood before the Lord and said, “I will give half my wealth to the poor, Lord, and if I have cheated people on their taxes, I will give them back four times as much!”
Luke 19:8, NLT
Restitution feels like a necessary evil at first. It sounds so dreadful. However, my experience of making amends is that it is powerfully liberating. If repentance is getting everything out of the closet and into the light, restitution is seeing clearly what went wrong and doing what it takes to make it right. Instead of unrealistically longing to go back in time and do things differently, this is a way we can start to change the impact of the past in the present—both in our lives and the ones affected by our decisions. For me, this looked like making apologies to my children about things I knew I should have done differently and would today if I had the chance. Having those conversations opened up new ways for me to connect and renew the relationship I had with my daughters.
Reimagination
One of the major themes of the Old Testament is the theme of the “double portion.” Two examples that stand out to me are the story of a man named Job and the promises God makes to Israel about the future of their second temple. In both instances, there was a great loss. In Job’s case, he loses his wealth, his children, and his physical health. In Israel’s case, they had lost their nation and their central worship location: Solomon’s Temple. In Job’s case, he suffered due to no fault of his own. In Israel’s case, they suffered due to a series of bad decisions by political and religious leaders. Yet in both cases, God leads them into a new beginning by giving them double what they had lost.
God assures us that we might not be able to go back in time and change things, or get back what was lost, but we can change some things now and start living life anew with new blessings which may be better than the first. You do get another chance at life. You can forge new paths and renew broken relationships. You have more than one chance to do the right things and make better decisions.
Step 11 places the practice of reimagining within the spiritual practices of prayer and meditation by urging us to improve our conscious contact with God through prayer and meditation, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. Learning about contemplative practices like centering prayers and visualizations is a great way to start working on reimaging your life and your future.
Repeat
As you are on the road to recovery from crippling guilt and regret there will still be times when you will be hard on yourself again. When we start thinking too much about ourselves and our mistakes it helps to move our focus outwardly and onto other people. Helping other people is one way we can stop the cycle of guilt. Another way to stop this cycle is to repeat the practices and the behaviors that save us: repentance, restitution, and reimagining.
Step 12 teaches us to carry this message to others and to practice these principles in all our affairs. Jesus said, “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you… (Matthew 28:19-20). He said, “If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love” (John 15:10). It is clear that the practices of sharing our journey and continuing to keep the practices that saved us from the guilt and shame of the past is the way to stay sober and vigilant against self-recrimination.
The intersection of recovery and spirituality is where many people have found freedom from destructive behaviors that are often a symptom of undealt with regret. The example of Jesus and the cloud of great witnesses who testify to the transformative power of Twelve-Step programs should not be ignored. I encourage you to pick up a copy of the Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book even if you are not an alcoholic. The steps can help us all heal and recover from whatever weights are holding us back.
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.
Hebrews 12:1, NLT