Haunted by the Past Part 2: Releasing Regret

Welcome back to the Thriving with Depression Series! Thank you for joining me on my adventure! 

To view the full series, check out our archive! As a reminder to new readers, you can start anywhere, even here as articles do not need to be read in any particular order. 

Student: We better hurry; the school bell just rang!  Let’s try this room…

Teacher: Welcome everyone to room 100! If you need help finding the correct room, or if you are not sure where you should be, please ask anyone wearing an orange jacket.  If you’re here for the future, that class will be starting soon across the hall. If you are here for the present, that class is starting right now in the room next door. If you are looking for the past, we already started our first class last week, but please feel free to have a seat and join us. 

Student: I’m not sure what class I need to be in!?

Teacher: Students, listen up. If you are anxious, you are probably in room 300, the future. If you have some stress but are ok, you are in the present, room 200. If you feel guilt or regret, then you are here with me in the past. Now, please take a seat. 

Welcome back to the past! As we discussed last week, most of us are haunted by the past at one point or another. The ghost of regret can be especially persistent, haunting people for years and even decades. The only ghost I want visiting me is Casper the Friendly Ghost. Ok, well maybe the Staf-Puft Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters would be ok too.

Student: Bad joke. But I like Casper, too. 

Teacher: Ok, let’s begin.
You can’t live in both the past and the present at the same time. And you can’t fully thrive in the present if you are absent to class. (Get it? Ok, enough with the bad jokes.)

So, how do you get past the past? How do you make sure you’re not “living” there?

One way you know you’re living there is if you have regrets or hurt that you just can’t seem to get past. I mentioned last time that you can use the 3 main steps of thriving with depression to overcome the past. These steps can be used for present issues, future worries, and past regrets. 

Step One: Reframing your Point of View. 
Step Two: Read Out Loud. 
Step Three: Stop and Smell the Roses. 

But, I believe, regret from the past is harder to deal with than either the present or the future. We still have the ability to alter the present. We can stop and turn a different direction at any time. And any changes we make in the present will affect the future. But the past is, well, past. It cannot be changed, no matter how much we wish it.

So, why do we keep thinking about it if we know that we can’t change it?

Regret of the past is complicated. Everyday issues are like a traffic jam on the freeway. Regret is like a traffic jam on the freeway, in the rain, while driving uphill. Therefore, understanding more about what makes it complicated may be helpful. Issues with regret:

• Past actions lead to results/consequences that we cannot alter.
• We feel guilty if we have hurt others.
• There may be multiple emotions involved.
• We need to accept our actions and ourselves.
• We need to accept the actions of others.
• We want to be the hero of our own story.

Past actions lead to results/consequences that we cannot alter. 

While we may not be able to alter the consequences of our actions, all is not lost. We can learn from our actions to ensure we don’t repeat prior mistakes. In addition, there may be actions you can take to mitigate past consequences if the consequences or results are still with you in some way today. 
Step One: Reframing your point of view is going to be very important. Reframing events you regret is a little different than how you reframe stressors in your life. 

Let’s say a major stressor in Nina’s life is her relationship with her mother.  She might reframe “She nags me all of the time and never says anything positive to me.” to “My mother loves me, and I appreciate how hard she worked to raise me by herself.”

In order for reframing to work, both of the sentences above must be true. Nina can’t pretend her mother loves her if she really doesn’t (hopefully that’s not the case!). In the example provided, she is looking at the positive aspects of the situation rather than the negative. 

Regret, however, is a little different. Let’s say Nina said some things to her mom right before her mom’s death and she regrets her actions. She needs to reframe “I told my mom she was a horrible mom and treated everyone like garbage. I told her I wish she wasn’t my mother.” If she tries to reframe it in a positive way, she might say “I loved my mom and told her this on several occasions.” This is good but something is missing. And it doesn’t make Nina feel any better. Nina still has the regret. 

When you reframe a past regret, it is not enough to look at the positivity of the situation, it is also to learn from it. 

Our mistakes are our life lessons. Instead, she might also say “I said some unkind words to my mother. She was a negative person and I used to hope she would give me a compliment. But I know she loved me, and I shouldn’t have said what I did. I learned that when I get frustrated with a situation, I need to take a time-out before I lose my temper.” 

In this case, Nina is reframing the event from focusing on what she regrets to what she learned. This will help her to get over the regret. In dealing with regrets, I recommend that you spend some time reframing and writing about the situation and what you learned from it. As you continue to do this, you will start to feel better, and healing will begin. 

Just a tip: the more you write, the more you will learn. 

We feel guilty if we have hurt others.
Like I mentioned above, continue to write what happened as well as what you learned from it. This will help alleviate the guilt. The past is stubborn so you will need to do this activity several times before you start to feel free from regret. 

There may be multiple emotions involved.
Loss, grief, sadness, anger, disappointment, self-hatred, guilt, etc.
These emotions may continue to visit you if you have not dealt with them. 
Start by writing down all of the emotions that come to mind. Then next to each emotion- write a few words about it. Learn more why you feel the way you do.  Then you can let it go. 
It is like a balloon. You cannot let a balloon go until you blow it up. 

We need to learn to accept our actions and ourselves. 

Note, I did not say we need to agree with our actions. You can start this process by not continuing to ask yourself why you did something. After you complete the steps above, no longer ask yourself why. Once you write down what you have learned about the situation then it no longer serves you to dwell on it.  Continue to write and reframe it. At some point, you will start to notice the chains of the past loosening.

We need to learn to accept the action of others.
When our actions hurt others, even if that was not our intention, others may respond in a variety of ways. They may hurt us in return, or they may take out their anger/hurt on another. There is a saying that two wrongs don’t make a right. Just like we don’t need to agree with our own actions, we may not necessarily agree with the actions of others. It is not for us to look into the actions of another person. It is for us to focus and learn from our own behavior. Now, that doesn’t mean you can’t learn from what someone else does. But beyond that, you are here on this earth for you to learn. When you are in elementary school, you need to learn to read and write. It is not your job to make sure others learn to read and write. You can certainly help others in their journey. But, if your best friend is having trouble learning to read, it is not for you to figure out why. That is the (very) important job of the teacher and the parents. It is for you to accept it and realize that there is something that is stopping them from learning. This is the same way you need to approach the actions of others. Just realize there is something that leads to another person’s actions. We may understand a part of it, especially if our own actions played a role, but we may not understand the whole picture. 

If you are thinking “I know I was rude to Jeff but not only was he rude back, he hit me and wouldn’t talk to me for months. I didn’t deserve that! He went overboard And I DID apologize!” 

Depending on your relationship with Jeff, you may ask him about this. But if he doesn’t want to discuss this or you are not close enough to Jeff to feel comfortable discussing this, that is okay. Just realize that people get hurt and respond in different ways depending on their current and past situations. You may help Jeff, but it is not your role to understand and learn from Jeff’s behavior. It is your role to learn from your own behavior. 

Your thought process could be “I know I was rude to Jeff, but I was surprised when he hit me back. I feel bad that my actions hurt him, but I have learned from my mistake. I try not to take out my frustrations on others. I now use my punching bag or listen to music.” 

Yes, I know I was a little wordy here. But this is a really important point. Focus on your actions. 

We want to be the hero of our own story.
Gustavo Razzetti, an entrepreneur and author, makes an interesting point in his article. We keep ruminating about the past. One reason is that we want to be the hero of our own story. He mentions that to move on , you have to reframe your relationship with the past. (See, there is that word again. Reframe.).  Stop trying to be the hero of your story. No one wants to look bad. So, we try to construct an idealized version of the past and blame others instead of taking ownership for what happened. For example, you might think “Ok, I was rude to Jeff, but he was the one who hit me. I’m not perfect but I wouldn’t hit someone.”

This is such an interesting situation. When we think about the past, some days we think “I was horrible” and the next day we might think “I wasn’t that bad” about the same situation. We are frustrated we can’t resolve it so we try to rethink the event and try to tell ourselves we really didn’t do anything wrong, really. The problem is that we may not really believe this. So, the next day we will start again saying “I am horrible” and the pattern will continue. 

There are a couple of problems with this. First, you are not owning up to your behavior. And, if you don’t accept your own behavior, you can’t learn from it and move on. This is not a who was worse contest. This is learning from your mistakes so you can move past any regret. You won’t move past it otherwise and it will keep haunting you. In your movie, you are the star. The star can’t learn everybody else’s lines but then forget his own. Then he is no longer the star anymore. 

In conclusion, learn from the past, accept what happened, work through the emotions and let go. 

So, before calling your local priest to do an exorcism to remove the ghost of regret from your life (because he/she will just return anyway), use the Thriving not just Surviving steps to deal with unwanted ghosts of the past and any regrets you have.  

Just like you, I have situations I wish I had handled differently. But I’m no longer trapped by the past. I now live in the present and I can tell you that there is nothing like it. 

Join me again next week for a further discussion of this very important topic (the ghost of hurt). 

Class dismissed. 😊