Mind Moves Marie MurrayRegret is a powerful human emotion. It usually occurs some time after the event to which it relates. It may be enhancing or self-defeating, immobilising or energising. In its deepest and most severe form, regret can lead to mental ill health.
Regret in its pure state may be reinforced by pain, anger, guilt or shame. Preoccupation with the past may obstruct the present and impede the future. Regret allied to guilt is usually toxic. Allied to forgiveness, including forgiveness of oneself, regret may provide healing of a special kind.
Of course, regret may be instantaneous, for example, when a person realises that he or she has hurt or offended another person by irretrievable words. The problem with words is that one may regret but cannot retract them: the said cannot be unsaid.
More usually, however, regret arises from a more reflective perspective, whereby a person looks back at past events remorsefully. This often involves realisation of the significance of an opportunity lost that cannot be regained.
It is more than insight. It is insight laden with sadness or guilt that what was done "cannot be undone" or that what was not done is no longer possible.
It is the irretrievability of opportunity that deepens regret. Sometimes there is just one moment in which to say the right thing, to do the noble deed, ask the significant question, give the appropriate sympathy, to help the person who feels defeated or to celebrate with friends who have achieved their life dreams.
There is a moment to say "well done" or "hard luck", to attend a funeral, to write a letter, make a phone call, send an e-mail or text and let another person know that what is happening in that person's life is also important to you. Equally there is often one moment to stand up for oneself, to assert individuality, resist coercion, declare beliefs, defend one's ideas and demand respectful treatment.
This is why regret is time-related. It is often expressed as a wish that one could turn back time, take a different wiser path, follow a road less travelled, choose another route, alter a response, change a relationship, amend past incidents or even alter the entire course of one's personal life.
Psychological literature suggests that regrets occur primarily with regard to education, career, intimacy and parenting. But in the clinical context, what frequently arises are regrets about what was not said to someone, words that now cannot be said because that person has died.
Grandchildren often wish they had told their grandparents how important a role they played in their childhood lives. Nieces and nephews regret that not until adulthood did they appreciate the contribution of their aunts to their emotional wellbeing.
Sons are sorry that they could not tell their fathers that they loved them or that they had to hear from other people that they had made their fathers proud. Daughters may wait a lifetime to receive maternal recognition and many parents never get told that the job they did was good. Valued friends may not hear how significant they were.
Death-bed moments pass without the words that people wish to say being spoken and untimely death can rob those who are left of any chance to do or say what they would have said if they had known that tragedy would strike.
While insightful regret may be useful, prolonged regret is counterproductive. The idea that future events are crucially conditional upon past choices is sometimes too firmly held. These "if only" antecedent propositions can be powerful in shaping what we believe are consequent events.
Carried to extremes we can enter into the world of so-called counterfactuals: of possible or impossible worlds that could have been, would have been or might have been if things had happened differently. This lends too much power to the past. After all, the road we did not travel might have been bumpier than the one we chose. We cannot tell.
Maybe the richness of life would have bypassed us if we had taken more predictable paths. Maybe what we did and said and what was said to us was enough and if we wished that it was more or less that may be because we have insight now rather than that errors were made at that time.
For we need to remember that the unsaid is usually known, that when we regret what we did not do in the past it is from the perspective of the present that we make that analysis. We probably did what we could at the time and we should not judge ourselves by what would be possible for us to do today. When young we do not have the benefit of time, the experience of parenting and the perspective of the present to inform us. Hindsight can be harsh.
What makes the words of Frank Sinatra's My way so powerful is that it universalises the reality of regret and rationalises the right to live our lives our own way. It reassures us that having a few regrets is human, that life can deal highs and lows, triumphs and blows as we live our lives our own way.
As to regrets about the unsaid in this article? Sometimes we have to let things go, not perfect words, but the words that arrived as we write. No regrets.
mmurray@irish-times.ie
Marie Murray is a clinical psychologist.