Regrets come not only from what you do, but also from what you don’t do. In fact, research shows that people have greater regrets about things they didn’t do.
“Regret happens because we’re wired to compare reality to possibility,” says Emily Lambert Robins, LCSW, a couples and sex therapist based in New York City. “The brain loves ‘what if’ scenarios — it’s part of how we learn and make sense of our choices, but it can also become a loop that keeps us stuck.”
When people come into her office carrying regret, Robins says it’s rarely about an event itself. “It’s about the meaning they’ve attached to it,” she says. “[They’ll say], ‘I should’ve known better. I should’ve been braver. I should’ve trusted myself.’ Regret becomes a kind of emotional echo chamber unless we pause and really listen to it.”
That holds true for Melissa Gonzalez, a principal at the global architecture and design firm MG2 in New York City, who regrets not listening to the quiet, persistent signals her body was giving her nearly two years ago: increasingly frequent episodes of vertigo, persistent fatigue, and longer durations between bowel movements.
“I kept pushing, convincing myself I could power through an increasingly prevalent change in well-being, until everything came crashing down in the ER,” she says. “It wasn’t that I didn’t know better; I ignored what I knew. I equated rest with weakness, and productivity with worth. Looking back, I can see all the moments my body pleaded for care and calm, and how many times I overrode those warnings. I regret not honoring my intuition sooner — before it had to shout to be heard.”
She regrets that her choices didn’t just affect her: They deeply affected her daughter, too. “I’ll never forget the look on her face when she saw me in the hospital. That moment broke me open,” she says.
Lisa Niver, a writer based in Los Angeles, has relationship regrets: Marrying and staying with a partner she says was physically and emotionally abusive. She and her ex-husband were together for five years, but she wishes she’d left him sooner. “I don’t regret walking away, but I might have regretted not finding the courage to go,” she says.
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