Regret - Teacher or Tormentor

We all have felt regret before - that feeling of sadness or disappointment over something that has happened or that we've done. It's not a positive emotion but it can be used to teach us lessons - often the lesson of how we will do it differently next time. But what happens when instead of taking the lesson and moving on, we hold onto the regret? Then it becomes a tormentor as we are filled with shame and judgment about ourselves.

On this episode of the podcast I talk about:
- why we hold onto regret.
- how to make regret a teacher instead of a tormentor.
- why regret is a choice (and one you don't have to choose).
- how regret gets in the way of desire.

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jamelyn@jamelynstpehan.com

Transcript

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I'm jamielynn Stephan and this is what to want at episode number 73. Regret teacher or tormentor. Welcome to want to want it a podcast for women of the church of Jesus Christ of latter day saints who are ready to ignite not only their sexual desire, but all of their desires to create a more fulfilling life and marriage. I'm jamielynn Stephan. I'm a certified life coach, a wife, and a mother of seven children. I'm excited to share my personal journey to desire with you and teach you how to desire more as well Hello, everybody. Welcome to the podcast today. I'm really happy to have you here. I'm prerecording, this and this podcast is supposed to come out on July 4th. So I hope that all works out and it is coming out on July 4th because I want to send out the happiest birthday to America. Happy birthday to you. I do not live in America. We had Canada day on July 1st. That is our big national celebration. But love July 4th. And I think partly it's because my oldest brother and my sister, that's just younger than me share a birthday on July 4th. And so it's always been a really special day in our family. And I want to say happy birthday to both of them. I love them both so much. They are really my good friends. So happy birthday, Jason and Brianne. Okay today, I want to talk about regret. I had put out two to my email list and said, what kind of things would you like me to address in my emails or on a podcast that you're struggling with? And somebody emailed back and asked if I would talk about guilt. They said, I just have so much guilt about past decisions and choices, and I just don't know how to let go of it. And as I was reading this, I thought this isn't just guilt. This is regret. So that's kind of the angle that I'm taking in answering this problem for this Lister. And hopefully it will be helpful. So first let's understand that regret doesn't come from what you did or didn't do. Okay. It comes from your thought about what you did or didn't do. It isn't the action or lack of action that makes you feel regret. It's simply what you make it mean what story you're telling yourself about it. And we know this because many of us make similar choices in our lives and some of us regret them. And some of us don't it's because the choice or the action doesn't fill us with regret, the thought we have about it does. Now regret is interesting because it feels super important. It feels like a very responsible thing to feel. And we're going to get into that as we go along. And I mean, honestly, you're welcome to look back and learn a lesson that is useful. But. We think we need to feel horrible about things forever more and go over how we should have done it differently And how the outcome would have been better and carry around this really heavy, full backpack of guilt forevermore, because our brains tell us that this is super useful, right? It's like, this is going to keep you from making this mistake again. And it may, it's certainly going to keep you super cautious and probably hold you back from a lot of good opportunities, but regret really doesn't serve us if we're feeling it longterm, honestly, if we need to feel it at all. If you regret something, then take the lesson and drop the regret. It's meant to empower you. It's meant to teach you something. And when we learn that something we're now wiser and more capable and more empowered in our lives, and that should feel good. We don't have to love what we did or be happy that we didn't do something we should have, but we can take the lesson, be so grateful for it and allow that lesson to direct our future. Using regret as the feeling that we're taking with us into the future is not empowering. It actually is fear-based and it's going to hold us back. And using regret as a way to punish yourself is just unnecessary suffering. And I know this because I've done it so much in my own life, but it is honestly just choosing to suffer unnecessarily. Even if you think about the idea of godly sorrow or genuine guilt, right. That says I did that wrong. Like I actually know I did that wrong. That feeling of guilt that you get, or that kind of sorrowing that you have, it's actually not meant to be with you longterm as a beating stick forever more. It's simply meant to turn you to God it's meant to teach us how to open up for healing, you know, personal healing and the healing that we can offer to others through sincere apology and restitution. Right. That's what that is meant to do. So if you're holding onto regret, because you feel like it's useful, I really want to challenge you to throw that out. I can see how it feels useful, but it really isn't. So I want to share with you an experience that I had that. Was really difficult. And filled me with a lot of regret. And kind of the journey that I've had with this. So when one of my daughters was a baby. I had one of those strollers where you can put your newborn baby into their car seat, and then you just clip that car seat onto the stroller. Right. So you don't have to take them in and out of their car seat everywhere you go. Which is so lovely. So she wasn't very old, maybe a couple of months old at the most. And I had her in her car seat and I had the car seat clipped into the stroller and we went on a walk as a family and we were visiting some friends. And I took her out of the car seat to kind of rock her for a minute. And then I laid her back into the car seat that I didn't do her up in her car seat. I just laid her back into the car seat. Now we started to head home and my two year old didn't want to walk. So I lifted him up and set him on the handles of the stroller. Now I've done this before, but usually I'm holding the stroller, but I was a little bit frazzled and I picked him up. And set him onto the handle of the stroller so I could push him along. And instantly the stroller flipped backwards, throwing him off the stroller, but also throwing my baby from her car seat. Onto the hard concrete sidewalk. I was sick and horrified. And besides myself, As I comforted my baby. And I had so much regret. Like, what was I thinking? Like, how did I not see this happening? And even now just speaking about it, just my chest feels so tight. I was so sick and I had so much regret, but it was nothing like the regret I started to feel when my daughter started to show signs of verbal learning delays, especially processing delays, creating a lot of frustration for her because she could not express herself. And she also couldn't understand always what we were trying to get to her, to do what we were trying to say to her. So as we kind of sought medical help and psychological assessments and all of these things to try and find help for her. They would always ask me, you know, has she had any physical trauma, especially to her brain. And so of course trying not to cry, I would tell them the story of what had happened. And I just felt so regretful. And the doctors and the therapists and everybody's we're always just so kind. And they're like, you know what, actually probably isn't that like where she hit probably wouldn't affect this, but I really could not be comforted because what I really wanted was to turn back time and change what happened. And maybe you've experienced this before, when you maybe back to your car into someone or something. And you're like, oh, what I wouldn't give to take back the last five seconds? We want to go back in time and to do things differently so that we don't have to live with the regret. But there are no time machines. Right. We don't have those. We can't go back and quote, unquote, make things right. It just doesn't work that way. And I struggled with this for such a long time, blaming myself for really like ruining her life. And I mean, I say that loosely, she actually has a really fantastic life and she does really well. But I really blamed myself for her struggles. And I just had constant regret about that decision to put that little boy up on that stroller. But guess what? Regret didn't make me a better mother. It didn't help me problem solve for her. It didn't make me more resourceful. It just punished me and made me feel terrible about myself. And. I don't think I'm a great mom. When I feel like garbage about myself. So I had to accept. Okay. Yes. Maybe I actually have been the cause of her disability. But I also can acknowledge that there isn't necessarily a sure connection to that. So looking back, I realized I could have just taken the lesson. Which I did. Right? Like every baby that went into a car seat after that got buckled in and no child ever sat on the handles of a stroller, if nobody was there to stabilize it, I learned my lesson on that. And then I could have. Taken that lesson. And then looked at the problem. We now faced to get my daughter to the help that she really needed, which again, I did, we got her the help. We did a lot of therapy with her, but the whole time I'm carrying this heavy, heavy regret, that was just so unnecessary. And it is so fascinating because as we were getting her help, the therapist warned me a lot, you know? She is going to probably struggle in school, Really initially, but they told me, you know, so probably actually do fine until she gets to the grade level where they start to talk about things that are a little less concrete and more abstract, like. Governments and politics and that kind of stuff. But shock of all shocks government and politics have proved to be one of her favorite subjects. And as we sat the other day, discussing the virtues of capitalism versus socialism, I thought, wow. Who would have thought. That was so hard back then, but I'm so grateful for all the resources we were able to access for her that has brought her to this point in her life where she's doing better than expected. And, you know, as I record this, I am so grateful that I didn't let my regret stop me from problem solving. But I also see how the regret I held onto only punished me. It didn't move me too. Good action. And it took me a long time to get to a place where I could have some compassion for myself and forgive myself and trust that God's overall. And he can make up for my shortcomings. But I didn't get there until I started to loosen myself from the idea that I deserve to feel regret for the rest of my life. Maybe it's true that my actions negatively impacted my daughter. Of course, I wish that wasn't the case, but regardless, I don't need to regret that all my life and beat myself up about it. I am a better mother. When I forgive myself and focus on helping my daughter navigate her struggles now. Truthfully. I know that this may be, wouldn't be her struggle if I had done something differently back then, but no matter what, she was going to have struggles all along her journey, that was inevitable. Whether I did what I did or not. She's a human. And what she needs is a supportive, compassionate mother. Not another soulful of regret that she's beat down and held back. Do you understand what I mean? Now I know many of you have regrets. Maybe you regret a sexual relationship from your past. Maybe you regret taking a certain job or moving to a new city. You may regret how unkind you are to someone else. Maybe you regret the ways that you've shown up as a parent or a spouse, right? The list can just go on and on and on. And again, I'm all for learning lessons. I don't want to say that regret is completely useless. I think we can say, wow. I actually regret that. I wish I had done that differently. But then you have to direct yourself to the lesson. That's the point of regret to teach you not to beat you up. Regret can keep you stuck in the past. But what is better for us is to be focused on the present and the future. All right. So I regret that, but who do I want to be now? How do I want to make amends? What do I want to do moving forward? What have I learned? Or you could even acknowledge that the person you may have been in the past is not who you really are. Like you weren't being your best at that time, but how do you want to show up now? How can you be more of the person, you know, you can be, do you see how much more useful that is than just wallowing in regret? Now, I know there are some of you out there listening who think. Yeah. But what I did was really bad and I just don't deserve to be let off the hook so easily. I really deserve to feel this regret. It's my punishment. And I'm going to carry this regret forever to show how truly, sorry. I really am. And because I just deserve it. I don't deserve better. And here is something so fascinating. Now this is a total tangent that I probably shouldn't go on, but anyways, sometimes the people we hurt with our actions also don't want us to let go of the regret. Now I'm totally embarrassed to admit that I am like this, especially with my husband. I want him to feel so much regret forevermore for the things that I feel like he's done that are unfair or unkind to me. Now part of the reason that I want him to feel this regret is because I feel like I want them to suffer. Now I know this sounds so terrible and I'm being really vulnerable here and showing. What a horrible wife I am at times. But I want him to suffer because I feel like, okay, you did something that hurt me and now you can feel hurt. And I don't feel bad about that. And I also realize that. I kind of have this idea, like, oh, if he doesn't feel regret forever more about this, then maybe he'll not learn his lesson and maybe say something unkind to me again, or snap at me. Right. He has to feel regret forever. So that he'll be kind to me forever. What I mean, this just feels super fair in my head. This is part of the reason why I think there is so much power in letting go of the lie. That regret is useful because if we believe that it's useful, then we are also going to put that expectation on other people. We are going to want them to feel constant regret so that we can feel avenged for the suffering we've experienced. I know this is immature. I know I am immature in this. But I also see how, because I have felt like me feeling regret was my just desserts. Then it feels like everybody who hurts me should feel regret forevermore. And that's their just desserts. But it's just not good. It's not useful. It's not the way to happy relationships. It's not forgiving. It's not future focused. It's all caught up in the past and it keeps me stuck there. So again, just notice it in yourself. Do I have this belief that I should suffer forever. And do I have the belief that other people should suffer forever? And how is that actually working out for me? Okay. I'm sorry. That was my tangent. I just want you to see that Satan wants us to suffer. And so he wants us to believe that we don't deserve anything but regret and that others should suffer forever with regret as well. He wants us to believe that we aren't good enough because we made a mistake and therefore we deserve eternal punishment. The truth is that regret really only punishes you, it doesn't change things or make things right. Or give you a good momentum to get onto a new path. Regret is meant to be a teacher, not a tormentor. I recently read the book called the midnight library. And it's about this woman who is hovering between life and death. And she enters a library. And in the library is this massive book of all of her regrets. And she gets to pick a regret and live in the life that she would have had had she made a different decision and she gets to do this all through the book. And it is so fascinating to see how some of the lives that she would have had had she made some different decisions were in some ways better than her original life for awhile. But most of them were actually worse. And the things that she thought that she'd really screwed up actually were just inevitable in her life. And we're going to happen that way no matter what she chose. So for example, She goes back to the day that her cat died, because she wanted to be sure that her cat was inside and not outside where it died in the streets, in her original life. So when she arrived in this version of her life, where she's this more responsible cat owner that keeps her cat safe and inside. She finds that her cat is dead anyways. So she goes back to the midnight library and she's so confused. Cause she's like, I've gone back to keep my cat from dying, but it's dead. And it turns out that the cat actually had this undiagnosed health problem that took its life. It actually had never been hit by a car. It had died on the street from the same condition. It died in her home from. And I just love the quote from this book says. Sometimes regrets aren't based on facts at all. Sometimes regrets are just a load of bull. Anyway. Throughout the book, her book of regrets begins to shrink because she starts to see that they were so often baseless and that by going back to undo them, didn't actually bring her more happiness or the life that she really wanted. And that the really important things in life still unfold exactly as they were always going to. Now I want to talk a little bit to parents specifically. Just like my daughter and her speech delay. It can be easy to look at your children when they are suffering. Or making terrible choices and think this is all my fault. I'm the reason all of this is happening. I want you just to consider that you aren't that powerful. Now. If you can honestly look and see how your choices and actions may have contributed in some way to your child's current struggles. And this helps you to be a better parent. Hair Anya, take a little responsibility. But in general, I don't recommend it. Especially, if you have more than one child. I had the pleasure of speaking with a woman who worried that her son was suffering with some trials in his life because of something she lacked or should have done differently as a mother. But this woman has more than one child and the other one doesn't have the struggle at all. So if this mother had so much power to make one child suffer, why wasn't the other one suffering as well? Do you see what I mean? Carrying around the idea that you need to regret how you've raised your children and beat yourself up for it. As a way of reconciliation is unnecessary. As I've said before. You were never meant to do it. All right. All the time. Take the lessons and then let go. So you can continue to parent your children in a way that serves you all. If you need to ask for forgiveness, ask for forgiveness, do better, but take the lesson and drop the rest. If you beat yourself up for all the suffering of your children, I want you to consider how this is negatively impacting you and them right now. How does it hold you back From putting reasonable expectations on them and teaching them to do hard things. Do you understand what I mean? If you have a child who's doing drugs and you think it's your fault, you're way less likely to hold that child accountable for their choices or drop them off at rehab. Or maybe even tell them that they need to find a new place to live because their habit puts your family in danger. You are way more likely to develop a codependent relationship with them and take on the responsibility for their problem. If you wallow in regret and shame and judgment and tell yourself That you're the reason they are, where they are. I know this is a bit of an extreme example, but I want you to see how, when you make regret your tormentor, it actually decreases your power for good as a parent. It decreases your ability to help your child grow up. Face hard things and own their lives. So how can you help regret be a teacher instead of a tormentor in your life? I think the biggest thing is to take the lesson and then discipline yourself enough to keep out of the judgment and shame and name calling that you add onto it. Okay. So take eating, for example. So many people regret food. Okay. They feel terribly guilty about the type of food that they ate or how much they ate now, when I overeat and feel utterly sick from it, I have regret, right? It's like, why didn't I stop myself? And I often say I'm never doing that again. But I also think you have no self-control. You deserve to feel like this right now? You're so irresponsible. You can't be trusted to be reasonable with food. So now I've taken my regret and I've made it my tormentor instead of my teacher. And here's the fascinating thing about food, especially it's actually not immoral or illegal to eat food, all kinds and all quantities. But we love to make food, some kind of moral issue. We even call some foods bad or good. And I get it. And I'm not telling you that you have to stop doing that if it works for you. But when I hear my clients telling me about all the bad food, they eat, no wonder they feel guilty and have so much regret about it. They make it sound like they are into some almost criminal behavior and some of them even act that way. They literally stashed their bad food somewhere. So no one will find it, not just because they don't want to share it, but because they don't want anyone to know that they eat this food. And then they sneak around and eat it. But nobody can know. They not only think the food is bad, but they act like the food is bad by how they are when they are eating it. You know, they're scrambling to hide their fast food drink from the friend that they unexpectedly run into in the park. You know what I mean? Anyway. I'm digressing a bit here, but I just wanted to illustrate that when we add shame and judgment onto our regret, we are now ignoring the lesson and our regret can't be our teacher because it's now our tormentor. I really love this quote, but I totally forgot where I found it. I want to say it's a Jen Sincero. Quote, but that might be a total lie. So anyway, here is what it says. I didn't make a mistake. I'm just wiser now than I was then. And then she goes on to explain that just because we wouldn't do something again. Doesn't mean we did it wrong in the first place we did what we thought was best and now we know better. Or maybe it worked then, but it won't work now. This is how regret becomes a teacher, right? It's saying, okay, I did that. I don't like how things turned out. I'm thankful for the lesson now. I'm all the wiser for it. So, so far I have focused on regret from the past, things that have already happened. Now I want to talk about how to live a life that is really mostly regret free for the future. And it's not by hiding away and living small. It's really quite simple. That may feel hard or even impossible to those of you who are in the habit of regret. As humans, we hate the feeling of regret I have yet to meet a soul who likes it. And because we hate that feeling. We do our very best to make decisions that we won't regret. Now, sometimes this is super easy, right? Like, should I steal that car? No, I'd regret that. But other times it's not as easy. I've been accepted into more than one university. I don't know which one to choose because. I don't want to pick the wrong one and regret it, or we could move to this house or this house I'd hate to pick the wrong one and regret it. Or should I marry this guy? He's so awesome. But what if he's not the one? And I'm just too infatuated to see it. I'd really regret that. What color should we paint the walls? It's expensive to paint the walls. So we're going to be stuck with it. And then we're going to have to just regret it forever. Or I'd like to try this in my business. I think it's going to be a huge success, but I'll have so much regret about the money I spend on it. If it flops. I mean, honestly, I could go on forever with these types of examples. It can be as simple as which shoes to wear to an event like these heels look so stunning, but if I end up standing more than I'm anticipating, I'm going to hate myself. So here's what I want to offer you. Just decide ahead of time that you won't regret your decision. Now I've talked about this before. I think, but when I first heard this idea, I was like, what. Like you can do that. You can just decide ahead of time not to regret something because I'd always believe that regret just happened to me. And I also believe that regret was part of the, just desserts that I got for being foolish. So I had to live with it. It had never occurred to me that I could just choose ahead of time not to regret something. I know for some of you, you're going to be like, no, I'm not doing that because You're kind of addicted to regret you hate it, but you have to have it because your relationship with yourself with literally fall to pieces. If you didn't have something to hold over your head all the time and be mean to yourself about. You might actually have to do some really uncomfortable work of learning, how to be kind and forgiving to yourself. So I get it. I get stuck there myself sometimes, but actually not so much anymore because of this concept. So when I have to make a decision and that little voice says. What have you regret this? I just tell myself I'm not allowing myself to regret this decision. I'll take the lessons, whether good or hard, but I will not regret this decision. It's not like I'm making these decisions without any thought or, you know, educated guests. And some of them aren't even that big of a deal. Right. They don't even need a ton of consideration. I just decide I'm not going to regret it. So if I get somewhere and think, oh, I should've brought that sweater after all. I'm like, okay. I'm going to be a little cold and uncomfortable now. It's okay. I'm just going to know for next time. Bring the sweater. Regardless. Lesson learned I'm a little wiser than I was. No. No regrets. Does that make sense? Does that seem doable? I found myself actually doing this, even if I haven't planned ahead that I'm not going to regret it. So. Little while ago I unhitched a small trailer full of dirt. And I wasn't really anticipating how heavy it was and I really hurt my hand. And my brain was like, you are such an idiot. You should have seen that coming. And I just was like, no regrets. I'm just doing my best. And my hands still have some healing to do. It's been a little while. I can't completely do all the things I normally do without some pain, but I'm not beating myself up for it. It's done no regrets. But again, should regret come up because you decide to choose it and feel it's useful. Remind yourself that you want it to be your teacher, not your tormentor. And when I say teacher, make it your favorite teacher. You know, the one teacher that you had in school that you really liked make it a kind teacher, a patient teacher. A gentle teacher. Not the strict unyielding headmasters, like you read about in Jane Eyre and other books like that. And I also want to offer that you could use this with food as well. Sometimes you will have a treat and then you want to beat yourself up for it. That is unnecessary and takes the joy out of the whole experience or at least the pleasure. And that was the whole point of it. So when you go to eat something you usually would regret, you can just decide no regrets. I just actually had this experience and that's why I wanted to share it because I took a break from work and had a bit of cookie dough. My brain was like, that's bad for you. Why'd you eat that? And I was like, no regrets. It's yummy. And I just put the container back in the fridge and walked away. Now I know some of your, like, I'll be a million pounds of I do that. I want to promise you, you're not going to be a million pounds. And I want to remind you that you can't hate yourself. Skinny. And I think that goes for regret as well. You can't regret yourself healthy or thin or fit. It just doesn't work. So no regrets. you don't have to make that food choice ever again, if you don't want to, but you also don't need to regret it and shame yourself for it. Forevermore. So decide ahead of time that you aren't going to regret your choice. This will save you a lot of regret in the future. And I want to offer to those of you who are learning, how to desire a getting your lives. This will be helpful for you. If you're learning how to speak your desires, especially to your spouse. It's very vulnerable to do that. And it may not go well at first. Please try on the idea that you don't need to regret your choice to share that desire. Even if it doesn't go as you hope, no regrets for being brave. If you're debating about how to pursue a certain desire or even which desire you may want to explore, the fear of regret can keep you from making any choice at all. And for some of you, even though you want to learn more about yourself and find yourself. You are scared about it and it feels overwhelming a little bit, this whole, like who am I am finding myself and learning about desire. It can feel so overwhelming. And so the fear of regret actually works for you because it keeps you from having to make a decision, having to make a choice and move forward. I want you to be onto yourself. And I want you to eliminate that roadblock to your path of self-discovery. I just decide ahead of time. No regrets, like so many things in life. This is all an experiment. We're just testing things out. So there's no need to regret it. If they don't work out how we hope. I know there are some of you listening today who feel like what I'm suggesting is impossible. You can't even imagine how not to feel the regret you have in your heart. And you certainly can't imagine just deciding not to regret anything in the future. And I get it. And there's nothing wrong with you. You can actually still live a full, happy life. But I want you to consider that maybe just, maybe it's possible for you to not have so much regret as your life goes on. Just let your brain chew on the possibility that regret isn't serving you and that you could possibly live a life without it. One day. Your brain may not latch onto that right away, but just keep presenting it with the possibility that you don't have to live with regret forever. It's just a baby step, but eventually your brain will believe that. And then you can take another little baby step towards a life where regret is a teacher, not a tormentor, and the future can be lived relatively regret free. Have an awesome week. Everybody enjoy your 4th of July by. Thanks for listening today. If you like what you hear on the podcast, and you'd like to learn more, feel free to head over to my website. Jamilin Stephan coaching.com or find me on Instagram or Facebook at Jamileh. step in coaching.