Regret is an emotion almost everyone has experienced at one point or another. For some, regret might manifest after not saving enough money or making the decision to prioritize starting a family over pursuing their dream career. Other times, a person might experience regret after the loss of a grandparent they wish they’d spent more time with while they were alive or after a fight with a friend. Regardless of the source, the guilt and shame associated with regret can be devastating. If you’re wondering how to deal with regret, we tapped mental health professionals to guide us in recognizing the pain of regret and transforming that remorse into positive emotions.

Viewing regret in a positive light may sound far-fetched at first. Learning how to deal with regret and cope with related emotions, though, can open the door to a richer life founded on the idea that negative experiences don’t have to have completely negative outcomes. “Regret is a powerful emotion that can deeply affect our mental and emotional well-being, [but] it is possible to move through this pain and find a path to healing and growth,” says Sandra Kushnir, LMFT. Ahead, experts share concrete strategies to help you address any kind of regret you may be experiencing, identify the source of that regret, and move forward confident in your decisions.

What is the root cause of regret?

Learning how to deal with regret and guilt requires understanding the reasons behind it. But regret can be a tricky, multi-faceted issue, says Dr. Zack Goldman, LCSW. “Regret arises when we reflect on decisions or actions we’ve taken (or failed to take), feel disappointed, guilty, or remorseful, and subsequently wish that we had done something differently.” In other words, regret is a gap between what we thought we could achieve or who we want to be and what actually happened. Dr. Goldman says, “Unmet expectations, perceived failures, missed opportunities, and the internal conflict between what is and what might have been” are key factors that lead to feelings of regret. You can succumb to feelings of regret in any part of your life, from relationships to work to school. You might regret leaving a job to work somewhere that doesn’t have a positive company culture. Or you might have to learn how to deal with regret after a breakup if you think your partner is the one who got away.

“We are human. We are fallible. We make mistakes, and regretting them is a very common negative emotion.” —Amy Silver, PsyD

People can be more sensitive to regret when it comes to protecting themselves over others. A European study about regret¹ found that people are more likely to avoid situations that might lead to regret when that emotion is likely to hurt them versus when it’s likely to hurt others. If a hard-working parent had an exhausting week at work, they might choose to order food on a Friday night instead of cooking dinner, even though they know the fast food they’re ordering isn’t as nutritional for their kids as a homecooked meal. Prioritizing rest and reducing the mental and physical burden of cooking—the bigger of two evils at that moment—might outweigh the potential harm of one low-nutrition meal.

How to deal with the pain of regret

Overcoming the pain of regret, regardless of the source of your emotions, can be difficult and may even feel impossible at times. Experts, however, shared a few steps that may bring you closer to taking control of those remorseful feelings once and for all.

1. Define the negative emotion you’re feeling

As with any painful feeling, acknowledging and naming exactly what what it is your’e experiencing can be a helpful first step in dealing with that emotion. Let yourself feel the anger, sadness, and any other emotions that come up when you think about something you regret, advises Lara Fielding, PhD, a clinical psychologist. Next, name the emotion—is it a case of FOMO, or is it something deeper? “When you find the right word for what you’re feeling, it actually activates the orbital prefrontal cortex that connects to your emotion center in your brain, called your amygdala,” Dr. Fielding says. Once that happens, your brain can more effectively understand the issue and kick into problem-solving mode, as opposed to getting lost in the swirl of shame or overwhelm.

2. Acknowledge the potential upside of your regretful action

While it’s easy to blame yourself for something you did or said that had a negative outcome, that same decision might have spared you from a worse outcome. Similarly, you might be overlooking the positive outcomes of your decisions in favor of focusing on the negatives. So, it’s important to consider all the ways in which your actions impact the world around you, even if those benefits aren’t immediately apparent. “Dive into your negative thoughts and check their accuracy,” says Dr. Fielding. “See if there’s an alternative way of looking at how the situation panned out.” For example, your choice to keep dating someone who wasn’t right for you may have saved you from a handful of bad first dates. Or, maybe that job interview that flopped spared you from a would-be toxic work culture.

Once you allow that imagination game to take hold, picture the positive potential, and acknowledge it. Then, be sure to return to the present moment because “regret really is a past time-traveling kind of activity,” says Dr. Fielding, and dwelling too much on the past won’t necessarily help your future. To bring yourself back, turn your attention to one or two things that are good in your life right now, whether they’re the result of careful planning on your part or sheer luck.

3. Practice self-compassion

The personal shame and blame that tend to get wrapped up with the feeling of regret have a way of making you feel at fault for specific outcomes: How could I have done that? Or, why didn’t I do that? But that’s really not the case. “We are not unusual in our experience of making wrong choices,” says clinical psychologist Amy Silver, PsyD. “We are human. We are fallible. We make mistakes, and regretting them is a very common negative emotion.” Just acknowledging this can help you learn how to deal with regret and offer yourself a little more compassion and grace.

4. If your regret involves others, seek forgiveness

Perhaps you find it hard to forgive yourself for a regretful action because it had a negative impact on others whom you love or care about. If that’s the case, it might be helpful to apologize and ask for their forgiveness in order to find closure. “Seeking forgiveness and forgiving yourself go hand in hand,” psychologist and forgiveness researcher Robert Enright, PhD, previously told Well+Good. Even if the person doesn’t accept your apology or you aren’t able to get in touch with them, you’re more likely to find peace knowing you attempted to do right by them and the situation.

5. Honor the loss of what was or could have been

Attempting to quickly let go of negative things isn’t always a part of positive mental health. Thomas and Dr. Fielding both believe that you should take some time to mourn whatever lost experience it is that’s making you feel regretful. “It’s often helpful to give yourself a season of regretting it,” suggests Thomas. “I think it’s just like the grieving cycle. If there’s something that has happened that you’ve missed out on or you’ve wasted time doing something else, and you’re regretful, you have to allow yourself time to grieve what could have been.”

Depending on your situation, you could be in this stage for a while. Regretting a haircut is going to look a lot different from regretting the way a relationship ended. “There’s a common misconception that, ‘when you’re ready, you can just let go of it,’” says Dr. Fielding. “But you may not ever feel ready because chewing on old pain is a little bit like biting down on a toothache. It feels terrible, but it’s familiar.” Instead of waiting until you wake up without the pain, practice validating the negative feeling by acknowledging the loss until it begins to feel less potent.

6. Broaden your perspective

However huge the regret may feel, it’s still related to a moment in time and not a constant behavior. “It’s not that you always make wrong decisions, but rather, that you made a wrong decision,” says Dr. Silver. “Or, it’s not that you aren’t a brave person, but that at one point in time, you weren’t bold in your decision-making.” Creating that distinction helps separate the feeling of regret from your identity, making room for perspective and providing you with the agency to make a better or more aligned decision when you arrive at a similar crossroads in the future.

7. Connect with other people who can relate

Though you might come across people who say, “I have no regrets,” the experts agree regret is very common and would even wager to say everyone has experienced some version of it at one point or another. If you can find and connect with people who carry a similar kind of regret to yours, you’ll have an easier time normalizing it for yourself, says Dr. Silver. Sharing difficult feelings opens you up to support from others and helps break the unhelpful narrative that your perceived failure is unique to you.

8. Remember that regret, in and of itself, isn’t a bad emotion

As uncomfortable as it may feel, regret can serve as an excellent tool for better understanding yourself and your goals. “Regret helps us see clearly what we don’t want to do, and as long as we don’t let that become a deep burden to us, we can allow it to teach us things,” says Thomas, who notes that the emotional process for learning how to deal with regret is really about stepping back to see the humanity of it. The natural tendency to feel regret over past actions that turned out poorly is what helps ensure that we course-correct and move forward with our best interests in mind.

9. Identify the lesson(s) you can learn from regret

Figuring out exactly why you feel as though you could’ve made a better choice or decision in the past can lead you to the real silver lining of regret: the lesson. “If you don’t like that you made a less courageous decision when you look back, perhaps you can use that information to help you the next time you have a choice to make that requires courage,” says Dr. Silver. “The idea is to figure out, ‘What have I learned about what is important to me?’ And perhaps this is the definition of being wise: You’re wiser because of the retrospective of your choices.”

10. Use regret as a motivator to take action

Because it’s often tougher to view inaction as a real mistake when you compare it to a clearly wrong action, you might be tempted to brush off a failure to act as “something that just didn’t happen,” says Shai Davidai, PhD, a social psychologist. But, in reality, that allows you to keep putting off whatever it is, and “eventually, the inertia of inaction leads to more inaction,” he says. Consequently, the tiny, “What if?” in the back of your mind becomes a more powerful sense of regret. If you did something you regret, Kushnir says you can also “use the energy from that regret to take positive action. This might involve setting new goals, or making a plan to avoid similar situations in the future.”

What are the four types of regret?

Regret is one of those sneaky feelings that can take over easily, so it’s important to identify what kind of regret you’re having in order to address it. There are four main types of regret: foundation regrets, moral regrets, boldness regrets, and connection regrets. Each has a different root cause, so understanding the kind of regret you’re experiencing can help you figure out how to shift out of it and how to deal with any shame or remorse stemming from the situation.

Foundation regrets

“Foundation regrets stem from failures to build a solid foundation for life,” says Dr. Goldman. They can touch every major part of someone’s life, but especially health and wealth. Not saving enough money, not pursuing higher education, or neglecting your health are some of the most common examples, says Dr. Goldman. If you didn’t go to college in your youth, attending when you’re older is always an option, but there may be other priorities in your life now—like family or work or the enormous cost of a college education—that make achieving this goal harder.

“If we choose to see our feelings as messengers. We can reflect on our feelings in effective ways that promote wisdom and help us learn about ourselves.” —Gabrielle Morse, LMHC

Moral regrets

As the name implies, moral regrets come from “actions (or inactions) that violate one’s moral or ethical standards,” says Dr. Goldman. Shame is also a big component of moral regret along with guilt. If you want to move past regret and shame, then you need to stop feeling guilty and forgive yourself. Examples of moral regrets include cheating, lying, or failing to stand up for what’s right. Moral regrets feel like a failure of character, of not living up to one’s full potential. But not everyone feels regret when they do something that might be perceived by others as morally wrong. A 2023 study found that users of the cheating website Ashley Madison were generally satisfied with their affairs and didn’t regret cheating on their partners². Moral regrets are internal and not external—they’re a reflection of how you feel about an action you’ve taken, not how others hope or want you to feel.

Boldness regrets

“Boldness regrets come from missed opportunities due to fear or hesitation. They involve not taking chances that could have led to growth or fulfillment,” says Dr. Goldman. A little fear is healthy—a therapist might tell you that fear and anxiety are the body’s yellow lights. They’re a warning to assess, but not an indication that you should necessarily stop or avoid action. But in the case of boldness regret, fear won out when it might have been safe to proceed. Dr. Goldman says some of the most common boldness regrets include not traveling, not starting a business, or not expressing feelings to someone you care about. Work on trusting yourself and your intuition so you minimize your boldness regrets.

Connection regrets

Human beings are chemically wired to connect—that’s why we cry at emotional commercials during the Super Bowl. Dr. Goldman says we can feel connection regret when we “fail to maintain or deepen connections with others. They often stem from neglecting relationships or not resolving conflicts.” If you look back at a high school or college friendship and feel that pit in your stomach when you think about how you let that friendship fade away, that’s a form of connection regret. The good news is that as long as someone is alive, you always have the opportunity to reach out and reconnect. Some other examples of connection regret are not spending enough time with family or ending a relationship on bad terms, says Dr. Goldman.

Why is regret so painful?

Regret can be one of the most painful emotions to deal with, both physically and emotionally. If you’re ruminating—repetitively and persistently focusing on the negative aspects of past decisions—you might exacerbate feelings of sadness, guilt, and frustration. Certain areas of your brain are stimulated by regret. “Regret activates areas of the brain involved in decision-making and emotional processing, such as the orbitofrontal cortex and the amygdala. These areas are linked to feelings of anxiety and distress,” says Dr. Goldman. That’s why certain types of regret might lead to physical symptoms. In addition to changes in your brain, Dr. Goldman says regret also affects your vagus nerve, a part of your parasympathetic nervous system that can lead to stomach discomfort or heartache. The good news is you can course-correct, as you can also stimulate your vagus nerve to calm you down.

How to stop regretting past decisions

Experiencing regret isn’t all bad. “There is a powerful opportunity within regret,” says Gabrielle Morse, LMHC. “If we choose to see our feelings as messengers. We can reflect on our feelings in effective ways that promote wisdom and help us learn about ourselves.” Actions or words that we regret can indicate bigger patterns, so taking the time to reflect on lessons and feelings and identify larger opportuniies for growth may pave a pathway to emotional development.

Dr. Goldman says that practicing a little self-compassion and self-forgiveness can go a long way. “Treat yourself with kindness and understanding rather than harsh self-criticism and recognize that everyone makes mistakes. Shift your perspective to see the learning opportunities and growth that came from the experience.” If you can, make amends to the person and take steps to rectify the situation, says Dr. Goldman. Learning how to deal with regret after death can be tricky. In explaining how to deal with regret, Dr. Goldman suggests “engaging in mindfulness practices to stay grounded in the present moment rather than dwelling on the past.”

Does regret ever go away?

Whether or not someone can deal with regret and get past their feelings varies from person to person. Dr. Goldman says, “Regret can diminish over time, especially as we process our feelings and learn from our experiences. However, it may not entirely disappear, particularly if the regret involves significant life events or moral transgressions.” In those cases where someone is having difficulty moving past an event in their life, regret can do damage to their physical and mental health. I this happens, “seek professional support,” Kushnir advises. “If regret significantly impacts your mental health. A licensed therapist can provide you with strategies and support to manage your feelings.”

Regret can be all-consuming, but it is not inevitable. How long you live with regret is fully dependent on you and how you manage your emotions. It may take time, but with the help of a mental health professional, it’s possible to learn how to integrate regretful experiences into our lives in a way that fosters growth and resilience.