By Ox Drover
“The Road Not Taken” is always out there beckoning to us. I should, I could ”¦ Why did I do that? Why didn’t I do that? Regrets!
Having been involved with a psychopath, and reeling from the devastation in the wake of the relationship, leads us to ask ourselves what might have happened if we had made other choices.
I question myself—if I had chosen differently, would the relationship have been a success? If I had dated John or Frank instead of the psychopath, would I now be happily married in a solid relationship? If I had just done things differently, like I started to, would it have been better? If I had just gotten out of the relationship sooner, or later, would I now be better off?
With our regrets, we beat ourselves up for being so stupid to put up with the abuse. We saw the red flags of suspicion early on, felt the sting and pain of his words, his disrespect, yet, now we regret not paying attention to ourselves back then. How much better our lives would have been if we had only listened to our own intuition, to the things we really knew, really saw, but brushed aside, thought we could fix.
We searched for the words, the perfect words, to explain to him how he was hurting us. Why couldn’t we find those perfect words, the ones we were so sure would make him treat us better?
Regret is normal
Regret in the past choices we have made in life: Go to work and get married, or go to college and get an education. Have children, or wait. According to those who study regrets, having regrets as we mature is a normal, natural and a universal human emotion. Neal Roese, Ph.D., a psychology professor at the University of Illinois says, “Regret is a very complicated emotion that involves all these things (pain and fear) coming together—it’s raw feeling plus all the complicated imaginings of future possibility.”
Another psychology professor, Carsten Wrosch, Ph. D., at Concordia University in Montreal, has linked regrets to many physical and social problems, which include sleeping problems, headaches, migraines, panic disorder and even skin conditions.
Henry David Thoreau said, “To regret deeply is to live afresh.”
Letting go
If we continually dwell on our past mistakes and missed opportunities, this consumes our ability to live and enjoy the present. Letting go of regrets though, is not a one-time event; it is a process of disentangling ourselves from them.
One of the ways suggested to start to let go of our regrets over past decisions is to consider it final. I find that when I have a decision to make, once I finally decide that decision is final, anxiety about making that decision seems to go away. Looking at that decision later, whether it turned out to be good or bad, I am more able to accept it.
People who study regrets and decision making also note that if we can “fix” a past mistake or correct it, our regrets tend to hang on longer and be stronger, but if we accept the fact that we made a bad decision that can’t be fixed, we tend to let go of it more easily.
Having regrets for past decisions, and especially regrets related to our relationship with the psychopath(s) in our lives, is normal and natural. As long as we hang on to those regrets and try to second guess ourselves, though, it impedes our healing and moving on.
Letting go of those regrets, the self-recrimination for our part in the relationship, for not finding the perfect solution, for not leaving sooner, or any of a thousand other choices we made, will be an ongoing process. But it will lead us, if we let it, to using those choices to make a better life for ourselves now and in the future.
Stayingsane:
Life begins at 50……..you go girl!!!!
Keep on keeping on!!!
Your doing great!!!
Dear Nic,
Iam with Easy on this one. Next time, notify him that it is ON TIME OR NO TIME—-Late? well, don’t bother coming. Late returning her? then that much time off your next visit.
YOU take control back from him. YOU CAN DO IT!
Remember back when he wasn’t putting her in a car seat? You know he doesn’t care about you or her—so if he doesn’t show up on TIME, put the kidlett in a car seat and LEAVE—DON’T BE THERE WHEN HE COMES. Make sure, too, that you have a WITNESS as to what time you left and that it was AFTER he should have been there. A few times of that and he will either quit coming or be on time, now wouldn’t that break your ehart if he quit coming. LOL Love Oxy
Hi OxDrover,
Your post about regret is a poignant one. How different we would do things over if we’d the chance to… blessed with the knowledge that we’ve had bestowed upon us. Regret will always be painful and deep when we have given so much to
those who were unworthy of the gifts.
Much of what happens to us, unfortunately, occurs due to the programming and roles we were assigned in our families of origin. Unspoken rules and roles from that time shape our choices in ways we are likely to deny vehemently, until alas,
the pain of continuing to relate in those old ways is too much to bear. The impetus to change ourselves lies within that pain
and regret. The urgency of the need to do so becomes apparent when the old ways of relating just don’t work any more.
Unfortunately for us, the old ways of relating meant “taking low” almost all of the time from those who didn’t appreciate us. Whether we gave a great deal or not no longer is the greatest sadness, but that we’ve allowed it to go on for so long.
Life teaches us some very harsh lessons to be sure. Looked at
from a spiritual (not religious) perspective, we can all find very personal meaning as to why certain things have happened in our lives. Each of us knows in a very personal way that we are working on certain themes that keep repeating over and over until they get our attention. The circumstances and the people may change throughout our lives, but we know the things we are here to work on in this life.
I believe that in this way we are making a contribution to
anyone we relate to in our own sphere of influence in a healthy, loving way. HEALTHY self regard doesn’t come cheap
when it has to be learned in adulthood. It’s a gift your parents
are supposed to model for you growing up. Most of us know
the pain of strugggling to learn positive self regard in the face of abuse. Once attained it can never be lost again.
There is so much to learn in this life. Wondering how life would have been had we chosen the other and if it would have been better is a natural reaction to what is unfair.
A great deal of our growth has come through the very people
that have pushed and stretched us to our limits to understand
them. Sociopathic behavior, no longer being a riddle, allows
us our freedom to move forward and explore who WE are.
What good is sharing warmth and a sense of relatedness with
those who don’t understand, value or even recognize what we’re holding in our hands and hearts extended to them?
Better to take the gift of knowledge and use it to heal.
Much of what I’ve read here has provoked a great deal of thinking on my part. My mind keeps going over the themes
involved.
The film adaptation of the book The Colour Purple by Alice Walker keeps flooding my mind. It is resonant with so many of themes that are universal in the struggle for selfhood and healing. The first time I viewed it I was floored at how deeply Celie’s plight touched me. Each one of the characters in the film has something to say about unhealthy relating and its damaging effects that ripple outward upon all they touch.
It’s also a story of love and hope and compassion. It’s a story
about healing and faith most of all through the most painful of
circumstances.
Ultimately, Celie finds a sense of inner peace and acceptance
of what her life has evolved into. So much of what she endured early on was out of her control. The same applies to many of us. Along the way, she, as well as we ourselves, have had kind and not so kind teachers. Some of them modeling truly cruel behavior and others awakening in her the awareness of her own unique beauty as a human being; bringing her the gift of real regard and relatedness.
I believe at the end of the journey the goal is to truly love
and value ourselves. Regardlesss of the amount of struggle and pain life brings, there will always be those who touch us and fill our lives, even in the midst of despair brought about by uncontrollable situations and people who have run amok in our lives.
I’m wishing that for all of us as well.
Peace
Oxy, thanks for a very provoking post. And one that is comforting to those of us who are still beating ourselves up.
Regret is one of those words that we define differently, or maybe feel differently depending on where we are in our lives or our healing. I know that when I first started to recover from this relationship, I was brutally beating myself up, thinking that I was “just too stupid to live.” And at the time, I would have said that I was drowning in regret.
But that is not how I define regret now. Now, more often, I look back and see things in my life that I would have done differently if I’d known then what I know now. At the time, I was doing the best I could with the needs and the level of maturity I had. But going back now to look at some of these past experiences — ones that caused me a lot of pain, or ones in which I made mistakes that caused other people pain — they seem more like lessons than anything else.
I had a minister who used to pray, “God, I know that you’re sending me a lesson here. And I’m willing to learn. So if you don’t mind, could you just please hurry up and let me know what I’m supposed to be learning?”
I mentioned last week that I was thinking writing a post about guilt, because I think it’s such a big factor in our lives, and largely unrecognized (because like shame, it’s so uncomfortable, we push it to the background). I had a major collision a few weeks ago with a ton of guilt I’ve been carrying around for decades, and avoiding thinking about. I discovered that some children I took care of when I was in my mid-twenties, while their mother essentially abandoned them to travel around with a new boyfriend, had not done well when they grew up. One of them is dead now from an overdose.
I supported them and their father for two years, and I ultimately had to leave, because I just couldn’t bear the burden anymore. It’s hard to talk about this even now, because I knew that it was going to be just one more blow for these youngsters. And I loved them.
The guilt I felt when I got these information just whacked me with what some people might call regrets. But I would call guilt. And it took me a while to sort it out. But eventually I did. There were a lot of circumstances around that involvement. It began only a few months after I was widowed by my second husband, and it was an escape for me from grief. I had no boundaries in those days at all, and no sense of what I could manage with any concern for my own wellbeing. And though I did my best to fix it, the entire situation was bigger than me. No matter what I did, it was actually caused by people who were deep in their own dramas and who would continue to destroy any stability or emotional security those kids had.
For me, the learning in that situation — now more than 35 years later — was that there are tragedies around us. People we love may be involved in them, as we may be too. And no one, however well intentioned, can control everything. Sometimes, we just have to embrace hard realities, and not stop loving, but also recognize that we have to take care of ourselves. Because if we turn into human sacrifices, then we have nothing to give.
So I grieve what happened, grieve the loss of the little girl I loved and the difficulties her brother still faces, continue to love them across time, and comfort myself with the idea that we all did the best we could.
As far as not biting off more than I could chew, I learned that lesson at the time. It was a hard lesson, and I occasionally forgot it in later years. But it was pretty well learned because it was so painful, as all of us here are learning from our experiences with the sociopaths.
So this for me, is what regrets are really. Just a look back to recognize something I would do differently now, but not be sorry. Because I can’t be. It was the story that brought me to where I am today. To a great degree, I caused these stories for myself, as I did the one with the children by volunteering to become so deeply involved with their lives. From my perspective today, I caused my story with the sociopath too, by wanting what he had to offer. And that was caused by other stories I volunteered for, which all emerged from patterns set up in a very dysfunctional childhood.
Oxy mentioned regrets about roads not taken, and I can probably relate to that more than anything. I feel like I wasted so much of my life struggling with the dysfunction I carried from my childhood. But even that was my story. I took the roads I did, because they were the ones that were most meaningful to my development. I believe that. And I could wish that I had a different childhood, or wish my parents had different childhoods, or wish that the whole culture wasn’t so fear-driven and addiction-ridden, but what’s the point?
Ultimately the big challenge of life is to love ourselves and to learn to use what we have. Whatever it is. Regrets are important, because they hold learning inside of them. But if they cause us guilt or shame, then maybe we need to work on forgiving ourselves for being human. Oxy wrote that in an earlier post, and I always thought that was a great way to say it.
This is a great thread with so many thought-provoking comments, thanks for starting it Oxy.
keensight, you said, “Sociopathic behavior, no longer being a riddle, allows us our freedom to move forward and explore who WE are.”
That should be a quote on everyone’s refrigerator or maybe make a bumper sticker. That wisdom is profound because, understanding sociopathic thinking has opened up an entirely new perspective on my world – like nothing I would have imagined.
Kathy, I’m sorry to hear of your loss. I understand that you regret that you couldn’t do more, but you did the best you were able to at the time. You said you had taken on more than you could chew. Those words describe us all, when we were small children being abused by adults. In our child minds we focused on a strategy that would help us cope, but most of the time, the strategy was flawed. How could it be otherwise? we were only children. Now that we’ve grown up, we are learning to release that strategy so that a new one can be found. Unlike the P’s, we aren’t stuck in the perpetual childhood that keeps us repeating the same evil deeds over and over as vengence for what happened to us.
Maybe that’s the meaning of forgiveness: finding a new strategy.
Dear Keeninsight, thank you for your response, very thought provoking.
kathy, thank you for your response too—and also thought provoking.
That is the thing I love about an article like this, is that so many people see different things, meanings, etc. in the same words. Our words in any language are poor conveyors of FEELINGS and how each of us sees something a little different in a word such as “regret” or “guilt” or “love” and how our lives are impacted by it.
Those differences are wonderful because they EXPAND our lthoughts and though each of us is unique, yet were are also alike in so many ways.
The spiritual aspect to healing is I think such an important one (separate and apart from religious views or thoughts) I believe mankind is a “spiritual” being because we can analyze our motives and feelings as I think other mammals are not able to, and I think one of the things that is different about us and the personality disordered is the “spiritual aspect.”
This is just observation on my part, but though I know Ps that at least pretend to be religious, I do not know any that show any spritual insight, it seems beyond them. Who knows, maybe that consciebnce or lack of it is what “spirituality” is all about.
Sure, our “raisin'” influences what we think is right and wrong, or what we think we “should” or “should not” do or expect, but at the same time, we are independently able to analyze these beliefs (if we will) and see that they are or are not VALID. You may have been raised by a family that taught you prejudice against other people, but as an adult you can either continue to accept this belief, or examine it and say “that is not true in light of what I observe” and discard that belief. We ARE able to “reprogram” our belief ssystems that were “fed to us” as children. Earlier on we may have acted on those beliefs, and AT THAT time we believed them, but we have the power to de-program those beliefs, to install new beliefs, and new conceptions of truth, and while we may look back and say “I did so-and-so, but at the time I was acting on xyz belief, now I no longer hold that belief as valid, so I will no longer act on that” We are FREE moral agents, and I think that is what a good manyy of us are doing here, is to examine our “truths” and see if indeed they ARE true, or if they are “contamination” from our families of origin, or from our culture etc. i.e. we are spiritual beings on an eartly journey and we have self determination and are NOT predestined by our past to live our future by a set of codes (guiltly feelings, or remorse, etc) that someone else installed in our heads. Just learning that we CAN reprogram ourselves, that we are so powerful and able to alter our internal landscape if not the extermal one. I can’t alter the external land scape that I am a 62 (almost 63) year old white female who grew up in rural America, but I CAN alter the internal land scape of that woman, and I am working dililgently to do so. Looking back and saying that I regret that I didn’t do things differently in the past doesn’t do anything except make me feel bad about where I am today.
I SHOULD have listened and not baked myself in the African sun, I woujldn’t have these liver spots on my face or near so many wrinkles, but I can’t go back and unwalk the path I walked when I was 19 or 20, or retroactively put sun screen on. But I will wear sun screen and a hat today to keep from making them worse or turning them into cancer. But, I am NOT going to continue to beat myself up because 40 years ago I did something dumb!
I agree that “forgiveness” is not about the person who did an unkind deed, but for ourselves, to get the bitterness out of our own souls jso that we can move forward away from that event, and not continue to keep it as CURRENT pain. That means forgiving others deeds, but also our own mistakes and bad deeds.
Keensight, I loved your post, you expressed what we all feel – in a gentle way. The sociopathic riddle is one I’ll never truly understand, it bleeds into
what I wanted to understand and make into ‘normal.’ I know I’m entering a new phase, I’m over 50 too and I have to not put any demands on myself
other than to just find new ways of acceptance, of myself and of others in a way that is healing and not condemning. I had a number of days of bad
headaches lately, have never been prone to them but had taken on alot, still dealing with feelings about this person as well as a bad tooth I got taken care of (that I hoped would solve the headaches!) as well as the good news of having to fill more orders for my business. And I just pushed
and pushed myself, still coming here to read periodically, but had to stay as quiet as I could – the headaches forced me to do that and I even
had to take off an afternoon from work one day as it seemed like my head was going to implode! I ended up at my son’s house and took a wonderful
walk in the sun by the river with him, my daughter-in-law and grandson and cried in front of them. They didn’t mind, they are supportive and I felt better, it was a real release. But I have to not be hard on myself that I let myself get so fragile, even needing that release. We’re so good, even dysfunctional about understanding others and what they ‘need’, that we neglect even giving ourselves the praise and support we need to forge ahead. Kathleen and Oxy, I love your posts always, too, thank you for being here.
I think it is hard to imagine what comes next and we all can tend to write off men or opening ourselves up to them in the future. I don’t feel I never want to be in another relationship though – I just feel a certain kind of release and freedom to do things I want to do now, and not let anyone else
(or myself) get in the way. Sometimes I’ve felt ‘invisible’ in the sense of the kind of respect I’m afforded by loved ones or bosses, sometimes it’s very subtle and I want to work on understanding that better as well for the future. It’s time to accept more responsibility and risk more in putting myself on the map, without apology.
As I told you all, I found a new pic on facebook of my P daughter whom I havent seen in nearly 17 years. I started to really beat myself up for being so stupid as to look her up.
Decided to call my Iranian “Kids”, they came over for lunch yesterday andwe had a great day. I was able to share my sadness with Roya, and she hugged me while I cried, and comforted me, so did my lovely new son.”Mama , we love you, we are your new family now, we will always love you and be there for you!”they said.So thank God I didnt battle that sadness alone, as my husband gets tired of hearing about my P daughters, and they have been very mean and heartless to him too.So alls well, I was able to turn things around, have a happy day, get support from my new “kids”
and stop beating myself up. How good is that?!!and {{HUGS!!}}} Mama Bear Gem.XXX
Mama Bear Gem,
I am so excited to hear you had someone to put their arms around you while you cried! It is a wonderful feeling to have that, I thank God he came to you in your time of need! Your iranian kids sound very good, I’m so very happy for you, not only that but I never thought I’d have an iranian brother and sister well except maybe in God’s family, you know what I mean!
God bless you Mama Bear! I love you! Love, hugs, and prayers, heavenbound
Oxy,
Very thought provoking article! I have spent the last few days trying to remember stuff that happened throughout my up-bringing, that have influenced me & my decisions. I didn’t even realise how many bags & how heavy they were until I set some of them down. I am still reading The Betrayal Bond, & doing the exercises as I read, discovering things about myself I never knew until now. Makes me wonder how I made it to 55 not being able to see these things.
Love & hugs to all of you, may our journey together be a healing one.