Regret, Remorse, Shame

Yesterday I experienced a set of unpleasant emotions – regret, remorse and shame.

Regret, Remorse, Shame

I made a decision that caused others pain. It was not intentional, but the results were the same. The problem with this set of feelings is the difficulty of making things right. As much as you wish to, you can’t undo your actions. All you can do is apologize, learn what you can from your mistake and move forward. The problem for me is that I often continue to ruminate on it…even after I’ve done everything I could.

Kathy, my Content Editor says, “Grief has many tentacles” which metaphorically describes how grief is pervasive and reaches deeply into multiple areas of our life. As I processed my hurtful behavior I worked with a couple of friends and my therapist to try and unpack what might have caused me to make this unfortunate decision. It took a while. There were several discoveries. For me it was important to dive deeply into the situation, so I could learn and move forward, because I was grieving my decision.

Tentacles of Grief

Here's what I did. Maybe it will help you if you’ve experienced these feelings (not just from grief).

1. Identify and define the emotion you’re feeling

2. Seek understanding for how your behavior hurt others

3. Apologize and mean it

4. Try to understand why you made the choice you did

5. Learn from it

6. Recognize you’re human and make mistakes

7. *Forgive yourself

8. *Move forward

*Still working on these last two!