Regret is a waste of time. What is done is done.

NOVEMBER 11, 2010, 10:07 AM

What a Psychologist Says About Your Regrets

By JAY S. KWAWER

More than three weeks after we called for comments on your financial regrets, we continue to receive your self-kicking missives — on everything from love to career choice to child rearing. To make sense of this phenomenon, we asked Jay S. Kwawer, Ph.D., the director of the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology, for context and understanding. Read on for his analysis.

To the child’s eye, adults invariably appear to be decisive and brimming with self-confidence, free of doubt, regret or remorse. Kids need to sustain this illusion about their “grown-ups” because they are so overwhelmed with their own uncertainties and confusions, repeatedly confronted with their vulnerability, their helplessness and their dependence.

All of us grow up with the underlying illusory belief that as adults, we should never be burdened by regret and that our decision-making should resemble the fictional images of grown-up confidence formed in childhood.

Of course, this is an illusion. There is simply no major decision in life that is not pursued in a context of some uncertainty. Likewise, there is no significant commitment that does not leave doubt and regret in its wake. “Buyer’s remorse,” whether about a real estate transaction, a new handbag, a marriage or a major surgery — to cite but a handful of ordinary settings in which regret commonly rears its head — is ubiquitous.

Because the illusions of childhood are so pervasive and persuasive (that real grown-ups never experience doubt or regret, and always act with dispatch and certainty), the inevitability of uncertainty and remorse often remains shrouded in shame or guilt. Most of us labor under the persisting illusion that “everyone else” always knows precisely what he or she wants, or that “no one else” struggles with doubts or regrets, affirming the enduring and disabling power of childlike emotional states. The regrets remain shameful secrets, privately fretted over and rarely expressed openly.

“I should have reached out and kissed her at the senior prom 35 years ago, instead of waiting for her to lean closer to me,” is the sort of refrain that remains a quiet and sometimes tormenting and preoccupying undercurrent in everyone’s life. Whether it is about a new car, a home purchase, a career choice, an answer to an interview question or almost anything else that human beings have to make choices about, regrets and doubts after the fact are inevitable. As inevitable, in fact, as the ambivalence and uncertainties that we face as we contemplate the choices life challenges us to make.

“Warner” (#14) whimsically underscores the futility of living in the mode of “if only. …” Richard Navas reflects, likewise, on the self-deceiving folly of “waiting” until one “has time.” And Silaki echoes a reverberating theme in this blog, urging, “make as much use of the present as possible!” Indeed, “moving on” (Adrian DeVore and Jamie) enables us to live more fully in the present tense, frees us from enmeshment in yesterdays, and also enables our emancipation from the unproductive mode of procrastination by “constantly living for tomorrow” (GMS).

It is always a great relief to us, burdened as we are by our childhood illusions about what “adulthood” mandates, to learn that others are similarly remorseful, plagued just as we are by silent and private doubts. Whether we say it aloud, or simply breathe more easily in silence, we are always relieved to hear that others — comparably burdened by such unrealistic illusions — also suffer from regrets. If we are fortunate enough to enjoy intimate personal relationships, we may find solace and understanding in the mutual and empathic acknowledgments to one another that we feel exactly the same way. The outpouring of such acknowledgments in this blog is simply an affirmation of our common humanity, facilitated by the opportunity for anonymous self-disclosure that is among the Internet’s most alluring and enticing qualities.

In effect, reading eagerly of others’ foibles and human frailties inevitably evokes in all of us the deep and reassuring silent sigh: “I’m so relieved to know that someone else feels exactly the same way. … I thought I was the only one.”

Jay S. Kwawer, Ph.D., is the director of the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology, a New York City postgraduate psychoanalytic training and treatment center.