Compulsive Toxic Regret: Stop It Using Neuroscience

The amygdala makes regret feel like a jolt of pain!

Source: Cast Of Thousands/Shutterstock

If you think about your deepest regrets, what do you feel? The range of feelings is complicated; we think of remorse, but most often, it’s a combination of loss, guilt, and shame.

How long have you held your regrets? In my clinical and personal experience, I’ve found that the more shame we feel about regret, the deeper it hurts and the more long-lasting it is. The problem with regret is that it seems to promise that we’ll be a better person—as long as we feel regret. In this way, it’s actually common for people to confuse feeling bad about themselves with being a good person. And that’s how regret tumbles into a toxic feedback loop that can be lifelong and worsen over time.

But with some insight from neuroscience, the good news is there are techniques to stop the feedback loop.

Regret, Shame, and Guilt Originate in Different Parts of the Brain.

There’s a neuroscience story to explain how regret, shame, and guilt work. It starts with regret, which can be the most simple and powerful of the three feelings. Regret is housed in the amygdala, the source of powerful emotions and our survival instinct. Animals experience regret as much as humans as a means of learning simple and important lessons for survival. Regret is about the loss of pleasure or an increase in risk, so the lessons are vital. Once we feel regret in the amygdala, the feeling travels into the “higher-functioning” logic and management part of the brain, or pre-frontal cortex (to simplify things a little), where it is processed and melds into guilt (“I did something bad”) or shame (“I am something bad”).

So when we are reminded of something we regret, that reminder is like a trigger, jolting us with emotional pain, quickly kicking in the guilt or shame (or both) we connect to the regret trigger stimulus.

The problem is when regret is strong, the emotional pain overwhelms our ability to think through it. In other words, regret and the amygdala hijack the pre-frontal cortex, and we get stuck with the pain of regret and shame or guilt but can’t employ our logic and rational planning to solve the problem.

To make matters worse, once the regret comes up a few times, we start to avoid or detach from the painful subject, but when we are reminded, the whole regret-pain spiral restarts, and we can’t break out of it. Toxic regret! The problem with toxic regret is that it’s hard to disbelieve. When the amygdala hijacks the pre-frontal cortex, it’s hard to use reason.

To Overcome Toxic Regret, Focus on Your Values.

The good news is that there’s a method for managing toxic regret to pull you out of the loop: Change the story’s ending.

Toxic regret is a story told by the amygdala with a message of pain, and we need to change it to a story told by the pre-frontal cortex about values and a sense of self. One reason you feel regret over a past action or event is that it contradicts who you feel you are or who you want to be. And we all worry from time to time that we aren’t meeting our potential. So our values will guide us out.

Ask yourself: How is this regret a story of the values that define you? Understand the regret as a story about your values.

Two Ways to Connect With Your Values and Let Go of Regret

Two of the most direct ways to engage the amygdala and translate intense emotion into higher-level cognitive functioning involve experiences that you can create for yourself: imagery and self-talk. When combined, as we will do here, the process can put you in touch with feelings of compassion and forgiveness.

Imagery is a meditative process using your imagination, while self-talk allows you to be both speaker and listener in a way that helps you feel real support and connection.

Here’s How to Do It:

Start with a regret-triggering memory that feels toxic. What age were you when the event happened? Whether you were 4 years old or it was last year, this could help. Think about the values you learned from your regret of this event and what you did or failed to do. Now, close your eyes and imagine present-day you going back in time to visit past you.

Have a simple, encouraging chat with your past self like this: “I know you really didn’t know what you were doing, or you were being impulsive. But because of what happened, I know myself better. I now know it’s important to me not to do what you did. I know you feel bad about yourself for this, but I forgive you. It can stay as a reminder of what we value together. It’s helping us become better, and we can let it go now. This is not who we are.”

Here’s Why It Works:

Using our inner voice is something we do every day; we usually just call it thinking. Sadly, the most common version of the inner voice seems to be the inner critic, when we are self-critical or punitive or mean to ourselves in ways we would never be to others. Positive self-talk is using the power of that inner voice for good in a mindful way.

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When we imagine an image of our younger self, we are calling on experiential elements of our brain through imagination—already engaging ourselves in a way that’s different from the regular thinking process. Self-talk also engages parts of the brain outside of the normal cognitive process: a part of us is listening to the voice talking and can really feel as though a dialogue is happening.

As I explore in my book, beyond just diffusing toxic regret, self-talk and imagery are powerful tools for building motivation, deepening self-esteem, and overcoming personal obstacles. Give them a try. You have nothing to lose but regret!