Scared of Having Regrets?

#TransparentTuesdays

Hi friend,

Many of my clients struggle with making decisions, and when we dig into why that is, they often report feeling paralyzed by a fear of regret.

While there are many factors that go into having a hard time making decisions, this fear of regret is an interesting one to me. After all, it’s normal and appropriate to take potential future regrets into consideration when making big life decisions, but in my experience we don’t tend to consider all potential regret pathways equally.

Instead, we tend to give far more consideration and weight to the “potential regret pathways” that society teaches us to be concerned with.

For example, society tends to teach women that we should be very afraid of regretting not having children. 

“Who will take care of you when you get old?”

“What if later on you feel unfulfilled, or like you missed out?”

“What if the end of your reproductive years comes, and you wish you’d had children?”

And… sure. Yes. Those are valid considerations. But what about the other side of this equation, which nobody ever brings up? What if you regret having children?

• What if you regret having children because you discover motherhood isn’t fulfilling for you, after all? 

• Or because you struggle to find yourself again after the kids are born, and feel resentful of your semi-permanent reduction of bodily agency, freedom, free time/alone time, or pre-kid identity? 

• What if you would never have chosen to have kids if you’d known how little support you’d have, how hard it would be, or that your partner would end up not pulling their fair share? 

• What if you regret being tied for the rest of your life to an ex-partner you can’t stand?

Now, I’m not trying to tell you what you should or shouldn't do here. Only you can know if parenthood is a good choice for you, and only you can know which regrets are more or less likely for you specifically, and which regrets you could or couldn’t live with.

But I am trying to draw your attention to the fact that every single decision comes with the potential for regret in at least two opposite directions: regret for having done it, and regret for not having done it. Far more often than not, however, people tend to talk about and worry about only one of those directions.

Back to the motherhood example, women who choose to live child-free are constantly asked if they worry they’ll regret their decision. But if a woman tells you they’re trying to get pregnant, almost nobody would ever dare ask the same question!

Why? Because our society teaches us to falsely assume two things:

1. Most women eventually want children, so the odds are higher that you would regret not having children, compared to having them.

2. Having children is so innate to a woman’s biological and emotional sense of purpose and fulfillment that the regret of not having children would be more traumatic and distressing than the regret of having them. 

Of course, there may be some statistical rationality to these assumptions, given that most people do want/have kids at some point, but these assumptions are completely skewed by the way certain people do and don’t feel safe and empowered to talk honestly about their experiences. 

In other words, there are lots of parents who love their kids… but if they could go back and do it all over knowing what they know now, they’d stay child free. These people know it’s not socially acceptable to say such things, however, because people would judge them as terrible parents and people. 

On the other hand, it’s pretty socially acceptable to talk about how painful it is to not be able to have children, either due to infertility, age, or other reasons. 

All of this is to say that we tend to hear stories that uphold and reinforce existing social norms and biases, not because those stories are more true or abundant, but because everyone navigating those social norms and biases knows what’s considered acceptable to share.

And that might give us all the impression that society is right, and the risk of regretting something, like not having kids, is a serious and scary one. But it actually doesn’t mean anything— both because it doesn’t accurately represent the statistics, and (more importantly) because statistics don’t actually mean a damn thing for any one individual! 

Think about it this way: if you loved art with a ferocious passion, and told your parents you wanted to go to art school, they might have been worried you would “regret it,” and said that you should get a communications or business degree instead. 

Now, your parents in this situation would probably have been under the impression that statistically speaking, people with business degrees have better lives than people who go to art school. They would have been thinking about the financial struggles you might face as an artist, and how it might be difficult to live a comfortable life, attract a high quality partner, and buy a house— all things that they associated with a happy, well-lived life.

But what they wouldn’t have been taking into account is YOU. 

They wouldn’t have been considering that your definition of a happy, well-lived life might look completely different than theirs, and that struggling financially might have been well worth it in your eyes, to live a life centered around art, beauty, freedom, creativity, and passion.

And the thing is, even if they were “right” about what most people need to feel happy and fulfilled, they wouldn’t have necessarily been right about what YOU needed to feel happy and fulfilled.

Only you could have known that. 

But how could you have even properly considered that question when everyone was telling you to think about how you might regret going to art school? And more importantly, how could you have fairly considered your options when people weren’t at least also talking about how you might also regret not going to art school?

Because, again, all decisions have the potential for regret in at least two opposing directions, right?

Which means there was just as real of a possibility that you would take everyone’s advice and get a business degree… then wake up fifteen years later stuck in a unfulfilling job with bills to pay, filled with regret that your life took such a turn for the mundane, the practical, the boring. 

What if taking your parent’s advice meant that you would have to spend the rest of your life trying to push away the little voice deep down in your soul that whispers “but what about art?” 

What I’m saying is that sure, you might regret going to art school. But you may also regret not going—and nobody talks about that.

It’s the same with all decisions.

While there is a potential for regret no matter what we choose, society often has an idea of which way we should choose (ie: the “right” decision), and it coerces us into doing so by reminding us only of the potential regret from what it sees as the “wrong” decision. 

And being the sensitive, empathic, and practical people we are, this tactic often works. 

Because when you only hear stories of other people’s pain, regret, and longing in one direction, you start to second guess what you would otherwise have known, deep down, to be true for you.

Maybe you knew in your bones that you wanted a divorce, but kept trying and trying and trying, because you heard stories from people who regretted “giving up too soon.” 

Maybe you felt a pull to an impractical dream like quitting your cushy job to travel for a year, or training to compete in a new sport, or moving somewhere you’ve never been… until you heard stories of people who regretted taking the time away from their careers, their families, their responsibilities, their communities. 

Maybe you realized you wanted to go no-contact with a problematic family member, until your mind was changed by stories of how people would give anything for just one more hug, or one more conversation, with a family member who passed away.

This all makes sense, and I’m not saying we shouldn’t consider the possibility of having regrets when making big life decisions. 

But I am saying we should at least equally consider the possibility of regret in both directions, and always place a higher value on trusting our intuition.

Statistics and societal pressure should never be allowed to override our own deepest body wisdom and authentic knowledge of who we are, what we want and value, what’s most likely to cause us pain, and the type of regret that would be most distressing to us specifically. 

Big hug,

Jessi

PS: If you struggle with making decisions, trusting yourself, or listening to your intuition and body wisdom, this is one of my specialities— apply for coaching with me here!