Letting Go of Regrets Over Parenting Mistakes
"It is not a bad thing that children should occasionally, and politely, put parents in their place."
—Colette
If you're not yet a parent, I will guarantee you will someday make a mistake in parenting. If you're already a parent, you know you've made a few. It goes with the territory. Unfortunately, human nature being what it is, if we get caught in the expectation that we should be perfect parents, we can create a huge pile of regrets by the end of "The Parenting Game."
We regret the things we wish we hadn't said or done and things we wish we had. We regret we weren't as effective as we would like in setting limits. We regret we didn't send our child to private school, or maybe we regret that we did. We regret we didn't encourage our children to do better, or maybe we can see that we've pushed them too hard and they refuse now to live up to their potential. We regret we didn't work harder at our marriage and go to counseling when there was time and now our children are suffering. We regret we didn't stop drinking long before we did. The list of potential regrets is endless.
Some parents spend little time concerned about their mistakes. Other of us spend much too much time. Why? The reason, I think, is fairly simple. We may have realized we would make some mistakes, but we didn't expect these particular ones, which in retrospect seem serious enough to continue worrying about. I say this from very personal experience. In fact, after struggling with guilt and regret when a son developed alcoholism and was homeless for several years, I wrote a book, Letting Go of Our Adult Children: When What We Do Is Never Enough, to help my clients and others deal with the regret of having children who chose to live a lifestyle that is not the one we expected they would choose, whether or not our expectation was realistic.
Our minds return again and again to what "might" have been, "could" have been, or "should" have been. We replay the images that connect us to the events we now regret. Rather than getting rid of these images, our constant ruminations only give them fuel to grow ever more persistent.
Fortunately, there is a way out of this dilemma. It is based on the premise that you can potentially think a thousand things and have available in your mind's eye a thousand images, but you can only think one thought or hold one image at a time. Consequently, if you are fully focused on images of "what is" and "what can be," it is impossible to focus at the same time on images of what was or could have been. Therefore, letting go of regrets involves the creation of images for releasing the past and then welcoming the future.
The following is a method many people have used to move fairly quickly from regret to letting go—whether their regret was clearly their own fault, the responsibility of another person who promised something and didn't follow through, or the result of uncontrollable circumstances.
Get Ready . . .
Accept that things are the way they are.
You may want to live in San Francisco, but if you haven't yet made the move, it won't help to get around your present town if you use a map of the place you would rather be. Acknowledging you are where you are is essential. Even if you're lost, it helps to admit it.
Practice letting go of something small.
It takes courage to let go of really, really big regrets, like failing to get your child diagnosed early, when there was a chance that medical attention could have prevented a permanent disability. So if you have trouble with letting go of a large issue like that, it's often a good idea to start small and work your way up. In fact, I recommend you think of something right now that is a small-to-moderate-sized regret you are pretty sure you are ready to get off your plate; perhaps your decision to not have him attend a summer camp, and for which he keeps reminding you was something he really wanted to do. Once you experiment with the technique, you may want to try it on something larger.
Acknowledge the role you played, though unintentional, in the failure of your dreams.
We're able to move much more quickly, and permanently, past regrets when we can admit that things didn't turn out as we expected because of something we did, or failed to do. Only psychopaths have no regrets. They never look back or learn from their behavior. The rest of us can.
Forgive yourself and others.
I suspect one reason we hold onto regrets is that some of us find it hard not to be perfect. I say this as a recovering perfectionist who knows a bit about this trait. However, I have learned a thing or two about forgiveness of our imperfections. As I remind my clients all the time, you didn't wake up each morning when you were parenting your children and intend to make a mistake. You did the best you knew how at that particular moment in time, even though today you would make very different decisions. Besides, forgiving ourselves and others releases guilt and energy we previously used to beat ourselves up. Forgiveness allows love to flow more easily. Most of all, forgiveness makes us happier people—and happier people aren't focused on the past.
Get Set . . .
Is there a lesson in there somewhere?
I think it's particularly important to emphasize this point because it seems to me that there's a mechanism within the human condition that encourages us to hold onto regrets that we haven't yet learned from. Certainly that has been true for me. And after I'm able to articulate the lesson within the negative situation in which I find myself, sometimes one in which I have had a not-significant hand in creating, I find it much easier to move on.
Decide why you want to let go of your regret.
Just as it helps to remember the lesson you need to learn, it helps to reinforce your decision to let go if you can say why you want to put the regret behind you. Here are some examples. "I'm just plain tired of going over and over something I no long can do anything about." "I could sure use the energy I'm expending on regret in more productive ways." So the question for you at this moment is, why do you want to release the regret you've chosen to let go?
Choose a symbol or picture that represents the burden of your past.
How do you experience your regret? What image comes to your mind when you ruminate on what was not, but you wish had been? Examples might be a picture of you and your partner in happier times . . . a picture of your child being held by your ex before the divorce . . . the diploma your child never got . . . a calendar with 365 identical pages saying, "He left me!" (or any other statement you keep repeating to yourself over and over again) . . . a heavy rope that ties you down to some error in the past . . . anything that keeps you thinking of your regret more than you would like.
Turn a piece of paper into an object for releasing the past.
You can do this step in your imagination or in reality. After you've read to the end of the article, you may know which way can work best for you. In either case, I suggest you choose a paper in a color you really don't particularly like. Next, on this paper write the lesson you've learned and the reason why you want to let go of your regret. Then draw your symbol or picture.
Now you have an internal image (or a piece of reality, if you are actually doing this) of your lesson, reason, and symbol that can be the vehicle through which you can let go of your regret.
Go !
Plan a ceremony in which you will get rid of the paper.
There are many possibilities. You could put the paper into a shredder and watch it cut it into a zillion pieces. How about just flushing it down the toilet or burning it? Then too, you could always get a shovel and bury it! But be careful you don't turn around and put a marker to let you know where it is. That would make it too easy to dig up again!
Acknowledge your readiness to let go.
As you think about how you will let go of the paper and the regret it represents, I recommend you plan to say something right before doing it. The sentence I generally suggest is, "I am ready to release my regret that . . ." and then complete the sentence. For example, you might say, "I am ready to release my regret that I didn't treat my child more fairly." Or, it might be something like, "I am ready to release my regret that my child has not done what I wanted her to do." Or, "I am ready to release my regret that I didn't spend more time with my children and less on work." You can say this either to yourself (if you might be embarrassed by having someone hear you) or out loud (in which case, you might even shout it).
Say good-bye.
You're ready, you're set, and now it's time to do it! As you take the real or imaginary paper and prepare to get rid of it by whatever means you've chosen, first use the sentence that indicates you're ready to do it and then add a simple "Good-bye regret" . . . "Good-bye dream" . . . "Good-bye expectation."
Embrace your freedom.
As you release the paper and watch it disappear -- taking the image of your regret with it -- let yourself fully experience the inner peace and calm that comes from giving up regrets and accepting life exactly as it has turned out to be.
See the sidebar for how you can move on from here, opening potentially greater possibilities for your whole family in the future.
SIDEBAR TO ABOVE ARTICLE:
Welcome the Future
Once you have used the suggestions for turning away from burdensome regrets of the past recommended in the article on the left, now you need to have the optimism of a farmer, who, in the springtime, when the rich earth is ready, plows the fields and sows the seeds which hold promise of new life. The seeds will mature if there are enough gentle rains and warm sunny days.
Just as the farmer doesn't have control over the conditions needed for the seeds to grow properly, neither can you predict if all your plans will come true. Nevertheless, without setting your sights on a future goal, you won't be able to get there, even if the conditions turn out to be just right.
Therefore, to plant your own seeds of hope, consider what you would like to do with your newly released energy. You might want to move in a whole new direction that would not have been possible when you clung to regrets of the past. Or you may choose to simply make time each day to appreciate what you have right now.
In any case, what could be your goal, the seed you can plant for the rest of your parenting days, no matter how long that future may be or whether conditions will be perfect for growing your seed into a dream?
When you know what that goal will be, reinforce your turn from the past to the future with a sentence or two. Just as you used words to help you bury, burn, tear up, flush, or in some other way get rid of the past, there are words you can use to help welcome the possibility that you will be a better parent in the future, for you have learned the lesson of the past. Continuing with the farming metaphor, you might even think of these words as the fertilizer that can make the seed of your intentions grow.
The following are examples of words that can strengthen your resolve to change hope into reality.
"I look forward to spending less energy feeling guilty about the past.". . . "I welcome the opportunity of accepting my child just as she is and not as I expected her to be." . . . "I want to use what I have learned from my mistakes to make wise decisions in the future." . . . "I intend to use whatever talents, energy and life I am given to make a difference in the lives of others, perhaps with my grandchildren."
A New and Powerful Piece of Paper
My final suggestion in the process of letting go of regrets involves another piece of paper. This should be of a color you like very much, for on it you will write what you intend to do. You might even want to add a symbol or picture that represents your goal. Then put that paper where you will see it every day. Let it remind you that you have chosen to live a life without regret.
By the way, don't worry if your old regret pops up from time to time. Since you've given so much thought in the past to your regrets, different places in your brain have stored those images. That's why seemingly unrelated thoughts can trigger old images. What you can now do when the images are brought to mind, therefore, is to replace those old ones with the new ones you created when going through this process. For really huge regrets, you may need to repeat the process several times. Each time you'll be laying down new, more positive images to replace the old, negative images.
Keep your new paper where you can see it and always remember this . . .
While holding in your mind a powerful image of what the future COULD be, you cannot also—at that same moment—hold images of what MIGHT have been!
© Copyright 1993, Revised 2005, Arlene F. Harder, MA, MFT