Gemma Speck

That isn't regret.

The missing piece here that we're seeing in these examples is self-blame.

You can have counterfactuals, but if you don't blame yourself, you don't have regret.

Regret is what happens when you look at that better-imagined outcome, that upward counterfactual, and you think, okay, that was on me, like, that was my fault.

Studies on this show exactly that.

Imagining a better outcome is one thing.

when you tie that better outcome directly to your own actions, those evaluations become really bitter and they become really painful.

For example, a study from 2018 from researchers at the University of New England, they looked at a sample of over 140 individuals and they asked them to complete a survey about symptoms of depression, symptoms of anxiety, and then they also had them rank and rate past regret.

and regret intensity and how much they had to say or they had the opportunity to correct that situation.

What the researchers found was that having greater regret

did not correlate to being more depressed or unhappy.

Having greater regret that you blamed yourself for and that you felt like you could have done something about, that was where mental health went bad or depression really began to crop up more frequently in the participants.

So what exactly do people regret the most?

You may remember I did a full episode on this a while back titled The 20 Regrets People Have About Their 20s.

I asked 5,000 people, what is the thing you regret the most about your 20s?

And the biggest answers were, number one, focusing too much on romantic love or staying in an unsuitable relationship for too long.

Number two, worrying too much about what others thought of me.

Number three, not fighting more for friendships.

Number four, not investing sooner.

And then another big theme, not going to college, but equally not.