I Really Screwed Up. Now What?

Mistakes are a part of living. What we do with them makes all the difference.

Reviewed by Margaret Foley

Key points

• We make mistakes, both large and small, as we confront decisions throughout life.
• Research suggests that when we make mistakes, regret is predominantly tied to choice and responsibility.
• Unrealistic expectations about what could have been done differently make healing more difficult.

This is part one of a two-part series.

As human beings, we all make mistakes. From the time we are infants all the way through adulthood, the mistakes we make in life have the propensity to help us learn and grow if we are open to the lessons they deliver. Our mistakes run the gamut from small to large as we are met with decisions and actionable circumstances every day. Maybe you are experiencing this now? Perhaps you fired off an angry retort in an email, said something wounding to a friend or loved one, or something hurtful occurred that you are now struggling with—or maybe something unfathomable happened that has changed the course of everything. It is in this journey of life that we make decisions that can lead to mistakes. How we meet those instances can change our lives in far-reaching ways, affecting who we are, how we live, and even who we become.

When Mistakes Loom Large

Years ago a young student in his early 20s approached me after a college class I had been teaching and initiated a dialogue I won't soon forget. The topic we discussed in class had struck something in him. He began to recount a deep regret that took him a few minutes to articulate. His story began like this: He was 18 years old at the time and had been driving late one evening, running on a lack of sleep and weariness, trying to make it home. I heard the tremor in his voice as he described what happened next. Under duress from lack of sleep and low visibility, he didn't notice a person crossing the road. At this point in the story, the student went silent, and I could see the emotional toil, and I nodded that I understood. He paused, lingering, and said they died later that night. He was taken to court and charged with vehicular manslaughter.

He tried to convey the indescribable magnitude of what he felt about what happened, how the person who was hit reminded him of his brother, how if only he had stopped to rest everything would be different, and how utterly alone it felt to walk through such a thing at 18 years old. He teared up saying this to me. The regret he felt was visibly immense. In those first days after the accident, he said he didn't want to live. But the family of the young man who was hit forgave him and wanted him to live his life. He told me he was astounded that amidst their own grieving, they could extend such an act of kindness.

What he then told me was something I won't soon forget. The judge in charge of sentencing looked at him and told him that he could see the young man's regret, but so that he would never forget what he had done, he would pay a dollar a week to the court for an indefinite amount of time. The victim's family, he said, had pleaded with the judge not to render such a verdict because the young man would not be able to get on with his life, but the judge was insistent that this punishment would impart something important. So, the young man did as he was told.

Those were very dark times for him, he said. He then told me that the day eventually arrived when he didn't have to keep paying the court, as his time was resolved, but instead, he continued to pay it. In fact, he insisted on doing so as it was his only way to cope with the enormity of regret and pain he felt. Over the years, he also grew close with the victim's family and learned more about their deceased son. Standing there before me, the young man said his life was slowly getting better, knowing that there was more work to do internally.

Mistakes we make in life have no defined boundaries. But behind our mistakes lie the deeper aspects of internal functions. Let's take a closer look.

Decisions, Mistakes, and the Seeds of Regret

Mistakes as an outcome of faulty decisions have been shown through research to have a direct correlation with regret, and alternately, shame. Roese and Summerville (2005) have conducted research on this phenomenon and believe that although other contributive emotions like anger and sadness play a part, regret is still considered a predominant factor for its connection to choice and responsibility. However, shame and self-blaming derived from actions we may or may not take, and the desire to undo them, are considered neural signatures of regret. These are also demarcative criteria for differentiating regret from other decision-related emotions (Matarazzo et al., 2021).

Research also demonstrates a neural temporal pattern in the way we process mistakes that lead to regret. This has to do mainly with our appraisal of the circumstances surrounding such things. The central features of this appraisal system are personal agency and responsibility. These features have distinctive differentiating functions that aid us in filtering through reflective introspection regarding mistakes as we encounter them. But these aspects of our appraisal system take a hit when penetrated by regret, shame, and self-blame.

Hindsight Conflated With "Unrealistic Expectations"

Often in the transgression of mistakes, it is the "reflective position" we assume regarding the consequences of the said mistake that can perseverate. Researchers Zeelenberg & Pieters (2007) see this potential as well, as they note that regret “is a comparison-based emotion of self-blame" that is experienced when we see or "imagine" our present situation as being "better" had we decided differently. Psychological research has also expanded the economic conception of regret by highlighting that the comparison can occur not only at the factual level but also at the counterfactual level, through imagined outcomes and foregone potentials (Kahneman & Miller). And when we assign such unrealistic expectations to ourselves regarding what could have been done differently, the inability to heal is magnified.

Becoming Bigger Than Your Mistakes and Regrets

Mistakes come from actions taken, and so does living with them. Sometimes it requires tough first steps like attempting to help others hurt by them, if we can. But some of that also begins with us internally. Moving away from assigning unrealistic expectations and imagined outcomes in hindsight to the mistakes we may have made is the first step. Additionally, learning to incorporate mistakes as "experiences" helps cognitively alter perceptions. With this kind of thinking, we may not be able to undo the mistake, but we can learn from it. Both good and bad circumstance is the diversity in what we consider experience after all. How we choose to look at something is ultimately up to us.