In this episode, I dive into regret and how to forgive ourselves when past decisions. I answer a listener question who regrets telling the truth and questions whether it was the right thing to do. I offer guidance on how to process our feelings of regret and how to let go of past burdens.

Timestamps

• Introduction: 0:15
• Listener Question: 2:04
• Outro: 26:36

For episode show notes, please visit: https://www.newviewadvice.com/107

For more free resources and to learn more about New View Advice, visit: https://www.newviewadvice.com/

I am no longer accepting new questions for the podcast, but if you’d like to reach out, you can still email me at newviewadvice@gmail.com. I’d love to hear from you!

Thank you for listening and for your support throughout this journey!

Sending you so much love!

Welcome to New View Advice. I'm your host, Amanda Durocher, and I invite you to

join me here each week as I offer advice on how to move through whatever

problem or trauma is holding you back from living life to the fullest. Let's get

started. Hi,

beautiful soul. My name is Amanda Durocher. And if you're new here, this is New

View Advice. This is a healing centered advice podcast where I offer

guidance for the healing journey. I don't believe I have all the answers you seek.

I believe you have all the answers. You just may need a New View and

a little help along the way. Thank you for joining me for today's episode. In

this episode, we are talking about how to forgive ourselves when we feel regret.

I think everyone here can relate to feeling regret over decision or action

in their life. All of us have made mistakes in which we could take an

action back or handle a conversation differently or change something that has

happened in the past. Sometimes we're able to move on quickly. We're able to say,

oops, that was a mistake. Oops, I woulda handled that differently. But other times,

these regrets won't go away, and they can end up feeling like heavy

burdens that we live with. In this episode, I am answering a question from a

listener who is living with many regrets, and they've felt this way for many

months now, and they're having trouble moving on. And one of these regrets

includes feeling regret for telling the truth. I think this is a great

question because I've actually had a few conversations this week about

truth, when to tell the truth, and feeling regret after telling the truth. So

we're gonna talk all about that today. My intention for this episode is to assist

you in forgiving yourself and letting go of regret, learning how to process

the difficult feelings that often go with regret, such as guilt, shame, and

more, and to help you to be kinder to yourself as you navigate these

regrets. Before we jump into today's listener question, I wanted to

mention that if you haven't checked out my website yet, I invite you to check

it out after this episode for more free resources for the healing journey, including

journal prompts, meditations, and more. You can find all

things newbie advice at newviewadvice.com/107.

So with that, let's jump on into talking about regret.

I went to another state for a work trip this summer and downloaded a dating

app there to meet new people. I matched with a guy who I had an

instant connection with and we fell in love. We were so obsessed with each other

and I practically lived with him for the 2 months I was there. But because

I wasn't looking for anything long term, I was meeting other people on the side.

We told each other that we would be physically exclusive, but I didn't keep that

promise from my end, and I lied to him. At the end of my work

trip, we decided that we were going to try long distance, but he had his

suspicions of what I was up to during our time together. I felt so guilty

for what I had done behind his back and for lying to him that I

came clean about everything. He told me that I was a horrible person and that

he didn't love me anymore and had no desire for a future with me after

learning the truth. It's been a few months since then, and I'm still devastated.

And I've seen that he's moved on, has new friends, and is living a fulfilling

life. I'm happy for him, but I'm shattered knowing I could've been a part of

that had I not messed up so horribly. Because this caused such a special

bond in my life to break, I'm regretting telling him the truth even though I

knew it was the right thing to do. How do I understand that telling the

truth was ultimately the right decision? And how do I get past my

guilt, shame, self hatred, and the grief of losing someone so special because

of my actions? How do I remind myself that I am worthy of love and

will have a special connection again? Thank you so much for this question. I think

this is a great question that I know so many people can relate to. As

I mentioned in the intro, I think everybody can relate to feeling regret

throughout their life. So I just wanna honor that for you and for anyone else

feeling regret right now and feeling burdened by those regrets. And I just

wanna take a minute to honor you. I think that to me, it sounds like

you're incredibly hard on yourself. You were called a horrible person and then throughout the

question you called yourself a horrible person. You are not a horrible

person. You made a mistake. We all make mistakes.

And mistakes can be especially hard when we hurt someone

else. And it sounds like you hurt somebody who you had very strong

feelings for. And that is not easy, but it

does not make you a horrible person. You are not defined by one moment

in time, and we'll talk more about that. But you are not

defined by that moment. And I think that it says a lot about

you that you're looking to grow from this experience, that you're being self reflective about

this experience, that you're learning more about yourself from this experience.

That's really all we can ask of ourselves when tough

things happen is how can we grow from this. So much of life

is a perspective shift. You know, we either feel like life is happening to us

or we're cocreating with life and we're like, okay. I'm here. I'm showing up.

Show me how I can grow from this. Show me how I can change. Show

me what I can learn. Show me how I can show up better next time.

And that's all okay. I think that especially

when we're young, we want to just be perfect,

and we expect ourselves to act really well. And if we don't, then we punish

ourselves. And when you get older, you just learn that life is

full of mistakes. Nobody's perfect, and you're able to

offer yourself more grace. So here, I just want to invite you

to offer yourself more grace because you do not deserve to be burdened

by this mistake for your entire life. So you've described

here feeling some really hard feelings such as guilt,

shame, self hatred, and grief. It's a lot of

heaviness that you're feeling. Take a moment to honor

how hard all those feelings are. Guilt, shame,

self hatred, and grief. I have felt all those

feelings throughout my life and those are really heavy

feelings to have. And to have all of those at once bubbling to the

surface, oof, be kind to yourself. Be kind to yourself. Most people

who feel those feelings shove them down. They shove them deep into their soul,

into their body, and they refuse to look at them. You are here looking

to be intentional. So part of being intentional about looking at

difficult feelings like that is being kind to yourself and understanding

that the work you're doing, the inner work is work and that it takes

time but that it's also you're doing something. Right? So many of us who do

inner work feel like, oh my god, I'm not doing anything because it's all internal.

It's not external. At least that's how I've felt throughout my life. And I want

you to take a moment to slow down and honor that and make sure you're

taking care of yourself throughout this period. Are you getting enough sleep? Are

you eating well? Are you exercising? Those sound like such basic things,

but when we're doing inner work, it's so important to take care of ourselves

because it will help you to be kind to yourself and to

remember you are not a horrible person when you go back to basics and you

take care of yourself. And so I also wanna mention here

that in your question you mentioned that he is all happy now and

he's living this fulfilling life. One thing that I think is another way to

take care of yourself and to help your mental health here because it sounds like

your mental health might be impacted because our mental health is always impacted by

heavy emotions such as self hatred that leads to a lot of negative self talk.

And one thing that may help you is to set some social media boundaries. I

mentioned this in a lot of episodes, but social media is not real

life. I had a hell of a past couple years.

I talk about it all the time on the podcast. I'm only mentioning that because

I could get on social media, and I could make my life look so good.

I've traveled all over the world. I've gone to places that people dream

about going over the past couple years. I could make it look like my life

has been so good. It hasn't been. It's been really, really hard. And

I say that because social media is not real and people choose and curate

their feed to look the way they want it to look, which is

totally fine. There's no judgment. We just have to remember when we're looking at it

that we're not seeing the full picture of somebody's life. And

so he may look happy. He may be happy. He may not be

happy. But it sounds like the regrets for you are building

by seeing these pictures of him and creating stories because

that's what it is. When we see somebody's social media feed and we make judgments

about their life based on that feed, we're actually writing a story

that may or may not be true. When I read that in

your question, the mentioning of how his life looks really happy

now, I was reminded of that song breaking up was easy in the nineties

by Sam Hunt. I don't know if you've heard it. It's a country song. But

the song's all about how it must have been easier

before we went on these rabbit holes of seeing what people are up to, before

social media, before the Internet, before you could just see pictures of how happy

somebody looks. Must have been easier to go through breakups. And I agree with that.

I bet it was. And I invite you to set boundaries with

yourself. It sounds like you and this person are no longer in contact.

So I think it's okay for you to block them, to unfollow them. I know

that that can be really hard, but I really think that

it's important for us to disengage

from those type of triggers that are just gonna make you feel worse as you're

healing. Imagine you had a broken bone. You wouldn't constantly

irritate that bone and hit that bone. You would allow it to heal.

You would give it space and time in order to heal. And so I think

it's the same way when we're healing from breakups is it's okay to

disengage from the person you used to be with. It doesn't mean you have to

disengage forever either. Maybe you just need a social media break and

you need to disengage your accounts for a little bit. I rarely go on social

media at this point. I found it incredibly unhelpful for my mental

health. I was constantly comparing myself to everyone else. And

now that I'm not on it, never been happier. So I'm personally

a fan of setting boundaries with social media. So I just wanted to mention

that up front here because I think having these pictures front of

mind and seeing what this person's up to

is contributing to your feelings of regret. So now I

wanna talk about your question. How do you begin to understand that telling the truth

was ultimately the right decision? And I think in your case,

telling the truth was the right decision because you know that it was for you.

You said that in your question. You know that it was the right decision for

you, and I think it's telling that you felt guilty before because it meant

that your heart and your body were feeling guilty. You would've

continued to feel guilty if you had never told the truth. So say you were

in that life right now, you were in those photos, you would be living with

this regret still. Right? You would regret what you had done and not telling

the truth. So to me, it sounds like the situation where damned if you

do, damned if you don't, where you were going to feel guilty

and likely feel these feelings of regret either way. And I

wanted to honor you here because you chose to do a difficult thing. You

chose to tell the truth, and that is often very

difficult in a situation like this. Not everybody would choose to tell

the truth. And you knew that your heart was telling you to tell the

truth. I want you to honor that. I want you to not punish your heart

for asking you to do something difficult. Because oftentimes our

hearts do encourage us to do difficult things because that's where we

grow. That's where we learn. That's where we become the people we

desire to be. You know? When I think about who I desire to

be, it's not an external thing. I don't desire to be a millionaire or I

don't desire to be famous or I don't desire these external things.

I desire to be a good person. I desire to go to bed at

night and know that I did my best. I desire to feel

creative. And for me to feel creative, I have to feel like I'm enough. I

have to feel like I'm worthy. I have to love myself. My

creativity comes from a love of self. And I love myself when I

am aligned with who I desire to be, not with the

mistakes of my past. Not by making decisions from a wounded

fearful place, but making decisions from a loving place. It's taken me a

long time to get here and I've gotten here by 1 by 1

making difficult choices, having difficult conversations, and

again and again forgiving myself for the mistakes I have

made. And I think here, something that happened, that happens a

lot of times when we tell the truth, is that you told the truth and

then by being honest you were left feeling like the bad guy. You felt like

you were punished for doing the right thing. And I want you to know

you're not alone in this. This is something I've talked about with many people,

and this is something that's also true for trauma survivors. I know

there's a lot of trauma survivors here who listen to the podcast. And I wanna

honor this because I watched a bunch of documentaries this summer about

sexual assault and sexual violence and what I was

struck by was how many people said, I

told the truth and then I was punished. And that is

so often what happens when people tell the truth because

they're telling somebody what they don't wanna hear or they're disrupting

a norm. And in your situation, you told the truth because

you knew that in order to build a better relationship with

this person, you wanted to have it built on trust.

You wanted it to be built on honesty. And you knew that there

was a crack in the foundation and in order to repair that crack you had

to tell the truth. And then it kind of blows up in your face when

he doesn't forgive you. And, unfortunately, that sometimes happens

when we choose to tell the truth. Sometimes it doesn't go the way we

want because the other person does not like our truth or they have

free will to choose a different way. And, this makes me think of the sentiment

that people say the truth will set you free. And the truth is that the

truth will not always set you free. It does not always feel that way that

the truth will set you free. At least it's not immediate. But

I do think the truth sets us free. What that statement really

means is that when we feel called to tell our truth, it may lead

us down another windy path, but in the

end, we will have that self respect and that self love

from being truthful and aligned with who we are. But it's not always

easy to tell the truth. As I mentioned, it's often a difficult choice. So again,

I just really ask you to honor yourself here and the decision you made

instead of punishing yourself. You are who is punishing you

now. You're beating yourself up for it with

the replaying in your head of the regrets rather than accepting

that this person is no longer in your life. And I don't mean that

harshly. I just mean that you made a mistake and you

owned up to that mistake, which is honorable. But that does not always

go the way we want it to, which is why so many people would choose

a different choice. But again, you are aligning with who you want to

be. And in your next relationship, which spoiler alert, yes, you are

worthy of love. Yes, you will find love. And in your next relationship, you will

be able to show up in that relationship in a new way and in a

more mature way. Because that's really what's happening here is you're growing and you're becoming

more mature. You know, your question reminded me of a friendship I had to end

this summer. I had to be honest with somebody that the friendship was not serving

me, and it came out of left field for them. They were very surprised. They

were very hurt. And I felt really guilty before I told

them. I felt really guilty after. I I thought the truth was gonna set me

free and I was gonna feel a burden lifted the minute I told this

person I couldn't be friends with them anymore. That was not the case. I felt

really bad. I felt like a horrible person. I felt like I did

this horrible thing and that I broke this person's heart and it was all my

fault. And I had to over and over again remind

myself that I ended the friendship even though it was really hard

because it was the right thing to do. That in order for

me to show up each day and love myself, I had to be truthful about

this relationship. And, yes, my heart asked me to do something hard, and it would've

been easier to ghost this person or it would've been easier to continue a wishy

washy friendship where

I wasn't honest with this person. That probably would've been easier. But in the long

run, it wouldn't have been easier. It would've been harder and more burdensome

on me. And that guilt and those feelings of

being in a friendship that wasn't serving me, that would've kept building

on me. I share that because it was a hard situation. I had

to move through all the feelings that went with it. But it was the right

choice, and how I forgave myself for that

situation was seeing the whole situation clearly.

So that's what I want to talk about next is how can we forgive

ourselves. And oftentimes, self forgiveness comes in layers.

I've found that true forgiveness isn't like a switch we can turn on and

off. It comes when we are truly ready to let go of the

past and the mistakes that we've made. And forgiveness is

much easier and it comes easier when we understand why

we did what we did and why we feel the way we feel. So, I

invite you to really become aware of why this situation played out the way

it did. Why did you say you would be physically exclusive and then

continue being physical with other people? I know you likely feel really bad

about this. It sounds like you've had some shame around the situation, but I

invite you to be curious with yourself. Be honest with yourself. If you

wanna be an honest person, it often starts with being honest

with you first. So many of us lie to ourselves about why we do

the things we do. We live in denial of how our actions impact others and

the consequences because we are often denying a truth within us.

And this truth could be a fear of getting hurt. It could be a

fear of getting hurt first. So maybe you're physical with other

people because if he was keeping the door open, so were you.

Or maybe you have a fear of vulnerability or maybe you've experienced trauma

in the past. But begin to become curious about why this

situation played out the way it did. If I'm to bring it back to the

friendship example, I found myself in a friendship that really wasn't

serving me and I had to ask myself how I ended up there.

How did I end up in this friendship that just wasn't good for me?

And the truth was, I met this person when I was really lonely and

I wasn't very intentional about going into the friendship and

I had to see that. I had to see that there were red flags from

the beginning, but because I was feeling lonely at the time,

I ignored the red flags. I also saw that this person

was very similar to a family member I have. So I

had taken on this role in this friendship that I had also been playing in

a family structure, And it wasn't until I looked at that role in my

family structure of feeling less than to someone

that I saw this pattern so clearly in this friendship, and I

realized I had to let this friendship go. But throughout this process

of breaking up with this friend and ending this friendship, I had to forgive myself

over and over again because I had to see that many of the

decisions I made were unconscious and I wasn't able to make new

decisions until I was conscious. And that's so often

what happens in our life. When we make mistakes, often times we are acting from

an unconscious place, an unintentional place. We weren't thinking about

the consequences of our actions and so we have to forgive ourselves

for that. And we have to be kind to ourselves like we would be to

someone outside of us and say to ourselves, hey, that was a mistake.

But it's okay. You didn't know better in that moment.

You may have thought you should have, but for x, y, and z

you didn't know better. Or maybe, hey, we did know better,

but we chose this out of fear. And by becoming curious and bringing

awareness to the situation, you're going to be able to

see it with a bigger perspective, witness it rather than feel

like you're really in it. You know, that's what awareness does. It creates a

witness perspective where we're able to see ourselves in a new way.

Rather than feel consumed by our thoughts, we're able to take a step back

and see the situation, like I said, from a bigger perspective. And so I

find that that really helps with forgiveness. And so when you're

becoming curious with yourself about why this situation played out the way

it did, why you were lying, why you were physical with someone else, the

things you feel regret about, I invite you to become curious with yourself

if you have played out these patterns before. For example, in

my life, as a trauma survivor, one of my coping strategies is

escapism. So what that means is is I find ways to

escape my life, to run from my life, to flight from my life. It's a

fight or flight response. And I mention this here because so many

times when this escapism comes up, I have to become

aware. I have not always been aware of this. Okay? I still

struggle with becoming aware of my escapism tendencies.

So, for example, this summer, I talked about in last week's episode, I was

feeling very trapped in my life, and it was a trauma response showing

me a few things I had to look at. But throughout that whole process,

I wanted to get in my car and run away. I wanted to move to

Mount Shasta, give up all my responsibilities over and over again.

I honestly almost did. I had to be talked off a ledge by my therapist

multiple times. And it's funny because I had this

urge to self sabotage my life over and over again. My life

here in Scottsdale, that's where I live, is really good. I have a yoga

studio I love. I have a home I love. I have a loving partner.

I have friendships. I'm on the board of a nonprofit for sexual assault

survivors. I'm just gonna drop here. If you're in the Scottsdale Phoenix

area, check us out. Surviversrise.com. We host a lot of events here.

Moving on. But I share this because I wanted to run for my life and

I had to be so conscious not to. And I have had to

forgive myself for that. And that when things get really good,

my instinct is to get up and run. There have been times

that I have had to forgive myself for that tendency. You know, when I was

in my twenties, I used to do that in relation and in friendships. If friendships

got hard, I just ran. I just ghosted them. I just didn't speak to these

people anymore. I share this here because there are times where I could just judge

myself and be like, oh my god. I can't believe you abandoned that person. I

can't believe you just stopped talking to that person. You're a horrible person, Amanda.

Or I can say, dang. Why did I do that? Why did that

friendship end that way? I've had to forgive myself time and time again for many

mistakes I have made, but it is through forgiving myself and

looking at my mistakes that I grow and learn. I forgive myself for

those moments where I fall short of who I quote unquote think I should

be. Because this brings me back to you're not a horrible person and

you may have been called a horrible person, but nobody but you gets to

define you And, no one moment in time defines you.

And, he may always view you as a horrible person. That's a

hard truth about life. I look back at life and there were moments

when I drank too much where I'm like, those people are always gonna hate me

or they're always gonna think I'm a hot mess. That's not

true. That's not true for me, but they may always think that about me. And,

I can either torture myself by thinking, oh my god, what do these people think

about me? Or, I can focus on what do I think about me? Who am

I every day? What actions do I take to show myself daily

that I am not a horrible person? And oftentimes

this feeling of being horrible can also go back to childhood,

feeling like we weren't enough to our parents or in school or with friends

at that age. So I invite you to get curious with yourself and really look

at if the feelings you're having now stem back farther. The

last thing I wanna share is that the most important thing, as always, is please

be kind and compassionate with yourself. You do not deserve to hold onto

this forever. As I've said so many times throughout this episode we all make

mistakes and you do not deserve to berate yourself or punish

yourself. Let yourself off the hook for this one. Be kind to yourself.

You have to allow yourself to feel all your feelings, to be honest with

yourself, and if you choose you can learn from this, but

you also have to allow yourself to let this go. You do

not deserve to carry this burden forever. You are a beautiful

soul. You wouldn't be here if you weren't. It makes me sad

that the self reflective people and the empathic people in the world are

often the people who beat themselves up the most. There are so many people

who don't choose to learn from things. They just keep playing out the same

patterns or they keep hurting people and they don't care about the consequences.

You do. That says a lot about you. It says a lot

about your heart. It says a lot about the person you're going to grow and

to be. That's what life is. It's about growing.

We never stop. Isn't that so cool? We can learn and change and

grow throughout our entire life. That's exciting. We put so

much pressure on ourselves to be perfect right now, forever.

Ah. Oh my gosh. What pressure? To live our whole

existence perfect? Oh my gosh. I can't even handle that

pressure. I won't be tensed even saying that. I am so

imperfect. And that's what makes life interesting. So really be

kind to yourself. Offer yourself grace. Offer yourself compassion. When healing from

regrets and forgiving ourselves, we want to balance that

self awareness, being curious, feeling those feelings with

kindness and kind words to ourselves, encouraging ourselves we're not

horrible people, telling ourselves who we do want to be, reminding ourselves

that what we see on the internet isn't necessarily true, and

my mantra that I held onto all summer is that I will not always feel

this way. So when you find those hard feelings come up, just remind yourself, I

will not always feel this way. I will not always be here.

This too shall pass. And, before I wrap up this

question, I just want to remind you that you are worthy of love.

Everyone is worthy of love. And you will 100% have another

special connection. I have no doubt. So if that helps you, know

that Amanda has no doubt for you. And the next time you enter a relationship,

you won't be carrying around this guilt. You'll be more self confident, self

assured. You'll know your own strength because you'll see a challenge

you overcame. You know, that's another thing about mistakes is that

we build strength. We build self respect. We build self esteem

because we see ourselves overcome challenges. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's

actually beautiful. So I invite you to remind yourself every day that you're worthy of

love. And I'm gonna let you in on a secret. Many people, even in

relationships, don't feel worthy of love. So just because

you are single right now, it doesn't mean anything about you.

I'm 32, and I cried all summer because I

realized I'd been keeping Evan's love out. And I realized I felt

unworthy in so many ways. And I let his love in more and

more, and I continue to do that. And I've continued to do that for 13

years. I didn't get in a relationship and just feel worthy of love.

Through the relationship, I've had to open myself up to more and more love.

And I mention that here because feeling love and that worthiness of love

has been an inside job for me. I can really only let in as

much love as I love myself. And I am humbled by that

time and time again. And I want to remind you that because if

you're in a relationship or you're not in a relationship, it's an inside job. The

more you love you, the more you will feel that love in your life in

all relationships and all aspects. And all this

is done one step at a time. And so I know you're worthy of all

your heart's desires. You will find your person. You will find your people. And you

will find the love of your life. And I am sending you so much love

today. Thank you so much for this question.

Thank you so much for joining me for another episode of New View Advice. As

always, I am so grateful to here with you and to offer you a new

view on healing, and this week it was talking about regret. So everybody out

there, be kind to yourself. And if you enjoyed this episode, I invite you

to leave a 5 star review and subscribe to the podcast. Reviews

and star ratings and subscribers really help to grow

the podcast. So I am forever grateful for all your support and for

everyone who continues to come back each week and listen. So thanks again for

joining me for another episode of New VIew Advice. As always, I hope I was

able to offer you a new view on whatever you may be going through. Sending

you all my love. See you next time.