Music.
67 of Waking Up to Narcissism. I am your host, Tony Overbay. I'm a licensed marriage and family
therapist, host of the Virtual Couch podcast, and several other podcasts coming soon to a podcast
network near you. So if you can go check out the show notes, there's a Linktree link that has all
of the latest information on how to sign up for the newsletter, how to find my $19 mini course for
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Relationships with emotionally immature or narcissistic people. And you can sign up for
that. Again, it's about $5 a month. And I do an episode there once a week, and I'm going to do
more content on there as well for the premium crowd. So that would be fantastic. Today, we're.
Going to talk about regret. I've got an article that I'm going to use as my muse, and we're also
going to, I'm going to read a poem. I read a poem in last week's episode and received a lot of good
good feedback from that too. People share in some big emotions, which I'm grateful
for. The poetry is something that I did not grow up listening to or reading and
definitely not participating in. My version of poetry really was it had to rhyme and I think I may have even done a joke last week about the, you know, how
the narcissist hears a poem and they say that's dumb, it doesn't even rhyme and I
realized, man, that was me. And of course what it felt like to be me in my younger years was not even taking the time to understand or be curious about a poem and
why someone expresses themselves the way that they do. So if someone finds themselves just
making an observation, there's a poem and a judgment, that's dumb, it doesn't rhyme,
that is a sign of emotional immaturity. So it is okay to not know something and to be
curious about it. The poem I want to read today comes from the Women's Private Facebook
group and there is a just a beautiful thread in there that talks, I put out a request for.
Anybody who has poems and there are a lot of them there. So I would love to make this
a regular feature of Waking Up to Narcissism. This person posted something after the poem
that I thought would be interesting to read before just to set the stage. They said that
this poem, the one I'm about to read, this was a few months after she had opened up her
heart to her spouse and she said this was also the last time. She said that he in essence
called her naive and delusional because she had explained when you hear this poem that.
She's really tired of being sad and depressed, and she wanted to find that little girl inside,
who could see the silver lining in even the most darkest of moments. But the feedback
that she received, unfortunately, was that when her husband heard that, he said, this
really makes me uncomfortable, makes me worry about you even more. And she said that he
went on to quote, which I would assume are some confabulated studies and statistics.
And she says, blah, blah, blah, that these are the people that feel this way and this
is why they fail and this is why he can't believe that she opened up and shared those
things because now he's really concerned.
And she said that was the day that she felt like her eyes opened wide and she realized
how often that he would do that, how often he would put her down when she talked about
her feelings or her hopes or her desires.
And she said the dam burst and the memories flooded of all the things that she had allowed
to happen in the relationship and the things that she had allowed herself to go through
in the relationship and that she had called it normal because up until that point,
that's what she felt like was love. So, with that said, let me read this poem.
She wrote, I want to get lost in the stars again. I want to marvel at the beauty of the natural
world again. I want to look up at the sky and actually see, feel, breathe, just be again.
It seems so long that the little girl inside of my soul, the very core of my being, had been
sleeping or suppressed. From the life I am living now, I want to feel the peace and joy inside my
soul again. When I see the delicate patterns in the petal of a rose, instead I glance,
then I let it pass my vision as if it weren't even worth the glance in the first place.
I seek peace in my heart, peace in my soul, peace in my being. I do not seek happiness,
only the joy that comes with peace of being, feeling, breathing, living. So much of me has
has been erased or silenced. I feel hollow and blank, numb and quiet, alone. The girl
who could sit and stare at the stars and feel the little electrical jolt in their stomach
and blood when a shooting star raced across the dazzling darkness is quiet now. The girl
that could be completely immersed in the beauty of a single leaf that had drifted from the
highest branches of the trees, swaying in the breeze, she cannot feel the little spark
of joy, of wonder, of beauty that that leaf had brought to her before.
All of this I miss in me.
Yet I have been told this is normal. That little girl is gone.
I'm told I need to grow up, let that go and move on because it's not who I am anymore.
I cannot accept this, but then have to wonder if the one who said this to me knows me better than I know myself.
I feel so confused at who I am anymore. I'm trying to find her, scrambling before it's too late, before she is nothing and
I become nothing.
Without her, I have to find me again. I have to live again.
Or I fear my soul will die, will sleep and never wake again.
Hollow, silent, and gone.
So even breaking down the poem, poetry, I felt such compassion when she said that all of this that she misses in her, that ability to honestly just be present and marvel in the glory of the universe, of God, of a creator, of a leaf floating down from the sky, of the stars in the sky.
So that is something that you absolutely can still take advantage of as an adult human being.
It's not childlike. It's just being and doing and appreciating and being in the moment.
But when she says that she misses that in her, that that little girl is gone, and she said,
I'm told right there, there's the genesis of our problem.
I've been told I need to grow up. Now, break that down.
An immature person, the husband in this situation, telling his wife,
his wife, you need to grow up. Again, no curiosity there. So if she's saying, I feel sad, I feel
depressed, I feel alone, I wish I could just go out and look at the stars again. The answer, the
way to connect with someone that is expressing that is to say, thank you so much for sharing
that. And what is that like? And when do you feel like you lost that ability and tell me more? And
how can we get it? And what can we do? How can I help you? How can I support you? Because I care
about you, not, well, you need to grow up, you need to move on. Because she says, it's not who I am
anymore. She says, I can't accept that. But is the one telling me this, does this person know me
better than I know myself? The answer to that is no. The absolute truth of that is no. If you are
in a position where you are wondering if other people know you better than yourself, your feelings
have been suppressed, your emotions have been suppressed, and you have not been in a healthy
relationship, whether it's with a parent, whether it's with an adult child, whether it's with a
sibling, whether it's an organization, a company, a job, a religious institution, and especially in
a marriage or a relationship. The way to live and to grow is to be asked, what is your experience?
How do you feel? What would you like? What do you think? None of those have to do with,
you shouldn't, you need to, do you know what this means to me? There's no curiosity.
So that poem just speaks volumes.
Okay, let's get to the article that we're going to talk about today. It is how to move past regret.
This is by Cian Ferguson and medically reviewed by Bethany Juby, who has her doctorate in
psychology. And this is on psychcentral.com. Again, how to move past regret. So I want to read
and then in essence, react and give some commentary. And not in the, this is the dumbest
article kind of way, but in the thank you for putting this article out because it brings up
of so many thoughts and emotions.
So Cian says, regret is a common feeling that has both negative and positive
effects, knowing how to move past and learn from them is key to your overall wellbeing.
And I will talk a little bit more in depth about that moving past. What does that mean?
So Cian says, regrets a feeling based on the idea that you could have acted
differently to produce a more desirable outcome.
So let's start there. Regret is absolutely normal.
And when we say, man, if only I had done this,
then things would have been different.
We start moving into the world of acceptance because the reality is, yeah,
now we don't know what those outcomes would have been, but had I done a lot of different things,
that there would definitely be different outcomes.
Before becoming a therapist, when I was coming out of the high tech field,
I interviewed to be a pharmaceutical sales rep as well as a financial planner
and got a little bit far along the process of the pharmaceutical sales rep.
Actually, I think I talked about this on a virtual couch episode.
I found a letter and some stuff that I didn't even realize I still had from Apple Computer.
And I had gone a little bit far down looking at this director of marketing position after
I came out of 10 years in the computer software business.
And I was devastated that I did not get that job.
It was close to my house. I use Apple products.
I had worked for Apple Macintosh Computer Software Company for 10 years.
So that was, I was making my way to the mothership. And had that happened, I would like to think that I would have enjoyed it and I would have
thrived.
But oh my goodness, I can't imagine not being a therapist and not being able to do the work
I do and being able to learn the things I've learned from a place of even just self-discovery
and self-confrontation.
So, is there regret? Well, there was for a while when I was in grad school and when I was struggling to get
my practice going and I had had my podcast equipment for a year or two without actually
having produced a podcast.
Was a lot of regret, a lot of regret that I did not find something else in that computer
field. But now I can't even imagine if that would have gone through. But Sian says regret
can be accompanied by guilt, embarrassment, self-blame. It can include asking yourself
a lot of hypothetical questions. What if I would have acted differently? What if I took
that opportunity? What if I didn't say what I said? And the reason that I find this particularly
fascinating for the waking up the narcissism audience is that what if I had act differently?
What if I would have done a lot of things differently? And often when somebody is coming
out of a trauma bond and they are starting to stand up for themselves and now they are being
gaslit, those new buttons that get pressed, which is what happens when you start to come out of that,
your role in the family system, your role of a fixer, of buffer, of provider, of caregiver.
When you start to say, hey, it's okay for me to have thoughts and feelings as well. I'm going to
start setting boundaries. Some of the new buttons that get pressed are this would be different if
if you would have only paid more attention to me when we were younger, when we were earlier
in the relationship, or if you would have supported me more when I was in school, or
again, telling the other person if you would have only done these things.
So then when you feel that discomfort, that's where that regret comes in.
And oftentimes, man, I don't like feeling the way I did.
Maybe he's right, or maybe she is right. Maybe if I would have just done these things differently five years ago, things would be
so much different now.
Now the reality is they would, but not in the way that you're thinking.
Doesn't mean that, oh, then everything would be better now. No, in reality, it might have
actually sped up the process of you starting to become frustrated or realizing that, hey,
this, that something's wrong in this relationship. But again, Cian says, because you can't go
back in time, you'll never know the answer to those questions. And for that reason, you
might ruminate about it. Ruminating. We're going to talk a lot about that today. Thinking.
The same thoughts over and over again, wondering what could have happened. I feel like rumination
is it is a waste of emotional time and calories, energy and effort. I feel like at some point,
the more that people ruminate, the more that I hear another phrase come in right behind
it. I just get exhausted when not me as I'm hearing it, although maybe there's some truth
in that, but people that are just saying, I just think about it and I overthink about
it and then I just get, I'm so tired. I'm exhausted. And that's where I feel like your
own brain is still trying to get you to do something different. So at some point after
it says, okay, you have you ruminated long enough because I think you're trying to solve
for some equation that you won't get an answer for. Let's just put you to sleep here. Let's
have you sleep this one off. Maybe tomorrow you won't ruminate so much. So, as Cian says,
you might regret something even when realistically there's absolutely nothing that you could
have done. And often in the relationships, there's not a lot you could have done. And
here's why, because you didn't, because you didn't know what you didn't know. So that's
the ultimate. I almost feel like this is one of those situations where I'll go to a movie
at times. I remember a James Bond movie once where I think he was going and jumping out
of a train that was going across a bridge. And sometimes I'll laugh to myself that,
oh, what if he wouldn't have been able to get out of that train and then the train blew
up and the bridge fell? Well, it's about a 10-minute movie, which of course wouldn't
happen because that would not be the way the movie was made.
But there's a part of me that does feel like when we say, why? Why do we regret? Why do
we ruminate? That the reality of it is because we do. And we're trying to make sense of things
that just will not make perfect sense.
And so if the answer truly is why, well, because you do, what do I do about it?
Hell don't. Which I know it's not that easy.
So, Cian says, the feeling of regret itself isn't proof that you did the wrong thing.
You might just simply have complicated feelings about your experience.
So why? Why is regret harmful? According to a 2015 study, people who are prone to regret are more likely to experience
depression, hopelessness, suicidal ideation.
Regret is associated with higher levels of cortisol. We talk a lot about that on Waking Up to Narcissism.
Cortisol known as the stress hormone. Cortisol helps you when you enter fight or flight mode.
Chronically high levels of cortisol are associated with mental and physical health problems.
So that cortisol keeps you out of your prefrontal cortex or your frontal lobe or the area of
your brain that makes more logical sense or decisions.
So if those cortisol levels are high, your heart rate is elevated and you are, I feel
like ruminating is one of those things that just brings on just more and more frustration
and that frustration raises your heart rate and raising your heart rate elevates your cortisol levels.
And so it does become this vicious cycle. Sands said, many people ruminate about regrets,
and then rumination. So rumination is when you can't stop thinking about the past, even when you are having
the same thoughts over and over again.
So with rumination, the thoughts are negative or they're upsetting in nature.
Sands says, although most people ruminate, rumination is associated with certain mental health
conditions, including depression, anxiety, PTSD, and OCD.
Those are the top four, I believe.
They say it's not possible to avoid regret entirely, but managing regret in a healthy, positive way,
can help you learn from the experience.
So why, why do we regret? I feel, I believe that this is where the brain,
again, wants certainty.
And it feels like if it can figure out what happened, and as if there is this tangible two plus two
equals four aha moment that will happen in the brain, the brain desperately craves that.
Because again, we don't like uncertainty, and we don't like sitting with discomfort,
and uncertainty breeds discomfort.
So when we are feeling uncertain and that makes us feel uncomfortable, instead of just being.
Breathing, and then moving on, we feel like, no, I have to figure this out. Why? What if I would
have done this? Why did I do this? Why didn't I do this? And again, that causes our heart rate to
elevate. So the antidote to that is acknowledging that happened, acknowledging I am noticing I am
I am ruminating and then not trying to say don't ruminate
because don't think about a polar bear, don't think about a wombat,
I don't even know what those look like,
but maybe we're trying to all think about what that is now.
But don't think about something, I will think about that. So instead of don't ruminate, I'm noticing,
I'm noticing that I'm ruminating.
So that feels much more calming than what is wrong with me, because that too, nothing, nothing is wrong with you,
you are just going through a moment
for the very first time in your life, which is causing you to ruminate and causing you to have regret.
And I'm noticing all of those things. Those are definitely things.
I'm also noticing right now that I'm wondering if I should edit out the part about a wombat.
I'm also noticing that I want to pull up another tab and look up and see what a wombat is.
I'm also noticing that I want to know that maybe I'll put a picture of that
in the social media post that will go up.
But those are all just things I'm noticing. and I don't need to tell myself,
oh my gosh, what is wrong with me for thinking those things?
Well, nothing, I'm just noticing I'm thinking them.
And instead of saying stop thinking about them, well, literally as I'm telling you that right now,
I'm now trying to really think hard about, well, what is, again, what is a wombat?
But the antidote, the answer is I'm noticing.
And that is a thing, and back to the present, and actually literally right now,
and get back to talking about the subject today rather than going on and on about this wombat.
So it's not possible to avoid regret, but managing it in a healthy way can help you learn.
So San goes on to say, can regrets be a positive thing? So regret is a healthy, common feeling
that most people feel once in a while.
And let's talk about, they say that the benefits of regret can include
improving your decision-making skills.
So while you can't avoid mistakes altogether, regretting past decisions can actually help you
make better, more thoughtful choices in the future. What would that look like?
That if I regret a past decision. So I'll give you a, might sound a little bit simplistic,
but I do, I do regret that I bought all this podcast equipment and then I sat on it
and I worried and I ruminated and I had imposter syndrome
and I went through all the feelings and emotions of why it would be embarrassing to put out a podcast
and I'm not even sure exactly what I'm doing and what if people don't listen?
And I do, I regret that I went through that intense period of rumination and feeling like an imposter.
How does that help me make more thoughtful choices now that I'm learning to trust my gut and to go forward with my instincts because.
Yeah, all those things could have happened. No one could have ever listened. I could have been made fun of continually, but knowing that as I then took action on this thing that I thought was important to me, then I felt more of a sense of purpose and peace, then I can learn from that.
They gonna say regret can motivate you sometimes you can motivate you to perform better take healthy risks focus your energy on what matters to you i feel like we can almost plug in that this podcast example for for several of these benefits of regret.
Can you be more self aware your regrets might teach you about your values your strengths and your weaknesses.
Over on the virtual couch side of things i feel like i went through a little period a few weeks ago of talking an awful lot about self confrontation.
So any of the feelings, regret, sadness, fear, anger, that if you really look at those as a guide
and as a teacher and learn to not push them away, but learn how to accept them,
how to take them in in their entirety as they are without defense,
then now I'm noticing regret.
And so how can I self-confront? What is that regret telling me? What's the story?
That there's this fear of failure or there's this fear of, again,
being exposed as an imposter.
So then I can now self-reflect. I can self-confront and then I can say,
okay, well, what do I need to do there? Do I need to do more research before I put episodes out?
Or do I just need to acknowledge that those are stories my brain is telling me?
But I won't get to that self-confrontation without feeling those uncomfortable feelings,
including things like regret.
Regret can inspire gratitude. They said that you can use your regret to fuel a deeper appreciation,
for the decisions you don't regret and the positive things you have in your life. I love
that reframe because as I'm talking about all the lessons that I have learned from regret being.
To do and be more, to take action more, to trust my gut more, but I also like the fact that okay,
but there are things that thankfully decisions made that I don't regret. The decision to go
back to grad school in my early 30s. The decision to go from just making therapy almost a hobby
to then jumping in with both feet and going into private practice. I was not a small business
owner, so this is something that was, I did make certain decisions. So, those are decisions
that I absolutely do not regret. So, with this said, Stan says if your regret is excessive
or obsessive, then it could do more harm than good. And this is especially the case if you
linger on regretful thoughts for far too long, or if you find it hard to think of anything
other than your regrets.
And if that is part of your experience, I really do hope that you are working with a professional.
Find someone that really does understand the way the brain works.
I highly recommend things like a mindfulness practice or a technique, but start to do the work.
And if you find certain programs or tools or books or therapists or podcasts,
and they give you that little bump of dopamine and I feel like I'm on a roll
and I'm starting to understand,
and then you just become a human being again, and then you don't continue with consistency
of whatever the thing is that you felt like was helping.
Then again, you're normal.
You're a regular human being, and so when you notice that you are no longer doing
this exercise or this program, or you've stopped reading this book or going and getting help,
then just give yourself grace and just...
Rinse and repeat, return and then start to do again. Or if it's something that then you, it took you a certain way, let's use a 100-yard football field analogy.
If now that you're aware and you're trying to do something new and a particular book or program or podcast got you to the 30-yard line,
then what's going to take you the next 20 yards or what's going to take you the next 40 yards or what's going to get you closer and closer to the goalpost?
It might be a new program or a new book or a new podcast or it might be going now to see a coach or than a therapist or it could be a progression it could be linear it could be eclectic you could have all sorts of things happening.
Is this is your customized treatment plan life in itself is your customized treatment plan because you're the only one living as you.
So find the things that work and if they work until they don't then welcome to human beingness.
And if you find that, okay, it's working, but then I just stop doing,
but I do feel like that will work, once again, that's part of the human experience.
So instead of beating yourself up or saying that this didn't work or what's wrong with me,
I'm noticing that now I haven't done whatever the thing was that was working for a few days,
give myself grace and I'm back to the present and I continue to do.
What are common regrets? 2018 review found that the ideal related regrets are more endearing,
Wait, there's the wrong word.
Yeah, all those ideal-related regrets, the pain of regretting failures and decisions,
not living up to your goals and acting as if you're like your ideal self.
How endearing are those? No, they're not. So, ideal-related regrets are more enduring and painful
than regretting other kinds of failures and decisions.
Ideal-related regrets are about not living up to your goals and acting as you'd like your ideal self to act.
And what I think can be challenging with this concept is that we often set the tone and the stage of our lives when we are eight years old or when we're 10 or when we're 12 or I want to be a pirate, I want to be an astronaut, I want to live on the beach, I want to be a baseball player.
And so then if we hit our 20s and all of a sudden we aren't doing those things, we can have this regret that we're not living our ideal life.
When in reality, we are just continuing to live and we might have started on the path of the direction that we are heading,
based off of some things that we thought were going to be there the rest of our lives that we were told by our parents or society or things that we just made a decision about in our youth.
So it's absolutely normal to grow and change and evolve and take in new information and have new feelings and thoughts because that's part of, again, part of the experience of living and becoming more emotionally mature.
But then a 2016 study based on a survey then ranked the participants most intense regrets.
And in order of importance, it found that people typically regret, number one, decisions that broke their own life rules.
In other words, decisions that went against their morals and values.
Number two, decisions that relate to relationships with others.
And number three, decisions that lacked an explicit justification.
Let me go back to number one, the decisions that broke their own life rules.
I want to go right back to that, these regretting your, these ideal related regrets.
So decisions that broke your own life rules.
I once had that thought or feeling that if I made a decision and I just said I will,
I will never do, I don't know, I fill in the blank. I will never do a certain thing if I am put in that position.
It feels really good.
It gets rid of a lot of discomfort. It gives you this sense of purpose and confidence.
But then you get put in that situation and now it's the first time that you're in that situation.
And what do you do? I may be an example that is not one that I have absolutely lived and I'm doing this on the fly,
but I was talking to somebody a couple of days ago that they were talking about someone
that just took action in a moment of intense,
something happened and something happened on an airplane and they jumped right to it and they took action.
So you may say right now that I solemnly swear and raise my right hand that if someone has a moment,
if they're having some problem on an airplane, I am gonna jump up,
even though I'm gonna feel uncomfortable, and I am gonna go and I am gonna try to help.
Even if it's just to say, what can I do?
But then you are now on a plane and perhaps it happens to be an international flight that's 11 hours to tokyo and you didn't sleep the night before and you've been nodding in and out of sleep and you're sitting in the middle seat beside two very very large people.
And they're hanging all over your seat and you thought you'd enjoy this particular book and you're not and so you have a headache and a migraine and all the sudden somebody goes into.
I don't know if they're having an issue and so and you all the sudden say i still have any.
So now you may have regret that I just broke my own life rule.
This goes against my morals and values to help somebody.
But in that very moment, it's a whole new situation. So I know that sounds a bit like a hypothetical.
I did fly to Russia once in the computer software, my computer software life,
and I was literally between two very, very large people.
And I did have a book that was very boring, but no one went into cardiac arrest,
and I didn't have to help or save anyone.
But give yourself grace. It is absolutely wonderful to set goals and make decisions of the things that you want to do with your life.
Because in that moment that you are making that goal or that decision, then it brings you a sense of calm and a sense of peace.
And it may even be your value-based goal in that very moment.
But then when life happens, and it's not something that you just drilled through.
I mean, I think about professional athletes. I've had the opportunity to work with a couple.
And the just muscle memory and the repetition. The reason why those 10,000 or more hours of practice occur,
is because when you then are in an intense moment, a pressure-filled moment, trying to hit a free throw
with no time left on the clock, with 17,000 people in an arena,
not your home arena, and they are booing you,
you have to just go into this muscle memory mode.
But if you are an amazing rec player and you never played in front of large crowds or gyms,
and you haven't sat there and just hit thousands and thousands of free throws
repetitively at the end of a practice and then all of a sudden you're given
this opportunity to play in the NBA and you find yourself in a playoff game and
now you've got to make this free throw to win the game and you have 16,000 fans booing at you, you're gonna lose your stuff. I mean you're gonna be in
danger of soiling yourself because that moment is gonna be terrifying even though you may have dreamed your whole life,
I want that moment.
But it's that professional athlete that is just put in the time over and over the muscle memory.
So the reason I give that example is you can say I am going to be a person that takes action.
I'm a person that is going to be there for my spouse. If someone costs me in a park,
I'm going to say, how dare you? But then you're not in there at the end of practice of being
accosted at the park, putting in those reps. So now when you are accosted in the park.
And you're reaching in your spouse's back pocket to hand over the wallet when they really were just
asking for, I don't know, something that wasn't their wallet, and then you say,
oh my gosh, I'm such a horrible person. No, you are just in life for the very first time
making those decisions. So, that regret, the common regrets, give yourself grace.
The study also found that people were more likely to regret inaction than action. In other words,
you're more likely to regret the things you didn't do as opposed to the things you did do. Amen to
that one. I would rather have someone take action and then have that data to process than have.
Regret and wish, man, if only I would have done fill in the blank. I hesitate because what if I
don't get this filmed? But there is an upcoming virtual summit. I'll just put it that way that
I'm participating in that if I complete my portion of that, it's something that I did not do last
year because I just read the title and I thought, eh, it's not something I'm really necessarily
interested in. I was invited to participate in it again this year and I saw a lot of the other
participants from last year, so maybe it was a FOMO, fear of missing out, but the topic that I
was asked to present on is about, it's about couples and it's about how to, the anatomy of a
healthy relationship and I love talking about that. So, I did, I regretted that I didn't do this last year.
So I am absolutely regretting the thing that I didn't do versus there are things that I have done that maybe there's been a little bit of regret of.
I've been on a couple of podcasts I did not absolutely prepare for, meaning that I did not read about, meaning that I didn't even know some of the questions that I would be asked.
And there's been a couple of those that have been definitely something that has caused a little bit of regret.
But it doesn't feel like the intense or the more powerful regret that comes from, I wish I would have taken action or done fill in the blank.
Zan says, how to stop thinking about regrets. So, and I could have some fun with that one
just because I like to talk about how to stop thinking. You know, my brain right there is like,
I will continue to think them.
But let's talk about some strategies of being able to move past or through regret.
So again, Zan says it's okay to have regrets. As mentioned, they might even be beneficial.
But if you often ruminate on regrets or find yourself having persistent,
unproductive thought spirals, you might want to find a way to shift your attention elsewhere.
Here are some ways to press pause on those unconstructive thoughts.
Number one, practice mindfulness.
Oh, I cannot say this enough, and it's probably been five minutes since I've said it on a podcast.
Mindfulness, mindfulness, mindfulness. 25% of the people that walk into my office
when I suggest mindfulness are gonna just tune me right out and never even think about it again.
And when I bring it up, they're gonna be like, right, right, mindfulness, presence, whatever that was.
Breathe, I'm breathing.
Another 25% are going to then leave and they are gonna download some mindfulness app,
they're gonna find mindfulness meditation tracks on YouTube,
or they're going to just scour the internet for mindfulness scripts, and they're gonna do it.
And they're gonna come back and they're gonna say, hey, I've been meditating for a week,
and man, I'm starting to really feel like that's a thing.
And I'll say, wait, what'd you do? You already did that?
And that's that person that will say, well, I'm here. I mean, I wanna change, I'm taking action.
And that person's growth will accelerate, it really will. And then 50% of the people I talk to are gonna say,
I'm on it. And then next week you're gonna say, hey, what was the thing again? The mind mind space
or mind mind heads thing. And then we're gonna talk about mindfulness. I particularly am a fan
of headspace, but there are a lot of apps and that that's gonna be repeated a few times. They
might even download the app. They might do it for a couple of days and say, hey, I did like that.
And I so I get it now. How are you? You don't bless your heart. A consistent mindfulness practice
is gonna then eventually help you put that pause in so that you can be in that moment. So that is
That is one of the best ways to notice that I am regretting something, notice that I am
having those feelings.
So then you are focusing on savoring the moment instead of getting caught up in ruminating.
I'm noticing that I am ruminating and I'm back on savoring this very moment.
What can I smell? What can I feel?
What can I do? What can I listen to? What can I touch? What can I dance to?
There's so many things that you can do in that way to bring you back to present.
And Sian says this isn't always easy, but mindfulness gets easier with practice and it really does.
Focus your energy elsewhere. You could try engaging in an art project or reading an absorbing book.
You can just do. I'm noticing that I am thinking and feeling, and so I don't try to stop it. I
don't try to change it. I don't say what's wrong with me. I notice it. I say, thank you, body.
Those are thoughts and feelings, and I am going to pay attention to you more often now. And right.
Now, I'm going to invite all those thoughts and feelings to come along with me while I make some
chocolate chip cookies. Exercise. A large 2018 study found that short bursts of exercise reduced
rumination and improve mood and participants. Drop down and give me 20. Push-ups, sit-ups,
plank, who knows. Walk with a purpose around a building or wherever you're at, but if you can
notice that I am ruminating or regretting and then give yourself grace and then exercise. Go and do.
Because here's one of the things that you're also doing. You are starting to create new relational
frames. When I recognize that I'm ruminating, then I come back to the present moment. That's
That's what mindfulness does.
Or when I notice that I am regretting or ruminating, then I am doing pushups.
And over time, your brain will even start having you get down into the pushup position
when you notice that you are ruminating because your brain likes, it's a prediction machine,
and it likes to then anticipate because that will start to cause it to use less electrical activity
if it knows what this guy's doing.
It's like my smart, it's like the, if I plug my phone into my car,
my wife and I were talking about this over the weekend.
We typically on a Saturday, we go on a long run or a long bike ride, and then I need some sort of sandwich,
whether it's, I don't know, all the different sandwich places.
I love a sandwich on a Saturday after long workouts.
And so now when I get in my car, we were heading somewhere last week,
I think we were heading out of town actually, and we jump in the car and it basically pulls up and says,
hey, can I offer you a sandwich?
And I just thought that the brain is similar to that. So if you start ruminating, it can say,
Are we doing pushups?
Because let's go ahead and start doing that.
They talked about journaling, and I've had a couple of guests.
On Waking Up to Narcissism, we had Dana Killian that talked about her journal,
which turned into her book, which is amazing.
And then over on the virtual couch, I had my good friend Zlatko, Z, who talked about,
he had gone through a lot of things, and so he started writing, and 365 days later,
after writing every day, it is such a process for him, and he actually has a little mini course
that will help you get into the writing experience.
So journaling, let me wrap things up. Sian says, tips to move forward from regrets.
Let yourself feel it.
Because regret can be so painful, it's tempting to just get away from it.
That's why I like to talk about we don't like feeling things, and so we want to move away from them, so we want to get rid of that discomfort.
But it's not as scary as we think. So, sit there. Don't squish the feeling down.
Stan says, but avoiding your regret can actually make you feel worse. If you're unwilling to have it, you will.
If I'm unwilling to have regret, then it will intensify.
So instead, acknowledge what you're feeling. Try to accept it.
Having regrets doesn't make you a bad or foolish person. It's a natural common emotion.
Draw something positive from the experience. We talked about how valuable regret can be.
It might be a valuable life lesson. It might be a great teacher.
It might inspire you to do more, to get that podcast out sooner, to write more,
to spend more time with loved ones.
Regret might influence you to then, hey, I really want to, I regret that I didn't make amends
with someone before they passed away.
So now if I am aware that someone is not in a, If their health is bad,
then I am going to go spend time with them.
Be self-compassionate. Cian said research from 2015 looked at three studies
on regret and self-improvement, and the analysis suggested that regret
can lead to personal growth if self-compassion is involved.
Acceptance and self-forgiveness can help you learn better from the experience.
And then a study in 2018 showed that self-compassion can also protect you from the potential health risks of regret.
Back to that cortisol thing. Self-compassion and giving yourself grace
allows you to calm down your fight or flight response.
You calm your amygdala down.
It lets you get back all up into your prefrontal cortex. It allows your short-term memory to come back.
And there are so many things that self-compassion can do.
So self-compassion can include forgiving yourself, reminding yourself of your strengths,
practicing loving kindness meditation, taking care of your basic needs,
raise your emotional baseline, self-care. Self-care is not selfish.
And allowing yourself to engage in enjoyable activities just because you want to.
And then finally, they said, it's natural to think about the what could have beens.
Try to avoid those what ifs.
If you made a different decision, the outcome might have been better. It would have.
So there you go. Doesn't mean it was gonna be better. Doesn't mean it was gonna be worse.
It just would have been a different outcome.
So again, could have been worse. Could be better. Acceptance.
So the thing is, we never know what that alternative outcome can be
unless you're on to some sort of time machine.
And although it's tempting to run through the possibilities in your head, that's where we talked earlier about it can be exhausting.
You're burning emotional calories that can be better spent being and doing.
Being in the moment, being present, connecting with others, doing something of value, learning a new skill, exploring, growing, self-confronting.
All of those are things that will not happen if you continue to beat yourself up and ruminate.
So try to recognize when you're engaging in a thought patterns that aren't productive or helpful, practice mindfulness.
So you don't get too caught up in all those what-ifs.
So, if you need help, then please reach out to someone. There are online therapy options. I haven't talked about this one in a long time, but you probably hear it on other podcasts.
Betterhelp.com. You can go betterhelp.com slash virtual couch.
And I think you still get 10% off of your first month's services.
But there are online services. You can Google low-cost therapy in your area.
There's always going to be some non-profit or a group that's going to have a sliding scale.
You can reach out to people that you really identify or connect with on a podcast. I have people that do still reach out to me and say, are you available for therapy or coaching? And there are times when I have an opening or two and we'll fit that in.
So it never hurts to reach out to somebody that you really connect with as well and get a little tune up or start doing some work. So you matter. So it's okay to seek help.
Thank goodness the stigma around mental health, getting help for your mental health is lessening,
but it's still there.
So there's nothing wrong with seeking help. Please seek help.
And if part of that process is listening to more podcasts, taking a course or two, reading a book,
any of those things, if that's all part of the process that maybe leads you to in-person therapy,
counseling, coaching, you name it, then that is awesome.
And that process is gonna happen as it happens.
So thank you so much for taking the time. If you have questions, please reach out to me
at contactattonioverbay.com.
And I welcome you to take a look at some of the other offerings that I have that are going on out there,
especially the Waking Up to Narcissism Premium Q&A Podcast. I would love to see you over in that world as well.
And thanks again, and I will see you next time.
Music.
On Waking Up.