No one is immune to making mistakes, no matter how great or small, how rare or how frequent. Even the luckiest among us has had bad timing and made unfortunate calls, leading to an accumulation of “would have”s and “wish I hadn’t”s. Because regrets often feed into anxiety, guilt, and shame, it can feel challenging to cope with them. After all, regrets are a natural part of life. Whether it’s a missed opportunity, a relationship mistake, or a decision that didn’t go as planned, many of us are ruminating over the past, stuck in a cycle of “what ifs” and “should haves”. This can lead to us wishing for a life with no errors. While avoiding mistakes entirely is impossible, we can change how we relate to them.
How Regrets Lead to Debilitating Anxiety and Panic
Anxiety and regret often go hand in hand. When we make a mistake, it’s easy for our minds to fixate on the past, replaying scenarios in our heads and imagining alternative outcomes. This can create a cycle of anxiety where we not only feel bad about what happened but also worry about the future, fearing we’ll make the same mistakes again.
This cycle can become overwhelming, leading to feelings of hopelessness or self-doubt. People with anxiety disorders may experience these thoughts more intensely, often feeling as though the weight of their mistakes defines them. In reality, regret is a signal that something matters to you. It’s an invitation to learn and grow, not a reflection of your worth or abilities. By recognizing this, we can begin to turn regrets into resets.
3 Ways to Cope with Mistakes
- Practice Self-Compassion:
When we make mistakes, our inner critic tends to take center stage, making us feel guilty or ashamed. However, self-compassion can be a powerful tool for breaking this cycle. It’s about treating yourself with the same kindness and understanding that you would offer a friend in the same situation. A cornerstone of in-person and online anxiety therapy is learning how self-compassion can lead to more happiness, inner peace, self-acceptance, and growth. Too often, we tell ourselves that bullying ourselves is the only way to feel motivated. Self-compassion transforms our minds into a hospitable and encouraging environment, facilitating progress. Literally, everyone makes mistakes. It doesn’t feel like it when you are the person who has just made a blunder. This is when self-compassion can come in the most handy.
Acknowledge that mistakes are part of being human, and remind yourself that growth often comes from discomfort. If you catch yourself spiraling into regret, pause and say, “I’m doing my best, and I’m learning.” This small shift in mindset can make a big difference in how you process past decisions. When your thoughts are gentle, your nervous system is better able to regulate. When you are regulated, it is easier to keep from experiencing panic.
If comparison is the thief of joy, self-compassion is the good samaritan who brings it back to you. We can become caught up in grading ourselves against others, especially in families or work environments with over-achievers. One thing to consider is that you’re not actually able to see the ins and outs of the lives of everyone you interact with; while you might know a sibling very well, that all-star coworker is actually more of an acquaintance. We often compare our worst days to the successes people share in person and/or online. Always remember that if something looks too perfect to be true, you are likely missing part of the picture. The other thing to consider is that, to others, you may be the one setting the bar. We have a tendency to overlook our own strengths or the things that come easily to us, in favor of admiring the one thing we don’t have or that we struggle with.
If you find that it’s hard to come up with self-compassion at the moment, set yourself up for success with a little collection of self-care items. This might include a notebook with affirmations written in it, or a book by someone who overcame obstacles to lead an inspirational life. It might have a cozy blanket, a scented candle, a face mask, or any other self-care item that is relatively shelf-stable and can help you feel physical comfort in times of distress. If you feel that you’re being unkind to yourself, review your affirmations while burning that candle for a little while. Sit with yourself in patience and grace.
- Reframe the Mistake as a Lesson:
Before you scroll, please know that I know that this is easier said than done. There may be times when you feel that no lesson is worth what you’ve lost when you are tired of how often you have to find meaning in your mistakes, or when you feel that life is being unfair and singling you out unnecessarily. All of these thoughts and feelings are valid and normal. But the truth is that determining what good can come out of a mistake is the best way to move forward from it because it gives you an idea of which direction you’re meant to be moving in.
Regret is rooted in the idea that we’ve lost something—a missed opportunity or a failed attempt. Instead of viewing mistakes as final outcomes, try reframing them as valuable lessons. Ask yourself, “What can I learn from this experience? How can I use this knowledge to make better choices moving forward?” This is a question we encourage clients to ask themselves in our Woodland Hills anxiety therapy sessions. You may choose to consider your answers on your own or with guidance and support from a therapist or counselor.
By focusing on the lessons rather than the loss, you can transform regret into motivation. Each mistake becomes an opportunity to refine your approach and become more resilient in future situations. When we approach every mistake with curiosity, asking ourselves, “What did I learn from this?”, we learn how many missteps were actually moments of progress. For the majority of mistakes, such as underestimating the time you’ll need for something, under-budgeting, or over-anticipating a result, you’ll put into practice breaking things down and considering them more closely. For example, you might put into practice blocking out your time on a physical piece of paper, and adjust that practice as you realize that you always sit in your car for ten minutes checking your phone when you pull into the driveway at home, or that you take fifteen minutes longer to get out the door in the morning than you usually plan for. When you have expected a positive result but experienced a negative one, you might learn that there were aspects of the situation you didn’t consider, whether through avoidance or being unaware.
When we aren’t able to view our mistakes in a productive way, we can easily let a fear of failure impact our lives. Stepping back from opportunities because you’re not sure you’ll be able to achieve your goal, socially isolating because you’re afraid of the impression you make, and the cessation of setting any goals at all are all ways that this fear of failure can hold us back. Instead, when we practice finding the lesson in our mishaps, we also practice being resilient and getting up to start again.
Some mistakes are harder to accept. Most often, these involve our deep feelings for someone that we miss the opportunity to express. This can include telling someone we love them before they meet someone else, or before they pass away, or making amends with someone we are in a rift with while we still have the chance. These mistakes teach us to take chances, to speak from the heart, to put our pride aside. And yet, despite how resonant these lessons can feel, they are also lessons we find ourselves learning more than once in life. Overall, the lesson we truly learned is that you can’t actually live each day as if you might not see the next one, and you can’t predict the future. All you can do is strive to be honest, to be sincere, and to be vulnerable. More often than not, it’s the things not done and not said that people regret. The missed opportunities, and wondering what might have been.
- Set a Reset Ritual:
Rituals can help you symbolically close a chapter and start fresh. This could be something as simple as journaling about your regret, writing down what you’ve learned, and then tearing up the page to signify a new beginning. Or it could involve creating a new habit, like going for a mindful walk whenever you catch yourself dwelling on the past. These small actions serve as reminders that every day is a chance for a reset. They help shift your focus from what went wrong to what you can do differently next time, offering a sense of control over your future. A lot of people who see us for anxiety therapy in Woodland Hills talk about projecting and catastrophizing. Approaching setbacks as an opportunity to learn and start again is a way of cutting off a self-fulfilling prophecy that can occur when our worries snowball. If every mishap haunts you until the next one, you will soon find yourself living in a perpetual and ever-growing state of panic.
A reset ritual stops the domino effect in its tracks and allows you to consider how you’d like to begin again. What matters most about a reset ritual is how well it works for you. It doesn’t matter how cool or inventive you find an idea, if you won’t do it, it’s worthless. Consider how you can integrate this ritual into your life based on your schedule, your ability, your finances, and the things you enjoy. You are far more likely to do a ritual that is fun or satisfying in some way than you are to do something that feels laborious the whole time.
While enjoying your reset ritual will ensure that you don’t avoid it, the enjoyment also serves another purpose: reframing setbacks entirely. Doing something you enjoy becomes a bit of a reward. You are treating yourself to something, or caring for yourself in some way because you had a setback. This positive reinforcement of starting again will go much further for your emotional well-being than punishing yourself would. Like reframing your mistake as a lesson, benefiting from your reset ritual enables you to rebrand mistakes as part of life, as no big deal, as positive catalysts for change. And while not every reset will be accompanied by cheer, the majority of them can be experienced as neutral at the very least. This is not about lying to yourself about what has occurred, but about creating an environment in which you feel strong, brave, and hopeful enough to take your next step, whatever it may be.
Consider who you can recruit to take part in part(s) of your ritual(s). When we experience shame, our instinct can be to hide away. By making a loved one part of your reset strategy, you overcome that instinct immediately. Maybe you want to go for a walk with someone, go out together for dinner, or have a little movie night with a comfort film you both enjoy. Remember that, just like you would always want to be there for those you love, those you love will want to be there for you. It’s up to you whether you tell the person their presence is helping you to reset; you might just want to reach out and make a plan, because you choose to talk about your misstep somewhere else, such as therapy. Or you may want to incorporate sharing about what has happened (with the other person’s consent, of course) to counteract the instinct of secrecy that shame and guilt so often cause. Some of this might be trial and error; that’s okay, as long as you are treating yourself and your loved one(s) with respect and care.
The toll of ruminating on past mistakes and worrying about future blunders is something I see all too clearly as an anxiety counselor in Woodland Hills. It is human nature to care about what matters to us, and therefore to feel a myriad of negative emotions when things don’t go the way we’d like them to. The key is being able to consistently reset after disappointments. If every misstep teaches you something new redirects you to what is more aligned with your goals, or develops your resilience, then you are doing everything you can do to navigate the ups and downs of life. It can feel, at times, as though anxiety is going to overrun your attempts to reach your goals, to better your life, to find peace. Being able to reset, and showing yourself the care and love needed to do so, will make a world of difference. Knowing you are going to falter is what makes you human; knowing that you can dust yourself off and start again is what makes you brave.
Anxiety Therapy at Embracing You Therapy
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