How to get over regret: Do you look back and miss your "better days"?
- Thread starter Sea_Star
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Help Support Crohn's Disease Forum:
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You shouldn't regret anything, because if you do then your life becomes a series of 'if only' thoughts and you never move forward, you only look back.
See the quote in my signature. That's pretty much the way I think. You can't change what's happened. Either deal with the fact you made 'mistakes' and move on, or let them crush you and get depressed.
Personally I don't have time for people who sit and go 'if only I had done this' or 'my one regret is this blah blah'. My question is, why didn't you do it at the time, and if you hate what the outcome of the decision you DID make was, why didn't you do something about it and try to go down the path you wanted to? No room for complainers in my life.
I have no regrets. I made my decisions, and if things didn't work out I fixed them by whatever method I could. But that's just me and people have called me a cold-hearted unfeeling cow for not sitting there and going 'oh woe is me, I wish I could have done this instead of this'. Nope. I just get on with things.
See the quote in my signature. That's pretty much the way I think. You can't change what's happened. Either deal with the fact you made 'mistakes' and move on, or let them crush you and get depressed.
Personally I don't have time for people who sit and go 'if only I had done this' or 'my one regret is this blah blah'. My question is, why didn't you do it at the time, and if you hate what the outcome of the decision you DID make was, why didn't you do something about it and try to go down the path you wanted to? No room for complainers in my life.
I have no regrets. I made my decisions, and if things didn't work out I fixed them by whatever method I could. But that's just me and people have called me a cold-hearted unfeeling cow for not sitting there and going 'oh woe is me, I wish I could have done this instead of this'. Nope. I just get on with things.
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I wish I had that strong mentality ingrained!! Very strong will-power
To answer your question, my initial choice to go off 6mp in 2012 had no repercussions (not directly anyway)...for about 2 years I was GREAT. The risks of cancer outweighed the benefit for my mostly asymptomatic, mild case, in my eyes. Ok. Had I restarted 6MP this May, I could have prevented using Entocort which has messed with my duodenum and stomach (causing erosions) so there's that pain now. I now have new areas of abdominal pain that I didn't have prior to this year (they appeared after the colonoscopy). I just feel generally unwell, and look back to how I felt in May, or January,...last couple years. But you're right. What is stopping me from going out there and living? The "what ifs" and "shoulds"..waiting for the past to happen again...
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Regrets are like grudges. They are emotionally draining. Accept the present and move on.
Being someone that never had a single GI issue until taking that silly zithromax at age 31 it's easy to say "what if ?" But becoming a patient has made me a better doctor, and I am getting screened for colon cancer very often now. Hopefully I won't ever need the colon removed, but I'm sure it beats dying of colon cancer. It's also taught this former workaholic rough east coaster to take things a little bit more easy. Do I wish I did not have CD? of course. But I don't think of pre CD as "better days." I think the best days have yet to come, and it has nothing to do with anything GI. Otherwise I wouldn't have CD. CD would have me. And that is never an option.
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Thanks Dr., and you're right. That has to be frustrating knowing by taking Zithromax, it triggered the illness to pop up. I'm pretty sure my college dining hall triggered this as well. That's very true...if anything, it gives us focus and forces us to take care of ourselves FIRST. Hope you're doing well!
Ps: Out of curiosity, what's your specialty?
Ps: Out of curiosity, what's your specialty?
Kev
Senior Member
Take it from an old man... do not dwell on the past. Any mistakes, mis-steps, omissions or sins... face them, accept them, deal with them, put them away... then MOVE on. Rehashing/revisiting the same thing over and over again isn't going to change the past. There is no time machine. There is a no time to waste machine. It's called life. Live it up while it is yours to live. This isn't a dress rehearsal, there are no do overs. Just this life.
Thanks Dr., and you're right. That has to be frustrating knowing by taking Zithromax, it triggered the illness to pop up. I'm pretty sure my college dining hall triggered this as well. That's very true...if anything, it gives us focus and forces us to take care of ourselves FIRST. Hope you're doing well!
Ps: Out of curiosity, what's your specialty?
General internal medicine, but nowadays I do more teaching (resident/students) and some hospital administration. More flexible than daily practice used to be, and certainly the variation keeps things from getting stagnant. Still see patients for the teaching service/clinic and as part of the hospital services. Don't ask which one. tyring to keep a bit of annonymitity here.
But suffice it to say it's a very large east coast teaching hospital, many in the US have heard of. Even if I didn't take the Zpack, something would have eventually triggered it. Another illness, stress, food. We all have a host defect that alows this to occur. So maybe I could have delayed it a year or 2. Meh.
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I don,t regret anything,past experiences are what makes you today.
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There are things I think of or back to, but that I don't regret. I feel like if you make a decision that you know is right at any given time and that you know is best for you, that you shouldn't regret it, regardless of how much it impacts you positively or negatively in the future. Some decisions that are the best decisions have negative impacts, but they should not be something you regret. There are decisions in my life that I wish I wouldn't have made looking back on them, just because of the impact they have made, but I don't regret them due to them helping me to learn things about myself and others that I would have never know or learned and they have helped me make decisions and they continue to help me make decisions. I am not the strongest or emotionally stable person by any means, but I don't think that I can move on with my life and be happy in my own skin if I have regrets.
