#68 The Power & Purpose Of Regret

Regret has a way of sneaking into the quiet moments, replaying old conversations and parenting decisions like a loop you can’t turn off. I’m Sharon Murphy, a certified life and mindset coach, and today I’m speaking directly to mothers, especially moms of adult children, who feel the weight of “I should have done it differently” and wonder if it’s too late to make things right.

We get honest about what regret really is: an emotional signal that something in the past didn’t align with our values, wisdom, or hopes. Then we make a crucial distinction that can change your spiritual life and your relationships: regret isn’t automatically the problem. What matters is whether it becomes a teacher or a prison. We walk through healthy regret that leads to humility, repentance, wisdom, and compassion, and we contrast it with unhealthy regret that turns into condemnation, despair, and hiding from God.

You’ll also get practical tools for emotional healing and Christian growth, including questions to discern whether a thought is moving you toward action or paralysis, peace or despair. I share a motherhood example many of us relate to, plus three simple steps to transform the moment: name it, learn it, and release it. For Catholic listeners, we also talk about confession as a real encounter with Christ’s mercy and how to stop “resurrecting” what God has already forgiven.

If this helps you, subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a friend who’s carrying regret in silence. What part hit home most for you?

Click the link below to set up a free discovery call to begin your transformation today.  Or email me @ smurph923.sm@gmail.com to find out more about how I can help.  

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Transcript

Welcome And Why Regret Hurts

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome to my podcast. My name is Sharon Murphy and I'm a certified life and mindset coach and I help women who seek to be happy and holy. Each week I'll bring you tools and insights to help you on your journey to the heights. I'm so glad you're here. Have you ever thought about a decision you made and you wish that you had made a different decision? You think of a conversation and that you would just wish you had handled it differently or that you had said something else. Today I want to talk to you about something that every one of us has felt at some point, and that is regret. Now I'm gonna drive this topic home specifically towards mothers, mothers of adult children, just because I work with women specifically ages 40 to 65, but this is true for all of us. We all struggle with regret, and for mothers of adult children, especially, regret it becomes sometimes a constant companion. We tend to replay conversations, we second guess decisions. We wonder whether we did enough, said enough, loved enough, or protected enough. We replay all the things that have happened in the past when we were spending those years raising our children, and we can get stuck in that. And we tend to think that regret is a bad thing. It's why sometimes we struggle when we have to make a decision. Because for many of us, this is what leads to decision paralysis. We fear that we're gonna regret the decision that we made. And while it's true that we all will have regrets from our lives, we make mistakes, we do things that we know maybe we shouldn't have, right? But what I want to propose to you today is an important distinction, and that regret itself is not really the problem. Or rather, regret isn't a problem, even though we think it is. What we do with regret determines whether it becomes a teacher for us or a prison.

What Regret Really Is

SPEAKER_00 1:54

So what is regret? Regret is really just the emotional response to recognizing that something in the past it didn't align with our values, our wisdom, or maybe even our hopes. Things didn't turn out like we had wanted. And sometimes it does actually come from mistakes, sometimes it comes from unrealistic expectations, and sometimes it comes from just carrying responsibility for things that were never really fully ours to control. For example, a mother regrets yelling at her child during a stressful season. It's happened to many of us, most of us I would dare to say. A mother regrets being overly protective and not allowing enough independence. A mother regrets working long hours and missing certain moments in the lives of our family and our children. A mother regrets not seeing warning signs and a child's struggle sooner. I think we can all relate to these, whether you're a mother or a father, or basically anybody, right? We all have those things in our lives. And while regrets they affect all of us, I think for motherhood, it touches us in a special way. And unfortunately, it's because it touches our identity. Because we don't just think I made a mistake. We think I messed up, I'm a failure, I'm not good. And that is where regret can become spiritually dangerous for us. Now,

Healthy Regret As A Gift

SPEAKER_00 3:07

regret can also be helpful. Healthy regret is actually a gift. It's the way our conscience functions properly. We have regret for a reason, and it's helpful when it leads us to humility, when we recognize that we're imperfect and that we are in need of grace. It's helpful when it prompts us to repentance, when we acknowledge that we've done something wrong, when we seek forgiveness, and we make amends when possible. It's also helpful when it produces wisdom, when we learn from what we should do differently and what we would do differently in the future. Regret can also increase compassion. Our own failures help us become more understanding towards others. This one is very important because in our own experiences of regret in our lives, we can definitely be a conduit of grace to other people who might be struggling with this as well. If we're someone who walks around and feels like we've done everything perfectly, we're really not much help to those people around we are we? I mean, think about it. We know those people in our lives who feel like I don't have any regrets. I've done everything, you know, they feel to the best of their ability. And while that can sound confident and self-assured, it doesn't offer us much when we're on the receiving end of that. Think of Saint Peter. I'm gonna bring this up. He denied Christ three times. Now imagine the regret that he felt. But his regret did not end in despair. It actually led him to repentance, reconciliation, and eventually leadership in the church. So there's an example how regret can become a doorway to transformation.

When Regret Becomes Condemnation

SPEAKER_00 4:34

So let's talk about when regret is not helpful. Regret becomes harmful when it stops being a teacher and it starts becoming our identity when we stay there. An unhealthy regret sounds like I ruined my child, or it's too late for me, or God could never redeem this. I don't deserve to be happy. If I had only done things better, then my child would be fine, or this situation would be fine. We place all this blame on ourselves, we kind of heap on top of the mistake we made. And notice how these statements have moved beyond just a specific action and they've become global judgments about ourselves and about who God is. We're claiming all the responsibility on ourselves, and we're not properly understanding what God's role is in our lives and the lives of the people we love. And this is where the enemy works, because the devil is called the accuser, as you know. And he takes a real mistake and he can turn it into a permanent condemnation. So just beware of where in your life that you might be allowing the devil to accuse you. So conviction, conviction says you did something wrong, and this should return us to God. That's what conviction is. Now, condemnation says you are wrong, and it forces us to turn away from God. This is what happens in our lives. We turn away from God. So conviction leads us toward the Father where condemnation drives us into hiding. And so, how does the enemy use regret to keep us stuck as mothers specifically? Well, for many women, regret becomes a loop. We tend to replay the mistake, and then we feel shame. And then what do we do? We withdraw emotionally and then we start to lose confidence. So we avoid new opportunities and conversations. We don't enter into those difficult conversations because we fear we're not going to handle them correctly. We lose our faith and our confidence in our own ability to handle things properly or to allow God into those situations, and then we replay the mistake again. Now, as a mother, you may think, I failed my child when they were a teenager. So I have no right to speak into their life right now. I will say one thing I've noticed in there's just certain people in my life who have gone through, they've experienced the tragedy of divorce and they've struggled with that decision. It wasn't their decision to make. And I see how they have just withdrawn in their roles with their children. And I believe there's a self-condemnation that's happening there because they feel like somehow they failed their children in this aspect with the family disintegration, and therefore they feel like I have no right to speak into their life. I have no right to say anything because they're still holding on to that condemnation. That's just one example. Another thing that a mother might think is I wasn't the mother I wanted to be, so I can't be useful anymore. Now that ties also into what I just talked about. That was just one example, but there's many others. There's people that have had real mistakes in their lives and they're still living in that condemnation of themselves. And therefore, they're not able to be present and to mother as they should right now, where their children are in this phase of life. And those thoughts that I just mentioned, they might sound humble, but they're actually hopeless. And that is not from God. Like I said, there's a condemnation, there's an accuser that's present there. So just become aware of that if you notice that in your own life from some of the past things that you've done that you regret, if you're hanging on to them and how it's causing you to show up now in your life. And just remember, God's pattern throughout all of Scripture is one of redemption. He's continually working with imperfect people, imperfect families, and imperfect histories. The question is not whether you have regrets. The question is whether you allow the regret to become a place where grace can work.

Questions That Break The Regret Loop

SPEAKER_00 8:18

So I want to offer you a practical discernment tool. And the tool is simply this: you can ask yourself a set of questions. Ask yourself, is this regret pointing me toward action or toward paralysis? Because healthy regret produces movement. That might be an apology, it might be turning to prayer, growth in any aspect, trying to learn or move beyond those areas of where you were, where you feel you made a mistake. It might be boundaries, it could be new habits, but unhealthy regret produces endless rumination. Another question you can ask yourself is can I identify a specific lesson in this? This is where there's a learning opportunity. If I can say I learned that I need to pause before reacting in anger, then that regret is teaching you something. If all you can say is this is that I'm a terrible mother, then you're no longer learning. You're just sitting in that condemnation of yourself. Another question you can ask yourself is, have I brought this to God? Meaning, have I prayed honestly about it? Have I gone to confession if sin is involved? Have I sought reconciliation where possible within that relationship or where that regret took place? If you have sincerely repented and sought forgiveness, continuing to punish yourself does not add to your holiness, and it's not helpful to you or anybody around you. Another question you can ask is Am I trying to control the past? So many parents, many of their regrets are really attempts to rewrite history, but the past cannot be changed. As much as we'd like to, we can't change it. What can be changed is your posture today and what you do moving forward. This is where you live. You live in the present. You only have the availability to change who you are and how you show up right now. The next thing you can ask yourself is does this produce peace or despair? Even difficult conviction from the Holy Spirit ultimately leads towards hope, clarity, and repentance. So if you're convicted of something, something that you feel like maybe went wrong, you should have handled it differently, if it's a conviction from the Holy Spirit, it's still gonna lead you towards hope and clarity and hopefully repentance. But the enemy's accusations will lead you in the other direction. That's gonna lead to despair, confusion, and it'll pull you into isolation. If you find yourself feeling despair or confused about things of how to handle a situation moving forward, or handling relationships as a mother, or if you're sitting in isolation, that's a sign that you're probably living in the accusation from the enemy.

A Motherhood Example That Heals

SPEAKER_00 10:48

So let me give you an example. Let's just imagine that you're a mother who regrets being overly critical of your daughter during adolescence. So hopefully, regret sounds like this is that I see now that my criticism wounded her. There's some wounds that she's experienced because of that. I want to acknowledge that and ask forgiveness. And I want to practice encouragement moving forward. And you can maybe work on growing in that area if you're somebody who's overly critical. I'm gonna just be very open and vulnerable here. This is a part of my story. I know that I have been overly critical of my children, each of them at different points in their life for much of their life. It's something I've struggled with, even just being overly critical of myself. And unfortunately, I've conveyed that to my kids. That's an area where at times I have apologized, but I know that there's also areas where I can still seek forgiveness from them and work on what was causing that. And I am working on that, what the reasons were for that criticism, but that's just an example. Now, unhelpful regret sounds like I damaged her forever. I'm a horrible mother. She's gonna live with these wounds, and our relationship is forever changed. And unfortunately, she's gonna carry these wounds with her, and this is gonna perpetuate into her own children or his own children, so on and so forth. So you get the idea. That first response, it creates the possibility of healing. Whereas the second response, it just kind of creates resignation, and it likely will perpetuate exactly what you're fearing. So, one of the most powerful gifts that we can give to our children, whether they are young or grown, is the example of being someone who can acknowledge mistakes without collapsing and falling into shame. Because let's remember our children are also very likely, maybe not all, but very likely going to become parents themselves. They're gonna experience mistakes. Might not be the same ones that you have that you've had, but it might it might be the same ones and it might be different. And we want to teach them how to grow and how to acknowledge those mistakes and not fall into shame. And just this reminder is really, really helpful is that children do not need perfect parents. They don't need perfect mothers. What they need is mothers who know how to repent, how to repair, and how to grow.

Name It Learn It Release It

SPEAKER_00 13:03

So I want to offer you three practical tools of how to do this. The first one is to name it. What specifically do you regret? So naming that regret is really important, becoming very clear about what it is. The second thing is to learn it, to learn from it. What lesson can you take from it? What can you what can you learn? That's really important. This is where it changes the direction of where that regret, where that regret can go. And then the third is just to release it. And by release it, I mean just praying. You know, Lord, I entrust this past to your mercy. Help me to live differently today. So this prevents regret from remaining vague and overwhelming. Now, another tool is the evidence question. And this this is basically when you hear the thought, I've I've failed, and specifically I failed as a mother. Now that can sound really, really deep and heavy, but I know that there's women out there who feel that. And so then you can ask this, what is the evidence that I've never loved, sacrificed, prayed for, or cared for my children? Can you find evidence that you've never done this? I'm willing to bet that that's not the case. So what you're doing is you're trying to find evidence for the fact of that that moment where you might have made a mistake or you have regrets, that that is not the complete picture. It's just one part of the story. There's usually abundance of evidence of love. And just remember that imperfection, we are imperfect humans. We're going to have mistakes, we're going to have regrets. It's not the same as being a failure. Now, another tool that I want to offer you is this. And for

Confession And Trusting God’s Mercy

SPEAKER_00 14:37

Catholics out there, this will really hit home, but for all of you, you can you can implement this in your own way. And that is for Catholics, we're not to be left alone with our guilt. Confession is an opportunity. It's not, it's not just merely a psychological exercise. For those of you listening who are not Catholic, I want you to understand this. It's not just a psychological exercise. It's actually an encounter with Christ's mercy. And hopefully, if you are a Catholic, a practicing Catholic, you understand this. But if you don't, then I really encourage you to seek out the sacrament of reconciliation, to go to confession, because it is where you encounter Christ's mercy. If a regret involves sin, make sure you bring it to that sacrament. Receive absolution, and then just resist the temptation to keep resurrecting that. If God has forgiven it, keep it in the past. Let it there. You may be tempted, and the enemy may try and bring that back up and resurrect that regret, that thing that you're not letting go of. But if God has forgiven it, it's so important to just let it in the past. And sometimes the most difficult act of faith is just believing that God's mercy is greater than our worst mistakes. No matter what it is, God's mercy is greater. He can step into any situation where we feel like we've made a mistake or where we're hanging on to regret, and he can redeem that. That's God's business. That's what he's here for. That's what Jesus came for. So some final encouragement. Every

Scripture Hope And Moving Forward

SPEAKER_00 16:07

single person listening has moments that you wish you could redo. And for you mothers listening out there, I know you've got some in your parenting role. Every family has chapters that are painful, but your story is not defined by a single chapter. St. Paul writes, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead. I press on towards the goal. He was not pretending that the past never happened. He was just refusing to let the past become his final identity. Saint Paul, we know his past. I'm sure he had a lot of regrets of the things he did, but he was forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead. That's great encouragement for all of us. And hang on to that scripture. So if you're carrying some regret today, ask yourself this. Has this regret already taught me what I needed to learn? Have I brought it to God? Is it time to start, you know, stop staring backward and start walking forward? Because the enemy wants regret to become a chain, but Christ wants it to become a turning point. Your past can inform you, but it does not have to imprison you. Look deeply and see if the past is still holding you prisoner. And with God, even the places you wish were different, they can become places where grace, wisdom, and compassion grow. These can be areas of deep redemption and healing. It can be vite prov it can provide so much opportunity for growth in your family. And as

Prayer And Practical Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 17:32

we finish up today's episode, I actually want to just end in a prayer. I want you to think about this. And I'm just going to pray. You can listen along. Lord Jesus, thank you for your mercy. Show us the difference between healthy conviction and destructive shame. Help us learn from our mistakes without becoming trapped by them. Heal the places where we carry regret as mothers, and teach us to trust that your grace is greater than our failures. Amen. Thanks so much for listening today. And if you're finding that you're struggling with regret in your own life, I encourage you to sign up for Discovery Call. And we can explore deeper what might be holding you back, what thoughts might be keeping you stuck, areas in which you feel trapped by your past and the things that you've done. A phone call of 30 minutes can heal and bring to light so much. When you get stuck in your own mind, just taking it to coaching and having someone just reflect your thoughts back to you, presenting the areas in which you might be believing lies and which you're bound. And until next time, onward and upward, my friends, to the heights. Thanks so much for listening today. If you have any questions or would like to go deeper into this topic or how it affects you in your own life, you can find me at Sharon KCoach.com. That's Sharon the LetterK Coaching.com. If you've enjoyed listening, please subscribe and leave a review on your favorite platform. And feel free to share with anyone you think might benefit from what you've heard.