Should Have…Would Have…Could Haves of Life

I am depressed and I have been working with a therapist to better understand my depression. Why am I working on depression? Well, Depression is found in about 30%–40% of all patients with Parkinson's disease (PD), but only a small percentage (about 20%) receive treatment. I have found focusing on my mental well being greatly affects my health and positive outcomes. As we talked, my therapist noticed I was spending a lot of time repeatedly going through my version of the should as, would as, and could as. I think almost all of us have indulged ourselves in thinking of times when you wish you had/would have done/could have said or done something differently. Apparently, my time spent obsessing over my regrets qualifies me as fitting into the should as etc syndrome. It can even be fun if you imagine something positive or even pleasant as a result of your changing the past and, as a result, changing the future. A little daydreaming is fine, but what happens if daydreams ramp up or change to nightmares and you can’t stop thinking about them?

The cycle

I found myself stuck between imagining a brighter if not possible future and cycling back to my negative thoughts. As an example, I focused on my regrets. It’s impossible not to have lived life without having regrets. It’s part of being human, but I let something like regrets become almost all I thought about and I couldn’t stop. I have to admit that, for me, regrets were also a cover word for guilt or feeling guilty about something and I, in further talking with my therapist, l learned I was adding guilt into the already toxic mix of my regrets. Guilt whether or not I had any rational reason to feel guilty. Guilt is a negative and focusing long or too often on negative thoughts can, and in my case, did lead to worsening depression. Only by thinking of regret/ guilt differently did I begin to learn how to stop them from taking over my life. Among the strange ways I used regrets was I typically twisted fact and fiction so as to make almost anything I’d ever done fit into the ever broadening definition of regrets and guilt.

There are more than a few ways to make the should as syndrome less of a factor in depression. Just thinking about what in your life you’re grateful for helps some people but I needed more. As I like making lists and understanding process, I have been using a method that starts with making lists.

My method

1. Make a list of my top 10 regrets
2. Examine the first list for is any guilt real vs your mind inserting guilt?
3. If the guilt is real, is there any way to atone for your past actions?
4. The question I had to ask was “is it too late to do anything about the regret?” If the answer was too late, I had to ask myself “how long past too late have you been hanging on to the regret?
5. A statement “if there is no one left you can make amends to,” move to your next regret. Harder than I thought but focusing on the next regret actually worked for me.
6. If my answer was "not too late," then I had to stop thinking and take action. For me, action was the best or only way to stop obsessing over regret.

I’m not saying taking action is easy. Often, I had not taken action because the first step involved telling someone else I’m sorry. The next steps might require going beyond just saying I’m sorry for and having to explain to myself AND someone else why. I found if I didn’t go all through the atonement cycle, I often ended up still hung up in the cycle.

I didn’t say any part of starting with "I’m sorry" was easy but I also had recognized guilt or feeling guilt was a significant factor in my depression. Of more importance, the only method I could find that seemed a real way to lessen my depression (or assuage guilt). I might even have taken the first step in an act of desperation. I absolutely felt emotional pain the first time. Luckily, I picked what I thought was the easiest regret on my list to start the process. If I had picked my hardest regret as my first attempt, I think I wouldn’t have even gotten to “I’m sorry” and gone back to wallowing in my regrets and fantasizing about going back and changing my future.

After the first two or so tries at saying “I’m sorry”, I realized the whole process was enlightening and cathartic. Enlightening because often the person I was trying to say I’m sorry to had no memory of the event or experience. The regret and guilt just disappeared and was no longer on my regrets list. It took practice but I am no longer obsessing about regrets. I am not recommending that anyone just try what has worked for me and I do recommend finding help to navigate through the should as/would as/could as maze.