Regret means “to miss” or “mourn the loss of” or “be remorseful about”. Some etymologies trace it back to Old Norse grata “to weep”.
In truth, regret is trying to turn the Cycle of Action backwards. The definition of regret is to return something through time, to run time backwards.
The Cycle of Action in this case is the consideration that things progress from Start to Change to Stop, or from Create to Survive to Destroy.
In the psychiatric billing bible Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), it is expressed as some mental disorder “in remission.” Remission comes from the Latin remittere “to send back.”
Thus we get regret being redefined by psychiatry as a mental disorder.
While regret may indeed be an unwholesome emotion, it isn’t a mental illness; it’s a symptom of a messed up Cycle of Action.
Psychiatric Regret
Some psychiatrists are finally realizing that what they once diagnosed as biological mental illnesses are in fact fake. They are now acknowledging that no biological markers have ever been identified for the non-organic mental disorders in the DSM; and that the psychotropic drugs prescribed for these fake illnesses are harmful.
Yet regret is still a hot topic in psychology and psychiatry, wasting precious funds on scholarly articles and research programs rehashing all the ways one can experience regret and what to do about it. An Internet search on “psychiatric regret” produces hundreds, if not thousands, of references.
Please forgive us if we jump on this bandwagon; nor do we regret doing so.
Cause and Effect
Regret is also the subject of Cause and Effect. An individual naturally desires to cause things, and not become the effect of something bad. Regret can be seen in this light as remorse for having caused something bad, or having been the effect of something bad and wishing it to be reversed. Thus the way out of this painful emotion is the rehabilitation of one’s ability to be a cause or to be an effect without all the accumulated trauma of bad causes and bad effects.
Masking these real emotions with psychiatric drugs, or endless talk sessions, only prolongs the pain and cannot relieve it. Psychiatry and psychology are not an answer; they only confuse the issues.
