You can feel bad if it makes you feel better....

There is a country song written by Matraca Berg and Tim Krekel with the lyrics "you can feel bad if it makes you feel better..." from around the turn of the century (wow, for most of my life that phrase meant the transition from the 1800's to the 1900's!).

We can always do that, and we may need to do that. Whatever it takes to fully mourn the events in our lives that call for mourning. In Marshall Rosenberg's transformational spiritual practice Nonviolent Communication mourning is considered a truly universal human need.

And, paradoxically, "feeling bad" can be a strategy we use to punish ourselves for something we did that didn't serve us well, in order to (and this is the strange part) unconsciously avoid actually changing our behavior. It truly can work to take the edge off the regret. We can feel somehow that we have paid the price for what we did, and then leave it at that. Then we find ourselves repeating the behavior and wondering why.

Can you relate? I can. I must have actually been taught somehow, that when I make a mistake I should grovel. Of course, no one was really ever expected to make mistakes. Mistakes were something you should feel ashamed of. So, externalizing the process, I would make profuse apologies and really feel bad about things that were just things that happen. You know. S*#T happens.That was supposed to take the pressure off that might come from people around me. Shaming myself was better than enduring the shaming from others.

I find this to be not useful in the long run. On the other hand, I notice that something in me wants to acknowledge a mistake, and even grieve the harm that was done. There are ways to do this cleanly, that are less likely to result in resentment. Btw, that's one to ponder -- why do I sometimes resent the person I harmed? So... I am feeling curious, dear reader. What ways do you like to use to express regret that leave you feeling clean and tend to result in learning?