Regrets & How to Deal with Them!
Dr. Z talks about regrets—those nasty past experiences most of you tend to regret in relationship to transition.
Regrets range from "I should have started sooner" to "I should have done things differently" to "I should have picked a different surgeon or worked with a different therapist." All things that fall in regret category under scope of gender transition or gender exploration.
Regrets are interesting—Dr. Z hears quite a few of you express in comments "I have regret about this or that." She thinks about this concept of regret and how to move away from being stuck in regrets. Regrets are one of those things everybody has—everybody experiences regrets.
If you're saying "I'm not somebody who tends to regret things," you definitely experience regret. The difference: you don't dwell on those experiences of regrets versus some people tend to dwell and sit in those regrets or sometimes even ruminate on those regrets. That's what separates people who say "I don't have any regrets"—what they mean is "I have regrets but I don't think too much about it, I accepted things didn't work out, accepted things could have been done differently, and I moved on."
Watch to find out why it's good to move away from dwelling and not sit in juxtaposition of regrets, what regrets are (past occurrences—always part of past, not part of future or present, something that happened in a way or the way it happened or the way you behaved that wasn't the way you'd want it to unfold, the outcome wasn't what you wanted, so you regret and say "I wish I could have"), why past is for reference not residency (don't take residency in past, don't live in past, but use past as reference point to inform future goals/decisions or learn from past experiences), and why you exert the same amount of energy ruminating about regrets (things you could have done sooner/differently—nothing changes, waste of energy) versus putting exact same amount of energy into things in the now that lead to tomorrow (you'll have an outcome even if small/internal/not tangible—because energy has been put into something in the present moving toward future).
