Remorseful
Feeling remorseful means feeling deep, lasting sorrow for harm you caused, often with a wish that you could undo it. It's heavier than ordinary guilt, and it points at the person you hurt.
- On the wheel: Ashamed, then guilty, then remorseful
- Nearby: Sorry, to blame, guilty
- Often comes: Long after the event, at quiet moments
- Often points to: Harm to someone you care about, and a wish to undo it
It comes back while you're brushing your teeth
Remorse returns. You're driving, or brushing your teeth, and there it is again: the thing you said, the call you didn't make, the look on their face.
Merriam-Webster describes remorse as prolonged and insistent self-reproach and anguish for past wrongs, especially wrongs whose effects can't be undone.1
That last clause is the heart of it.
"I missed my grandmother's last birthday because I was too busy with work. She died that spring. I think about the phone call I kept putting off almost every week."
Regret can be about a choice that hurt no one but you, and guilt can be brief. Remorse is about another person and what your act cost them, felt deeply and for a long time. The regret and guilt pages cover the lighter two.
Easing up on yourself, and doing better next time
Plenty of people worry that easing up on themselves means they'll do it again. Two lines of research point the other way.
Students who had put off studying for one midterm and then forgave themselves for it procrastinated less before the next, and the forgiveness seemed to work by easing the bad feelings tied to the first failure.2
People who looked back on a regret with self-compassion reported more acceptance and forgiveness, and said they'd improved more because of it, across another set of studies.3 The kindness didn't erase the lesson. It made the lesson easier to take.3
The aim is to let remorse change what you do, without letting it become a life sentence.
When you can't say it to them
Some people can't be reached anymore, and the apology has nowhere to go. You can still give it a shape.
- Repair what can still be repaired. If the person is reachable, an apology that owns the act and offers a fix matters most. The sorry page walks through how.
- Write to them if you can't reach them. An unsent letter can hold what you'd say: what you did, what it cost them, what you wish you'd done.
- Change one habit because of it. Remorse is the feeling, and a changed habit is how it pays something back: "I call my mom every Sunday now."
- Give yourself the hearing you would give a friend who did this. That's the self-compassion step from the regret studies.3 Pretending it was okay is no part of it.
What would you say if you could talk to the person you affected? Write it as a letter, then add one line about what you'll do differently because of it.
Answer this with JoyMonths later, every day
If remorse is constant after months, or you punish yourself for it every day, talk it through with a therapist.
Questions people ask about remorse
Can you feel remorse for something that wasn't your fault?
What you'd be feeling then is closer to self-blame, which can attach to things you didn't cause. Remorse, by its definition, is for wrongs you did.1 The self-blame page is about the other kind.
Is remorse the same as being sorry?
They're close. Being sorry is wanting to apologize. Remorse is the deeper, longer feeling that can sit underneath an apology, or stay after one. You can say sorry in a minute; remorse can last years.