Peace of Mind for Pet Parents Episode 059: It’s Not Guilt, It’s Regret: Understanding the Difference That Changes How You Heal After Pet Loss (Part 3)

Episode Transcript: 

Karen Wylie:Welcome back to Peace of Mind for Pet Parents. I'm Karen Wylie and today I want to speak directly to anyone who's ever laying awake at night replaying a decision they made for a pet who is no longer here.

"Should I have done the surgery?" " Should I have waited longer or not waited at all?"

If those kinds of questions live anywhere inside you, this episode is for you. This is the third of four conversations with Judith Eve Rosen, licensed clinical social worker, veterinary social worker, and author of "Life After Pet Loss". 

Judith draws a distinction between guilt and regret. That sounds simple but for many pet parents, it's the difference between staying stuck and beginning to heal. After our conversation with Judith, Gail and I came back together to reflect on what she'd shared and the conversation that followed surprised even us.

Karen Wylie: I wanted to look at the issue of guilt, the sense of responsibility, and how it plays out in end of life decision making. Now, Gail and I support pet parents who are hoping to allow for natural death and are working toward that. That doesn't mean it'll always be possible. Something may happen and an emergency occurs and euthanasia is on the table even for those who hope it would be different. Then for others, they are planning the euthanasia for specific days and times. That's where so many people seem to get stuck. It's not necessarily traumatic. Although I guess it could be and I will let you speak to that. But it's that responsibility grief of having to make that decision and then later on regretting having the second thoughts— getting their thoughts trapped. So I wanted to ask your thoughts about that.

Judith Rosen: I would love to see the numbers on this. I don't know if there's a survey of grievers that has this information. Anecdotally, like almost every client I've had, has had some kind of guilt. 

They call it guilt but it's actually regret, I'm going to explain the difference in a second, but that seems to increase the likelihood of grief for most people like a severe grief because they're feeling so guilty. Some of the things are really attributed to them. "I opened the door, the dog ran out, and the dog got hit by a car. It's all my fault. I shouldn't have..."

Or somebody else, "I should have been there to remind them to close the door" or something like that. All of these things are accidents for a reason.

So in Cognitive Processing Therapy, guilt comes up a lot in PTSD as well as people feel responsible. They blame themselves for what happened. Somebody that's assaulted, blames themselves for being out after 10:00 PM for example, right? In the early treatment, we show a slide, that's called levels of responsibility. So when something goes wrong, there's a traumatic event of some kind and it applies to the decision-making scenario, we can ask ourselves, "Was I involved in it at all?"

Usually, if you know for sure that you are not involved in whatever that traumatic event was, "There's nothing that I did that could have caused it." Then you don't have any kind of guilt. 

When you did contribute in some way, such as accidentally opening the door but you did not intend to cause harm, you never would've wanted anything bad to happen to your baby. That is regret. You regret the choice you made and we can process it as a regret but there is no need for self punishment or some kind of act to resolve it.

Guilt is actually the emotion that comes from when you feel bad about having intentionally caused harm to someone. That is guilt because when you think about in a court of law, somebody caused something to happen, they're guilty. Even when somebody's guilty of intentionally causing harm, there are opportunities for them to make amends. 

In our discussions, we'll talk about did you intend for the harm to happen or did you make a choice on the best information you had at the time, and regret not having made a different choice.

Do you regret something that you accidentally did but never for a minute thought that it would result in what happened? I think we're so self-punishing for so many things. I think that is just like the natural way. Nobody’s  harder on us than ourselves.

Karen Wylie: That's the truth. With so many of the situations that Gail and I deal with, people are caring for an aging pet at home with a chronic condition that they've been monitoring for a couple years. It can go terminal or a terminal diagnosis of something else can come out of the blue. So it's not often an accident that happens but it is a series of decisions made.

Bone cancer in a dog and they talked to the vet. The vet's saying, "It's pretty localized it appears. If we amputate that leg, I've seen dogs be able to have an extra year or two." So they're like, "Oh, okay. The margins look good and everything's looking good." But then they only have three more months with the dog. Then they're saying, "Oh my God, I should never have done that, if I had known that there wouldn't be this extra year of joyful living. Instead, there were three months of getting used to being without that leg during that time..."

Those are the kinds of care decisions. I think the distinction you're making is really very helpful because looking at the guilt from the court of criminal law is looking at it very logically, very differently than how most of us punish ourselves when we're second guessing ourselves and looking at our care decisions. Part of our brain is generally not functioning, we're not that logical.

Judith Rosen: No, and we're leaving out information usually. Sometimes we'll have to go back and talk and then people will forget. I think I mentioned earlier, people will forget other doctors or vets that they may have talked to or other things that they researched. The truth is that nobody knows what the outcome is going to be. The vet cannot ever tell you for sure. I had mentioned this earlier.

Karen Wylie: We totally agree.

Judith Rosen: It's so difficult. I think when people can get to a point, I'll see this in some patients, they're like, "You know what? I cannot change it and punishing myself is not changing anything. It's not doing anything other than causing me distress. Whereas if I stop causing myself distress, maybe I can start to feel better. I could go volunteer at a shelter or something." You want to make amends in some way,

Karen Wylie: That's an option.

Judith Rosen: That's an option for you. But it's really important to remember that the doctors don't even know. They don't know what the outcome is going to be. When they go in to do a surgery, they don't know. My cat Joanie died after— they thought she either had lymphoma or IBS. In the procedure they did, I guess, it's like an endoscopy. In the process her, I guess, bowel was perforated or something, which is something that can happen with either of those.

I had completely forgotten that was what happened and I happened to open up an old email. I had forgotten the whole IBS and lymphoma thing. I was thinking, "Why did I bring her into the hospital? Why did I...?" And I was like, "Oh yes, I forgot about all that." 

Again, there was no way to know. We have to remind ourselves that we are human and by definition we are fallible. That is why I have a couple of entries in the book about mindful self-compassion. Mindful self-compassion is looking at how we see ourselves, how we treat ourselves, and treat ourselves kindly as if we are our own best friend. And we regret mistakes that we've made but then we acknowledge that we are human and give ourselves self care out of that.

Karen Wylie: Gail is someone who often reminds everyone about the importance of self-care. Whether they're starting a caregiving journey with a pet or they're further down and perhaps the physical journey is over and they're dealing emotionally with the physical loss. Gail, you want to say anything about self-care and self-compassion?

Gail Pope: I hate you! You know what? Okay, let me just read you this. So on April the 19th, Judith's words were, "As I learned to be compassionate with myself, I learned to be compassionate with others."

I made a list and I actually picked up a yellow highlighter and highlighted that bit because I am totally the opposite, because I've counseled so many people as our clients. I've taught them to be compassionate with themselves but I can't do it for me. I'm up the other way.

Karen Wylie: I feel that myself.

Gail Pope: Exactly! Maybe I need an appointment with you but it has been years and hundreds of animals. They've taught me so many lessons about so many different aspects of life, living, dying, and death. I'm very comfortable with all of those. Compassion for me, "Eh? What? I don't get it. It's weird." It's just like a block down in front of me.

Karen Wylie: I was just going to say how "Gail" that was. I was looking through your book and said that what spoke to her was self-care and self- love.

Gail Pope: It's actually the first thing I wrote down that was in April.

Judith Rosen: I'm honored by that, Gail. So here's something practical you can do. Do you ever catch yourself chastising yourself? For example, if you send an email and you realize you forgot to put the attachment. You forgot to attach the file and you go, "I'm such an idiot. Oh my God."

Gail Pope: Of course, I'm going to do that.

Judith Rosen: So what you can start on just like a practical level and this is the mindful part, right? Mindfulness is just being aware of what's happening in the present moment. 

So anytime you hear yourself use that voice or those kinds of words at yourself, you can either just note that you did it and just become more aware of it. Or you can talk back to that voice and say, "No, I'm not an idiot. I love me.." Or something whatever you want to do but start by being more self-aware. 

If my best friend sent me an email and they forgot their attachment, would I email them back "You're an idiot"? No. In general, you would not want to do that.

Gail Pope: No, I'm right with you and I completely understand what you're saying. And yes, I do notice occasions like that. I'll email Karen and I totally forget that I didn't attach the thing that I was writing about. I don't know. I just don't deal with it the way you were suggesting or I guess I do but I go right on by it.

Judith Rosen: Try it. See if it works for you.

Gail Pope: I just call myself an idiot and move on.

Judith Rosen: But if you feel that you're not giving yourself enough self-care, if you find yourself, as you were saying earlier, doing that, then this is like one way to ease into that a little bit. Just being a little kinder to yourself. It does feel better. 

There's an exercise there— it's Mindful Touch and it's in the Mindful Self-Compassion program by Kristin Neff, who I adore and I love her work. It's just like giving yourself a hug or just touching yourself gently— like hand over hand anytime that you're feeling stress, like holding your own hand. It sounds silly but you feel it if you do.

One of the ones I remember she did is you know how when you, especially we do this with our dogs, just want to cup their face in your hands. So if you close your eyes and do that to yourself and see what that feels like. Just imagine somebody speaking very kindly to you while you're doing that.

Karen Wylie: It is lovely.

Judith Rosen: You just say to yourself, "You know what, Judy, it's going to be okay. Everything's going to be all right. It's going to be okay." And that feels really good.

Karen Wylie: Wow! Really?

Judith Rosen: And so I put that in the book because one of the difficult losses is the loss of touch. Especially if you live alone and when you would pet or sleep next to your animal, you miss that and you're not getting that dose of oxytocin that you should be getting. So that's why I put that in there.

Karen Wylie: It's a great addition. Especially when people who are like the kindest, most compassionate people are the hardest on themselves.

Gail Pope: Can I go now?

Judith Rosen: We don't want to put you on the spot.

Karen Wylie: Nothing like that. No, we won't do that. We'll move on to something else now.

Gail Pope: Oh, that's funny.

Karen Wylie: Oh goodness.

---

Part 2: After our conversation with Judith, Gail and I couldn't stop thinking about what she shared with us. So we came back together to reflect on it. Just the two of us, the way we so often do. What followed was one of those conversations that surprised us a little. We went places we didn't plan to go and I think that's exactly why it's worth sharing. 

Here's Gail and me.

Karen Wylie: I think everyone who would've just listened to that part of our conversation with Judith might need a minute to take it in. Because I think Judith just gave everyone what I wish every pet parent could hear, something that I need to hear and that is that there is a distinction between guilt and regret. 

The distinction she was making is that guilt is when you intended to cause harm and regret is when you say to yourself, "I made the best decision I could and I wish the outcome had been different."

Somehow I don't phrase things quite as nicely as that when I'm looking back and second guessing myself with decisions that I made and I think any of us who take care of our pets through that last chapter. You're laying awake at three o'clock in the morning and you're replaying every decision you made. You're wondering if you chose the wrong surgery or you shouldn't have done the surgery that you said yes to. Or you waited too long or you acted too soon. I do think her distinction between guilt and regret can be helpful at times because they are not the same thing. They don't let you heal the same way either.

If you're consumed with guilt where you're just probably going around in circles, over and over again, blaming yourself for something that, as she's saying, you didn't intend harm. Then you shouldn't feel guilty. Is basically what she said. What do you think?

Gail Pope: I wish it worked for me, is what I'm thinking. There's one particular incident back in my past which every now and again in the dark of night, comes back to me and I do feel guilt. I know very well that I should not be feeling guilty because I didn't know any different. So I followed my heart and the outcome was death and I was guilty. Do I regret it? Absolutely.

But for me they're both there. Yes, I can qualify both words as being pertinent but does that soothe my heart? Not really. After all these years, it still comes back with that, "Oh God, I wish that had been different. I wish I'd known. I wish I knew all the things that you were saying."

So I think when we are caring for our human children or our animal children, we can always look back and see the guilt, the regret intermingling in different ways at different times. Oh God, I don't know how to express it. I'm also thinking along slightly different lines, which is I know for a fact, I've lived it and I know that the animals that came into my life, the hundreds of them that steamed in there, came to teach me lessons. 

I think sometimes I've overthought those lessons. Sometimes I haven't realized what the lesson was until long after the animals died. It maybe wasn't even anything to do with their death, it was to do with some way that I treated them in life and the outcome could have been good, bad, or ugly. Most of it has been good because I've learned so much and it is through the animals.

So it's a kind of a roundabout way of saying that maybe it was meant to be. Maybe I had those experiences that didn't turn out as I'd hoped they would. Then I'd felt guilt, and then I'd felt regret but maybe that was their path. Maybe I'm being selfish and just looking at me and it's my regret, my guilt. What about them? Maybe they're on that other side, somewhere of the invisible line saying, "That was my choice. I had never died naturally before. That's what I wanted." Or "I didn't have a good death" or "I got hit by a car."

Why did that cat run into the road in front of my car? I had no choice but do I feel guilty? Yes, I do. Do I regret it? Funny, I could have been driving down a different road. All of those things come to us and along with the blame but we don't ever stop and say, "But what about the animal? Was that their choice?" I'll hand that back to you.

Karen Wylie: Oh, you! Because of course we don't usually know in a conclusionary way that we can say, "Oh, that it's okay that he died that way because that's what he wanted." As the pet parent who loved that animal, I'm not going to come to that for quite a while. Maybe years reflecting back, looking back but is certainly what you're describing.

There's a lot of discussion in literature about the sacred contracts that each human comes into each incarnation with. That is this pathway that we planned out for ourselves before we were born and then we came into our bodies and we began this particular life's path. Then what we learn, what we don't learn, apparently, is something that is reviewed after this incarnation. 

So certainly the way I think of our animals as sentient beings if we have sacred contracts, they can certainly have them too.

Gail Pope: Makes total sense. I'm remembering a situation, oh gosh, many years ago. I won't tell the whole story because it's a little brutal for this conversation but a cat died at BrightHaven. I didn't feel guilt. I didn't feel regret. The incident that happened, I wasn't involved in but it was one of the BrightHaven animals who died. The person who actually unwittingly caused the death didn't know. So I didn't tell her, but that haunted me for a long time. 

Until out of the blue in communication with an animal communicator about something different.

I was told, as I say out of the blue and what a shock that was, by the cat that he chose to do what he did in that moment because it was the opportunity he was waiting for to do what he needed to do. It's like that had the I's dotted, the T's crossed and it was heavily underlined. "Oh my goodness. There was something else at play here."

Karen Wylie: You were not having the conversation with the animal communicator about that particular animal’s loss?

Gail Pope: No, it came in as a sidebar, basically. That makes me think we have this huge guilt, always. Again, yes, regret too because maybe we should have done things differently or we could have but there is a greater plan. I think we come to realize as we age and we have all these strange, kinky experiences throughout our lives, that we have to start realizing it's not all about us. 

There's an awful lot we don't understand and the more we delve into these spooky occurrences, the more it makes us deal with life a little bit more, I don't know, rationally or irrationally, I'm not sure. We have to sometimes let go and allow the flow of life and accept that it isn't always just about us, what we did, what we said, but there are other things at play.

Karen Wylie: That's difficult for so many people to acknowledge because that's a whole other layer or level—

Gail Pope: It is!

Karen Wylie: —of looking at situations. Especially right after a loss and we're so focused on what happened here in this plane, in this existence. Especially, I think one of the things I had asked Judith about was Responsibility Guilt, Responsibility Grief which can be very difficult. For example, deciding the day and time of a euthanasia but in reality, yes, that's a big decision. That's one that people can have a lot of feelings about - and guilt or regret, however we want to be looking at it.

But when you're caregiving for an animal over a long period of time, one that is in decline, you are making so many different decisions every day, every week, all along the way. You can blame yourself. There's just so many different things you can second guess yourself on - what you should have done, not done, when you did it. It's just an endless array of punishment that you can do to yourself. When an animal you love dies and even when you're doing your best to support them on their timeline, you sure want them to stay as long as they can.

So I think what you're suggesting in terms of the animals' path, their soul contract, their life wishes, is an entirely different way for us to consider what else may have been going on, that we weren't necessarily picking up along the way, because we were so consumed with physical care of our pet.

Gail Pope: Yes.

Karen Wylie: And yet, like you're describing the situation for you, you weren't asking the animal communicator to help you gain closure or information about that particular pet. But because the channel was open to those that passed over, that animal came through with a message for you. Talk about an "Aha" in terms of a moment of "Is it real or did somebody make it up?" That's about as real as it gets because it was real for you. You hadn't said anything to that animal communicator.

Gail Pope: That's true.

Karen Wylie: About that animal.

Gail Pope: It's sad though, isn't it? That we can't have all of these experiences underlined all the time so that we can go, "Oh, thank goodness. At least it makes sense now." I don't think it ever takes the pain away. It really doesn't take the pain, the hurt, the sorrow. And yes, I think regret, guilt is a tougher one but I think if it eases the guilt then it is a softer slope. Maybe it’s the way I would think of it. 

I think stepping back from these kinds of occurrences, if we can only learn not to chastise ourselves but to absorb the story deeply within. Know without any shadow of a doubt that every decision we made along the way, whether it was a short journey or a long journey, we did it not only with love but with the best intent. Knowing that is a really big step, not even a baby step, along the way to acceptance.

Then along with the conversation we're just having now, comes along with the acceptance part of "Maybe this isn't just all about me. Maybe there is something bigger at play here. Maybe we don't know. We are not going to know anymore about this but let's just know that I did my best and I did it with love. That actually has to be enough. It is enough.

Karen Wylie: It is enough and should be enough for more people. I think we often talk about what notes to take as we're caring for our pets to keep track of what we are seeing in terms of what our animal is doing, behaving, how much they're eating and so forth. Are they still enjoying their life? 

But it's probably one of the things that I thought of based on this conversation with Judith is that maybe we should also be keeping track of why we made certain decisions along the way and capturing our good intentions.

So that later on, when we're all ready to "blame" ourselves for everything we did wrong, we would have a record to look back on that was just full of love and what we were trying to do. I'm thinking that our caregiver notetaking should be more than the physical care that we're taking of our pets, but also more about the decisions we make because later on that could be healing for ourselves.

Gail Pope: Yes, that really is an interesting thought. Along with that, to me, comes a kind of parallel thought which is just really underscoring what I said. It's following the process of our heart through the journey. If you are recording the steps you took along the way, it's actually stopping and realizing that your heart was involved in every single one of those little choices and decisions.

So how can you really feel guilty? When you actually look back, it's almost like an unseen force is acknowledging you did all that. You did it all. It's in your head, you've written it down here, you did it all, and it's okay. It's okay. The end result wasn't exactly what you'd planned but that's not up to you to plan. So, I like the way you said that. That's interesting.

Karen Wylie: I'm feeling another writing coming on.

Gail Pope: Oh, no.

Karen Wylie: The last thing that Judith had brought up was about self-compassion. I had to laugh as I was reflecting on that part of our conversation because you're so good at making sure each of us shows compassion for ourselves and we take care of ourselves throughout our pet's journey. But you can be really tough on yourself.

Gail Pope: And maybe that sits actually at the root of this conversation because I think that applies to all of us. So when we go back and we are trying to make sense of these guilty feelings, the regrets— that's what stumps us. I don't know. I've never been able to climb over that hurdle. I just have to accept and go on. I think that's why I preach acceptance and gratitude and animal wisdom so much because it's almost like pushing it away from me because it's very hard. Very hard.

Karen Wylie: It is.

Gail Pope: I don't feel compassionate to myself but I have lots of compassion for others. I don't know. Maybe I need a psychiatrist to delve in and find out why. But when we have this kind of a conversation, I find it an embarrassment. It's interesting and it's sad, but it is embarrassing because I feel that I should know how to do that.

Karen Wylie: I think you know how to do it. You just don't choose to do it. I often don't choose to do it for myself either. I'm so focused on problem solving and analyzing for the future. You know, I want to make sure this doesn't happen again. What did I do wrong here? What went wrong here? Because I'm trying to control a situation so it doesn't happen again to another animal. Or that I handle something differently or better the next time. 

So I don't think I'm that good with self-compassion either. Maybe that's why we're both here trying to create learning opportunities for other pet parents because we know we still need them ourselves. We know what we've been through. We know what worked. We know what we're still working on.

Gail Pope: Yes, absolutely. I can't think of anything more to say about it but it requires more thought because it is strange. Maybe actually we do or have learned self-compassion but we just don't know how to express it for ourselves. I think, I don't know, would we be doing what we do if we weren't compassionate to ourselves? Maybe we just are and it's just a natural thing that flows.

Karen Wylie: And maybe we're channeling it by providing helpful experiences for others and then we're having some ourselves.

Gail Pope: That makes sense with how I feel. Thank you, I'll take it. That's perfect. I'll have it.

Karen Wylie: Oh, goodness. This was a fascinating discussion with Judith and always a fascinating conversation with you, my dear.

Gail Pope: It's a huge topic and it affects all of us in our lives in different ways and we all strive to do our best. I think that's part of it. I guess my ending remark would be the same as it always is. Based on what you just said, yes, we will look back but we have to make sure that we understand that we did our best, we did it with great love and so all is well. We have to accept that for ourselves because it is the truth.

Karen Wylie: Yes. Truly, it is the truth.

Gail Pope: It is the truth.

Karen Wylie: And on that note, we'll say thank you for being with us for this episode of Peace of Mind for Pet Parents. Thank you. Bye-bye.

Gail Pope: Goodbye. Thank you very much.