How to overcome regret?

It's the difference between learning from our mistakes. which is good, and living in the past, which is bad. You have the first part down pat. Now you have the second part to work on. It's not as hard as you think.

The problem is very much like dreaming. In the daylight hours, you keep going into a daydream in which you're in the past. The solution is to notice the times when you do this and "wake up." It's not hard. It's just a matter of getting into the habit of doing it.

Get into the habit of reacting to any stressful situation or a bad flashback by taking at least two slow, deep breaths through your nose. This helps you two ways. It's been proven again and again, in clinical and laboratory studies, that slow breathing lowers blood pressure, slows the pulse, and calms people down. Also, when you're conscious of your breathing, conscious of your abdomen moving or the air moving through your nose, the awareness of your body makes you aware of the here and now. When you're aware of your breathing, look around - the sights all around you. Listen to sounds and feel your body's sensations, like the feeling of clothing on your skin, the pressure of the floor against your feet, and all that. You know completely, 100%, that it's not the past. You're not dreaming. And keep working on that calm breathing.

Other things you can do to put yourself in the here and now are doing things carefully, like washing and drying the dishes, making sure they're perfectly clean, just thinking about what your hands feel and the sound of the water, also eating or drinking very slowly, like nursing a cup of tea for as long as you can or eating popcorn one piece of corn at a time and thinking about how each piece tastes while you slowly chew it. I find the best way to do tea meditation is with a strong cup of good green tea that has a pleasant aftertaste, in a cup that holds the heat. Learn how to brew green tea. Affordable green matcha power is sold on Amazon.

In the 1980s, Jon Kabat-Zinn took a method from traditional meditation that we call mindfulness or mind-body awareness and used it to design the first mindfulness-based therapy, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). Since then it's been tested hundreds of times and found to help with stress, chronic pain, and other problems. It's been shown to improve people's memory and problem-solving ability. Dr Kabat-Zinn defines mindfulness as "intentional awareness of the present moment."

MBSR is available in hundreds of clinics across the US. A free online version of MBSR, Palouse Mindfulness, is offered by a therapist and certified MBSR instructor. There's also a popular app for mindfulness called Headspace.

The video below has audio for the original MBSR Body Scan exercise used as an introduction to mindfulness. It's very relaxing.

Another way to get started is with a simple breathing exercise. Psychiatrists Brown and Gerbarg recommend 20 min. of this twice a day for anxiety and depression. Lie or sit comfortably so you can breathe freely, with a hand on your abdomen to feel it go in and out. Breathe slowly through your nose, 5 breaths a minute, inhale about 4 sec., exhale about 4 sec. The authors have published 6 papers on breathing exercises and use them in their work. Their book The Healing Power of the Breath recommends a 3-way approach - breathing, slow body movement and mindfulness. You can learn Tai Chi exercise with one or two beginners' videos on YouTube.

I've written a lot of Mental Health answers, with advice from experts on mood disorders and other problems. You're welcome to click on my name and read.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4gZgnCy5ew&t=1129...

You're only 19, your life has barely begun. Short of murdering someone, just about anyone as young as you are can bounce back from whatever mistakes they've made. If you're going to screw up your life, do it before 30 so you have time to make things better!

Accept the past, for its not the past you're angry about, you're angry about yourself for having having a lot of bad thinking & habits.

just try to fix whatever mistakes youve made