Phenomenological Features of Regret About Something Unselected

In scientific practice, the experience of Regret About Something Unselected is not adequately addressed. The present study focuses not only on the intensity of the experience of regret, but also on the allocation of specific phenomenological indicators of each of the phases and each of the ways of living Regret About Something Unselected. We are talking about the phase structure in connection with the fact that Regret About Something Unselected can be similar to grief, but not reducible to it. In this study, a comparison of Regret About Something Unselected with grief was made, followed by a theoretical analysis of their similarities and differences. The research itself is exploratory (search) in nature, its purpose is to study the phenomenological features of regret about the unselected in a real life situation. The method of in-depth semi-structured interviews was chosen as the main method for collecting data within the framework of a 3-stage longitudinal empirical study, followed by data processing using qualitative content analysis with a two-stage expert assessment. The data include cases of 40 real life situations of Regret About Something Unselected disorders of varying intensity, obtained on a sample of 31 people. According to the results of an empirical study, 3 ways of living with Regret About Something Unselected and the phenomenological features of each phase (by analogy with grief) of living with Regret About Something Unselected were identified. Thus, this study sheds new light on the phenomenology of unchosen regret.