. The partners of these individuals also speak out with their own regrets for not having insisted that their loved ones “roll up their sleeves.”
In cases other than the death or severe illness of someone you know, it’s possible that counterfactual thinking can actually work toward your benefit. According to the “opportunity principle,” reflecting on a past event is “functional only if the situation can be changed or is likely to occur in the future.” You can’t change the death of a loved one, but you can be more careful when you tiptoe onto a stepstool.
Rumination over what might have been could also be involved in those who become ill with COVID-19 as well as, theoretically, their partners who blame themselves for not being more proactive. The University of Groningen study provides the closest empirical counterpart, having tested the role of counterfactual thinking in bereaved individuals studied longitudinally over a 6- and 12-month period.
Turning to the results, the scores on prolonged grief and depression of the bereaved were highest for those who engaged in upward self-referenced counterfactual thinking. The findings, according to the authors, suggest that “mentally ‘undoing death,’ in particular in relation to actions oneself could have taken, is a problematic coping strategy that perpetuates post-loss mental health problems.”
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