From tattoos to trauma, here’s what people regret doing to their bodies—and what those regrets teach us about healing.
Question: What Do You Regret Doing to Your Body?
There’s a quote that says, “Your body is the only place you have to live.” And yet, so many of us treat it like a hotel room we’re checking out of by morning. The saddest part is not just the physical toll—it’s the emotional debris we carry for how we treated the only vessel we’ll ever have.
Regret is a heavy word. But it’s especially haunting when it comes to our bodies, because it mixes the irreversible with the deeply personal. What we do to our bodies is often the product of our environment, our pain, our longing to belong, or our belief that something about us isn’t enough as it is.
Some regret came wrapped in vanity. Tanning beds, tattoos from a younger, hurt version of ourselves, plastic surgery that felt empowering but turned alienating. One person shared how getting breast implants left her feeling less like herself. Another said her freckles were once burned off, only to realize years later that those freckles connected her to her family in a way nothing else could. It’s not just about appearance. It’s about identity.
Others talked about addiction—drinking, smoking, overeating—not as crimes committed against the body, but as survival mechanisms. Habits that dulled the pain of trauma or numbed the weight of living. One person wrote about consuming hundreds of liters of rum to cope, only to now feel the irreversible damage to their health even 459 days into sobriety. Another described reaching nearly 900 pounds before choosing therapy and surgery as a lifeline. These aren’t stories of failure. They’re testaments to how hard we fight for peace—even if it’s self-destructive peace.
There were regrets born from neglect, too. Skipping the dentist for years, only to pay later in root canals, shame, and expense. Not wearing earplugs at concerts and now living with tinnitus. Not using sunscreen and now wearing the scars of sun damage. These are the regrets we don’t think about in the moment because youth convinces us we’re invincible—until time reminds us otherwise.
And then there were the invisible scars. The skin picking, the eating disorders, the self-harm. The stories of those who now wear their pain across their arms, legs, and bellies. One voice stood out—a model who had over 1,000 scars from self-harm. She didn’t call them beautiful, because they aren’t. She called them evidence. Evidence of survival. Of existing through the unimaginable. And that reframing—that scars aren’t signs of ugliness but of endurance—is perhaps the most radical act of self-compassion we can extend to ourselves.
But one comment cut the deepest:
“Not loving it more for what it is, instead of hating it for what it isn’t.”
That might be the most universal regret of all.
Regret doesn’t have to be a life sentence. It can be a teacher. A turning point. A quiet nudge that says, “You’re still here. You still have time to be kind to the body you live in.”
So whether your regret is a tattoo, a scar, a pound, a missed appointment, or a voice you never learned to use—know this: your body still wants to forgive you. All it ever wanted was to be loved by you.
And it’s never too late to start.
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