09/02/2026
Sometimes we’re harder on our past selves because we know how the story ended.
Hindsight bias can make us feel like we “should have known,” when we really couldn’t have known everything at the time. It’s a common phenomenon, but especially prevalent with those who have experienced trauma.
For example, trying to apply information you learned as an adult to something that happened when you were a child. It might feel easy to say now, “Oh, I should have done x, y, z instead, and that bad thing wouldn’t have happened!” But there is no guarantee of that in many situations, and it doesn’t change the fact that you didn’t know that information at the time as a child.
We can’t rewrite the past, but we can learn to process and manage our thoughts and feelings related to it now.
Learn from the past, but give yourself grace!
Learn more here:
https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/hindsight-bias
