Tattoo Regret is a Symptom

Why permanence fails without authorship

One day, you look down at your tattoo, and your stomach turns with subtle distaste. This piece of art that was supposed to empower, transform, and mark identity now feels wrong. You did everything right—you thought about it, you waited, you researched, and you diligently cared for the piece. Yet, still, you ended up here, filled with a sense of embarrassment to claim this decision in retrospect. What went wrong?

You look for answers as to what happened. How, considering what seemed like a reasonable decision at the time, do you prevent future unreasonable decisions? To fill the void, incomplete explanations surface: “maybe I didn’t think about this enough,” “maybe I should have done more research,” “maybe I was immature,” “maybe I shouldn’t get any more tattoos.” These are false conclusions: what floats to the surface when the true problem is a deeper one. But these conclusions don’t solve for the real, structural issue.

You did everything right—and still ended up here. Tattoo regret isn’t a personal failure. It’s a structural one.

The perfect storm for regret

Tattoo regret is a common problem (with a 2023 Pew Research Center study reporting 24% of participants regret at least one tattoo) and one that involves damaging psychological downsides. But tattoo regret isn’t a moral failing. It isn’t necessarily a sign of poor judgement, but it is the symptom of a structural gap. Although all tattoos are uniquely individual experiences, following the thread of tattoo regret leads us to find a missing layer.

Regret should be handled with a sense of understanding and grace, seen not through the lens of condemnation, but information. Regret points us deeper, not to a singular point of breakdown: “I didn’t think this through”, but to a complete absence of the right tools to support its reduction.

Tattoos are an especially potent modality for regret. They are deep in meaning, meaning that can be translated through radically differing lenses depending on their trigger and response. Acting as a powerful mirror of identity, they are a permanent snapshot on an ever changing sense of self. Tattoos are a statement. A statement that stems from a trigger and a desire to mark transformation. Because of this, they run the risk of being highly charged and emotive artifacts of the state they were born within.

To embark on the journey collecting a tattoo is not a casual pursuit. Tattoos, in the recent cultural past, may have looked like walking into your local tattoo parlor and selecting a design from the wall or a flash book. In some cases, this collector journey persists. Widely, though, the industry norms have moved to one of near complete customization. There are many steps in the process of deciding you want a tattoo to getting a tattoo: what the tattoo will say, what the tattoo will be, who to trust, what it costs… all steps before the physically painful experience of the tattoo itself.

If you’re reading this, this is not news to you. This is all to say: tattoos exist as a statement and a signal to their trigger. A trigger strong enough to compel the journey of pain and permanence. This can become the perfect storm of regret: significance, response, declaration, identity, all wrapped up in a permanent assertion.

Decisions you face daily

Psychology distinguishes two types of regret: outcome, “I hate how this turned out,” and process, “I hate how this happened.” This breakdown of regret is often perceived as the surface level distaste for the piece itself, the outcome. Although if you look closer, it is often rather the layers of context within the process that is at fault.

When we can’t see our reasoning clearly, permanence records the unexamined, not the intention.

There is a breakdown that leads to regret. This often occurs because tattoos require layers of deep, and often invisible, emotional nuance. Processing each of these layers, from desire into permanence, can hold several breakpoints. When we lack frameworks for permanence, our reasoning stays concealed. Over time, this disconnect between process and awareness manifests viscerally as regret. This is experienced directly by looking down at your tattoo and wondering, “why did I do that?”

To understand why regret appears here so reliably, we have to look at how permanence is supported in other areas of life. Tattoos are arguably one of the most permanent decisions you’ll ever make. Compared to other life-changing decisions like marriage or having children, tattoos are unique in the sense that the infrastructure around permanence frameworks have been very thin. There are whole industries catering to the specificity of mental models for marriage and parenthood. There are countless marriage and family therapists, and as many conflicting parenting books as you can imagine. The intellectual work within these realms has been dissected in nearly every way possible.

It could be argued that, while tattoos may not be as relationally impactful as other permanent decisions such marriage and children, they could be seen as just as significant on the perception of identity. A tattoo can cause self-perception to spiral, upwards or downwards, depending on its wearers relationship towards it. A successful, identity affirming and empowering tattoo, can change your life for the better. It can articulate poignant messages to the self and dramatically alter confidence.

In the same sense, tattoos that descend into regret can have the opposite effect: decimating confidence and identity, alienating you from your own body.

The layer that was left out

Regret itself has spawned a billion dollar industry of laser tattoo removal. Coverups, as well, have become their own artistic specialization. While this is useful response to remedy the symptom, we have yet to build infrastructure around the most potent leverage point: the process. Is regret completely preventable? No, for reasons we’ll later explore, regret is partly also a symptom of the natural human experience. A human life will always ebb and flow, and change is inevitable. Is regret, though, worthy of consideration and methodology? Absolutely.

When it comes to getting a tattoo—a decision that will wake up with you, on you, for the rest of your life—we have vague teachings about ‘making sure you’re ready.’ There is a lack of thoughtful and psychologically mature mental models around permanence design making. Which, within the realm of synthesis of identity to symbol, has led people to try their best, but still feel like they failed along the way. Not because they are irrational, uncreative, or impulsive but because they lacked the proper infrastructure of thought and the tools to implement it.

We still operate within the realm of well intentioned but undeveloped advice: imagine yourself at 60 with the tattoo, think about it deeply, don’t rush, research your artist. But no attempt, yet, to dig deeper into emotional readiness, origin states, and how those translate when crystallized into permanence. We still have no sophisticated tools around authorship, with the process of connecting idea to image being completely unsupported until one reaches their artist.

The process of moving from the desire for a tattoo to clarity around the vision is awkward, cobbled together, and severely lacking in modern day thoughtfulness and ease. This is a major point of friction for anyone desiring a tattoo: how do I find something that I will hopefully love forever? Currently, the cultural method is to scroll Pinterest and accumulate a composite of ideas with aesthetic appeal. Symbolic meaning is then captured from often conflicting meme-like resources, and significance is borrowed that once belonged to someone else. This is not to the fault of the tattoo collector. This is the process born from tools available, tools that haven’t yet been catered to permanence decision making.

The desire for process is there. You see it within the Pinterest boards that balloon from years of tending, from the screenshots scattered throughout their phone of symbolic meanings collected in earnest. The desire is evident to reason through this process in a deep, thoughtful, and supported way. But Pinterest is not a tattoo conceptualization tool. It is a source of reference material after the deep work has been done. Inevitably, this system of process leads us to a place where meaning is borrowed, not due to any other reason than lack of support infrastructure. Trends swell, and the tattoos that are thoughtfully done become borrowed relics of their intentional process, diluting originality and individualized creativity.

Tattoo regret isn’t caused by a lack of thought. It’s caused by the absence of tools designed for permanence.

The cost of misappropriation

Humans have been tattooing for nearly 5,300 years. The tools and skills within the trade have evolved to shocking degree. But all we’ve left collectors with is the Pinterest process, and the expectation of the artist to fill the gaps within the realm of deep emotional articulation. Artists are translators of symbol to form, but they are not equipped to emotionally excavate meaning and intuit resonance to its translation. The only person who can journey through the process of digging deep into the emotional realm to articulate truth into symbolic direction, is the collector themselves.

It is here where we find our next dilemma: the systemic mismatch of artist and collector, and the misappropriation of expected roles. Because collectors haven’t been given the proper mental models and tools to extract their experience into a resonant meaning, they look to the artist. Rightly so, the artist is expert and authority over the domain of execution of their tattoo. But the collector is the only person who is expert and authority over the domain of their inner world. Try as they might to connect vague ambitions and meaning to their artist, without the space to thoughtfully reason through their intentions behind the tattoo, this can be a major breakpoint in the process.

The collector comes into their desire for a tattoo with their years of experience, story, lessons, and taste all existing solely within them. This is nuance that the artist, no matter how world class, couldn’t possibly extract in the way the collector could and should, with the right support. The artist, steadfast in their own support and mission to execute on a vision, is reliant on a vision that is well formed and is resonant to the collector. If this handoff goes wrong, the tattoo could be beautifully executed and translated to perfection, but regret and eventual identity mismatch become a risk.

The artist can never be expected to dig deep into psyche and pull out truth. But with this systemic gap—this missing layer—identified, we see now why, when Pinterest fails, artists are viewed as the last mechanism of support. This is a system failure. Not a moral one, there are no parties of malevolence behind this gap, just the absence of a bridge: a framework and tools that give power and agency back into the hands of the collector. Permanence deserves support within the realm of emotional excavation and understanding. Support within synthesis-to-symbol, stress-tested through resonance, and a thoughtful space to explore, compose, and truly author.

The process permanence deserves

A better, more accessible, and empowering process is possible, and absolutely should be prioritized and provided. This process, evolved to meet the evolution of the craft of tattooing, would meet collectors where they stand: the desire for a tattoo and the monumental task of shaping identity-aligned meaning into clarity. It would help them to understand their state of readiness: is this tattoo a response to the desire for healing or the healed translation itself? They would be guided to understand the origin of this desire and whether or not the timing works with them or against them. It would take them on the journey of not preaching resonance—“you’ll know it when you see it”—but teaching resonance.

More than anything, it would give them a space designed around intent and authorship: not composing borrowed meaning. It would respond, in full, to the creative desire to write their own story. It would give them the tools to thoughtfully explore intentionally built symbolism, not borrowed. It would take the time that is necessary to author meaning for a piece of art that will live, every day, with them. This missing layer would gently redefine roles: putting the power back into the hands of the collector to tell a story through agency, not urgency. This is the layer that permanence deserves, and it’s due time.

Regret is only a symptom of a missing layer. At the root of regret isn’t your personal failing by lack of reasoning or thoughtfulness. The missing layer is authorship—a way of empowering your process of permanence.

That layer finally exists, and it’s called Body as Story.