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I think many of us go through things like this. Looking back at our lives and seeing where we screwed up and what we should have done to be responsible etc etc. Many of us have twinges of regret, but we have to put it all into perspective so that it doesn't eat away at us and cause us to kick ourselves.
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You're quite right, sabby, as far as you go. But I'm not talking about "where I screwed up" or "twinges of regret." I was trained, as a baby, to stay as far away from reality as is humanly possible without death occurring, and I stuck with it, all my life. No real pleasure. No real human relationships. No real achievement. But, oh yes! very high IQ. As if that means a thing if you can't use it. Everything, entirely, was all screwed up. And "twinges" doesn't quite measure up to the full-blown tidal waves I live with every day.
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Don't forget that hindsight is 20/20. What you now know, you may not have known then, so you could not apply that knowledge then as you didn't have it. I like to think that everything we go through in life is a lesson to be learned for future experiences. Sometimes it takes us many years to learn lessons, but that certainly doesn't mean that we were a total waste back in the day. It means we had more work to do in order to put all the knowledge pieces together to create a recognizable reality.
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I knew NOTHING then. But, to me, that's not the point. To me, the point is that almost every single other person in the world knows what I don't know. It's all common knowledge. I feel very related to ghetto teenagers who get guns and rob convenience stores out of sheer desperate rage at not knowing how to get what they want in a legal way. Do you know what it feels like to be shut out in that way?
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We also change our ways of thinking as we age. What was important to us when we were in our 20's changes in our 30's and even more so in our 40's and on up.
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What you say is, of course, true. But as I've found, and I'm sure you have too, there is a very large part of ourselves that does not change, that remains fixed for life. In therapy, I may (just may, since I'm not sure) find out how to deal with people like normal people do. But I assure you that if and when I translate that kind of insight into action, then, when compared with the real thing, the normal understandings that normal people have, my new insight in its workings could be compared with a medieval crutch used by medieval cripples. No comparison with reality. No comparison at all.
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I hope you don't think I'm trivializing what you are going through. I certainly validate your thoughts and feelings. As one who has gone through this before, I realized after awhile that feeling so much regret over times that were seemingly done wrong or under-corrected didn't allow me to move forward to a place more comfortable and to a place where I could work towards feeling better about myself. I hope that you can find that place very soon!
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Of course you're not trivializing what I'm going through. And I much appreciate your comparing my situation with feelings and reactions you yourself have had. I certainly do not feel this way all day, and would love to find a "more comfortable" place. I just have doubts about that "soon." Take care! 
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We must love one another or die.
W.H. Auden
We must love one another AND die.
Ygrec23