When I was in kindergarten, an older kid at my babysitter’s house was sexually inappropriate with me. I felt horrible guilt about what had happened for a long time. It caused me to start having severe panic attacks at age seven. I constantly felt like I was carrying around a dirty secret. I couldn’t eat. The best way I can describe the guilt was the physical feeling that my stomach was heavy. I very recently, at the age of 18, had my first consensual sexual experience. Afterwards, I laid in bed next to the guy and silently endured a panic attack. I was afraid of feeling the guilt again. Like horribly afraid. I couldn’t calm myself down or logic it out in my head. This was after cancelling on this guy twice for fear of having sex and then feeling the guilt. I should capitalize that. The Guilt is more fitting. Guilt is something I cannot stand in the slightest, and the only way I could make myself stop panicking about this situation was to almost immediately tell my mom. Why? I’m an adult. I’m on the pill. It’s my personal life. She doesn’t need to know. But I was so afraid of The Guilt, and that was the only way to be sure I wouldn’t have to deal with it. Now I’m fine. But I’m afraid of not being able to enjoy certain aspects of my life because I’m so afraid of The Guilt returning.

Every single time me and my boyfriend do anything sexual, I feel really really guilty about it after. We’ve never had sex before but have done other things and I don’t feel guilty about it in the moment, but afterwards I feel guilty. I don’t necessarily regret doing it but I just feel horrible as a human. He does not push himself on me in anyway and I know it’s all a me thing. He is very cautious in making sure I’m comfortable and feel okay, but I don’t start feeling guilty until afterwards. I feel like this always relates back to my faith, which has recently fallen off. I feel like I can’t talk to anyone about this because I always get told the benefits of waiting for marriage. And honestly I do understand that, but I don’t know that I want to wait. I feel like people keep shoving “waiting for marriage” down my throat and it draws me so much further from Christianity and makes things so much harder to feel close to God again. I just feel so lonely in feeling these things and scared I’m going to hell if I keep doing stuff with my boyfriend, but I genuinely don’t know what I believe in anymore and it’s draining me that my values are changing. I know it’s probably healthy and natural for values to change as you grow up, but I feel like there’s a stereotype of Christianity I have to adhere to and it makes me so anxious and scared I’m going to hell if I don’t get everything perfect. My relationship with Christ isn’t something that I involve others in because of how personal it is to me. But I just feel shamed upon by every other Christian and it makes me scared for myself and sad for the way society is making it such a black and white view of this religion.

I can’t help but feel so anxious because of guilt. I feel guilty about not sharing everything about my OCD to my partner, but because I understand that confession itself is a compulsion and would not help anyone. I feel so anxious too that if all my fears come true and she finds out, then it would be so devastating for everyone especially her. Does anyone feel the same thing? How could I change my perspective on this?

I've had a horrific subtype that has been affecting my day to day life. I think it's snuck in due to good things occurring in my life. If I can't forgive myself for my past, why should others? I'm happy knowing I'm not alone with these thoughts, but knowing it was OCD all along and I could have suffered so much less if I was diagnosed as a child... Decades worth of compulsive checking, thinking I'm worse than a monster... I just want to breathe normally again. I feel guilt with each breath. It's too much.