How can I accept the uncertainty around how I told my friend a really big secret about me that she could tell others and quite literally ruin my life?! It feels weird to say, but I wouldn’t be able to live if people found out. I’m scared she’ll get mad at me or even just accidentally say it to someone one day. And I find it hard to accept that scenario!

∆∆∆∆this response is stellar! I would emphasize the second point-you would live. It's going to be a lot harder to accept the uncertainty if you tell yourself that you don't have the resources to cope if it comes true

Thank you so much. That was so thought out and I appreciate it beyond words. I really really needed that.

I’m sorry to bother, but once again, I’m so worried about it. I find it imposible to accept the worst case scenario. I wouldn’t be able to deal with the judgement from anyone, I just wouldn’t. How can I learn to make peace with this? I wish I could ask my friend to never tell anyone. But I told her over a year ago and bringing it up would only reinforce the impact it has in me, making her potentially more likely to tell someone if she were to be mad at me.

@garden :) You learn to make peace with it by going through the motions of acceptance even when it feels awkward and strange

@garden :) I can share my own experience which is a big part of how I knew what you needed to hear, if you like. I said something to a friend around 8.5 years ago which I regretted every day since. It wasn't a secret exactly, I actually told her a lie that I was this awful person because it's what my OCD was telling me and I had the urgent need to test it to see if it felt true, and couldnt keep it in my head any more. I took it back very soon afterwards and semi explained why I had said it (I didn't know it was OCD-guilt). But if she went telling the world the first thing I said, it could potentily still cause cataclysmic problems for me (like, jail or something in the absolute worst scenario), as people could choose to believe it, and people who don't know about OCD see guilt as an accurate indicator of wrongdoing. Because I had corrected what I said, the fact that I'd said it to her really didn't bother me for about 6 years. But one day the anxiety came up and I got in contact with her for the first time in years, asked her to delete the messages where I had said that, and she refused to. She told me just to not look at it if it bothers me. So I showed her some other stuff that would help reassure her that what I'd originally said hadnt been real or realistic. And now around 2 years since then, she still hasn't done anything with it. I don't think she has ever seriously thought about it, she doesn't really have anyone to tell and it would be bizarre for her to bring it up with someone. I reassure myself that if she was going to go trying to publicly shame me over it etc then she would have done so at the time. Anyway- for me even though what I said isn't true, it's taken on the quality of a secret because I can't control how others would receive or try to use it. But take it from me- the uncertainty is never going to fully go away. I can reassure you that she spends a good 0% of her day thinking about your secret, but you'll never know for sure whether she even remembers it or if she is one irritation with you away from telling the world. It doesn't matter how bad the consequences ~could be~, you have to live your life anyway. Maybe years from now it'll all come crashing down around you. But the best thing you can do in the meantime is to get the most out of your life and develop the coping skills that you might need later. You can make peace with this but doing so is not going to involve the elimination of all anxiety about it. The anxiety is never going to fully go. Even if you carefully and delicately remove her entirely from your life, move away and change your name, in 30 years there will be the possibility that someone mentions your name to her, she remembers that you exist and immediately tells your secret just to make conversation. Making peace needs to be about living anyway. Hey, we are all going to DIE eventually- maybe in 60 years, maybe next week, and that's as certain as anything gets. No point living your life in fear not doing the things you want just because it'll all be stripped away one day. You'd be able to live with the judgement. Not only would the judgement probably be nowhere near as bad as you think (we are our own worst critics), but people would quickly stop caring. Any kind of stigma it would leave you with, is possible to overcome. If it's something where you really fucked up, second chances are a thing, too. Even murderers get them. A guy who lectured at my uni spent a decade in jail for violent crime and got his degrees while he was there. If anyone judges you the harshest ways you can imagine, they're probably very petty, dramatic people whose good favour isn't worth much anyway. You need to come to terms with the fact that in life not everyone is going to like or approve of you, and you need to live anyway. Decide whose opinions you care about, consider whether they have shown that they love you regardless of your mistakes, and try to see yourself the way they do.

@Louw Sorry I’m so late to replying, especially since you wrote and helped so much. God, that’s awful. I’m sorry it daunts you too as I know how horrible this feeling can be. I’m starting to accept the uncertainty more, but then again... I’m not. I just spoke to her about trust as I wanted to see if I could trust her with what I’d said without explicitly asking. So I told her I had OCD. I asked for her trust and then I used this as the reason. And I just feel so awful for that. She went on to open up to me more (and I think she’s really been needing that as she’s going through a lot right now). I helped her and we kinda cleared some things up as our friendship had been on the rocks for a while. But I just feel wrong for it as my initial aim in starting the conversation was not to help her, it was to help me. She’s such a good person and she’s so so hard on herself. I just wish I’d cared more about her when I went into it I guess. But that’s in the past now. Regardless though, I do feel closer to her now and I understand more about her. Plus I think I can trust her. And I know she’s occupied with her own things anyway. It’s just frustrating that I’ve shown my brain I can’t handle this uncertainty. I guess I found forgetting about it to be the best form of acceptance which is obviously not bound to be helpful in the long run. So instead, I had to ask (discretely).