Hey guys looking for some help. I’m so sorry for the long post! Basically I’ve been eating myself alive with guilt and convinced I am a bad person and don’t deserve to be happy ? basically about 5 months ago my ex partner broke up with me. Some stuff had happened in her personal life her mother passed away suddenly and she had also just moved away for a new job - the plan was that I would move in a few months. I’ll be the first to admit prior to theses two events the relationship wasn’t perfect tiffs here and there but nothing major. I thought it was because of the distance to begin with during which time her mother died my partner then came back for a month during this time and understandably was not herself. After a month a bit she had returned to her new home and work. We were keeping up the long distance thing going over phone calls etc but it was hard. She returned for a night out for her bday which I got upset on after some drinks and her acting like she wasn’t really interested in me at all. I had felt like this for a while anyway and was having doubts about moving away. Anyway - about a week later once she had returned we got into an argument over the phone and she said she was sorry she just didn’t feel right anymore about things and was taking it out on me - due to the situation with her mum. She didn’t know how to feel about the relationship and that we would be better off apart - I attempted to salvage things over the phone and was devastated when she said she thought we should end it - she said various things about us not getting on anyway which I thought could be salvaged when I moved to where she was. However she said repeatedly over the phone it’s not going to work and threw in something from over a year ago when I had been drunk and said some things and acted like a dick. Wish I apologised deeply for but I had been upset in general at that time because of some things that she had said or acted when sober. She used this example in why she was breaking up with me. There have been instances where we both drank too much and have said things out of line however I just have this horrible guilt about what has happened each time we were drunk and feel now I don’t deserve to be happy because of my behaviour despite being supportive and willing to move everything for her. I am interested in someone else who I am so excited about and we just click! And I now fully recognise that me and my ex were not meant to be but how the hell do I shift the guilt and allow myself to feel a happy with this other person without thinking about past things said and done? Any help?

Sounds like you already know that the frequency and intensity of the guilt you're experiencing is inappropriate for the situation. Although our minds don't necessarily acclimatise to guilt the way they do to anxiety, guilt can be made stronger by resisting and arguing with it instead of allowing it to happen. Emotions don't always make sense but they do need to be felt so that they can stop popping up or controlling your life or state of mind. I wonder if you have a day totally free soon where you could focus on letting your guilt happen fully without arguing with it, reassuring yourself or ruminating about the situation or the past or the future or asking yourself or others for reassurance or looking for it. Just feeling the guilt. You can focus on the sensations of it in your body if you need something to focus on to prevent being all up in your brain. A whole day will probably be long enough to feel the guilt through until it's gone without compulsions. If you catch yourself doing a compulsion, try to come back to the body. You can survive the physiological sensations of guilt without doing any thinking about whether it's accurate, inaccurate, right, wrong, or means anything else. This should help your problem. I have had serious issues with doing my own compulsions and avoidance to stave off guilt as it's a very uncomfortable and worrying emotion, as well as getting so drawn into the debate with it that I begin to question myself much more severely. More rumination and analysing and memory checking only equals more opportunities for things to pop up which make you feel even worse or take you into worse self-doubt. In future when you feel inappropriate or overwhelming guilt, your responses should either be feeling it through as described, or doing the "worry later" method if you can't face feeling it, in order to avoid doing compulsions at all costs, including venting/confessing to others with more posts or asking friends to attempt to validate that the meanings attached to your guilt aren't true, as reassurance. Feel the guilt first. We're here to support you in that. Later comes the insight, and the beers and rants with the boys if you like.

I have very similar feelings my ocd is mostly due to guilt about things I did when I was drunk. And I also have feelings of not deserving to be happy which is miserable. I’m trying to accept and embrace uncertainty like I always want concrete answers if I’m a good person or not but it’s not that cut and dry and I have to live with that uncertainty so it will lessen the anxiety

What? Man you were drunk! People say dumb things when they’re drunk all the time. If what you said hurt her really bad, why would she stay with you for another year? She’s just trying to find an excuse to justify why she was breaking up with you. You apologized, that’s what is most important. It’s on her for holding onto that memory. She needs to forget and forgive, not you. I hope everything goes fine with the girl you’re interested now:)