I struggle with fears that I may have significantly harmed someone in my past. I realize that while that may be true, I’m also harming myself right now by compulsing, and ultimately I have to learn to love myself enough to forgive myself for any mistakes I may have made and move on. Has anyone struggled with something similar and how did you get to the point where you forgive yourself for possible indiscretions?

My therapist helped me a lot. And not with reassurance. He's helped me to focus on the present and creating the kind of life I find meaningful

Still working on it. Self compassion training helps. So does working on seeing rationally what you did and didn't do. Remember that feelings aren't facts, the more you dwell on the feeling or look for a reason for it, the worse you might second guess yourself, your memories etc and begin to see things which just aren't there. It seems like common sense to believe that feelings of guilt or responsibility have to originate from somewhere. They may have roots in being gaslighted or shamed as a child, they might just be the way your brain is wired. Either way it's a really bad idea to keep obsessing about mistakes or possible areas that you think it might be coming from, looking for things to pinpoint. You'll only find more and more flaws and mistakes, plus exaggerate or fabricate ones out of sheer obsession and anxiety and suggestion. Personally I'm now better at recognising that my inaction can't be wholly responsible for any harm, and that while actions in my life may have caused harm, they've rarely caused as much harm as I think and it also doesn't guarantee that it was an immoral choice. Like, I spoke with friends about my ex's sexual abuse of me and allowed it to get out. I thought, on a friend's encouragement, that this would pressure him to get therapy. That never really worked. I only felt that I had done harm as suddenly everybody hates him. It led into a lot of guilt and suffering for me, feeling like I must've exaggerated at some point and like I wasn't being fair because I wasn't defending him and talking about my own mistakes and the fact I stayed with him during it etc. I cycled around between ideas about how much harm I caused, whether not being specific enough meant people thought it was "worse" than it was (violent) or more deliberate (he was young and stupid and had NOT been taught good boundaries on consent). Etc. Now I can see that talking about it may have brought harm to him but that doesn't make me the worst person ever. I HAD tried not talking about it and it made me feel constantly misunderstood and dismissed, like I was lying by not telling, and generally very alone. I haven't met anyone yet who doesn't see it as comeuppance. But I'd always been a bit obsessed with him not coming to harm (massive OCD obsessing during the relationship with fear about him going out on drug benders, imagining him pissing off the wrong person etc). I felt like I betrayed him. I felt like the worst person ever, and it always felt like I'd made too much of a fuss and just hurt people. The minor mistakes I made while talking about it (like not being extremely specific because it was triggering to talk about it, or saying that he told me not to talk about it when in truth I agreed not to talk about it- just didn't want people to blame me more or think of me as a moron) became huge errors of judgement where I must have deliberately wanted everybody to hate him the max amount etc. The only time I didn't feel guilty was when I felt angry. And then I'd take the anger as more evidence for my guilt. That's my story anyway. You need to find the middle ground. You don't deserve to suffer forever for your mistakes. Chances are most people wouldn't even see most of them as worthy of the name "mistake" lol. Just want you to be aware that you need to tackle both on the self compassion front (by feeling all of your guilt in your body, ERP style, until it's gone, which makes compassion flower there in the emptiness) and the OCD front (to then check whether your beliefs about your levels of blameworthiness are actually reasonable). I did compassion work before really working on the facts, and consequently while I had cultivated compassion for my mistakes and did a good job of moving on from them, I did realise that these 'mistakes' I had carried with me were 99% hot air. I vote doing the compassion stuff first, then actually breaking down the beliefs. If you try to break down the beliefs before doing the guilt processing and cultivating self compassion, your guilt and OCD just argue with you and it all gets worse. Do the processing, I promise you're very capable of forgiving yourself, I managed to even when I thought I'd made HUGE mistakes really, although the facts were vague. And then be sure to turn your attention to what you believe you did or caused and how and start looking at the multitude of grey areas, and beliefs which were based on emotions rather than what actually happened.