Has anyone ever struggled with the fact that you did something unintentional but horribly racist in the past? I’m talking about a real event (i.e made a micro aggression without realizing how offensive it was) rather than just having an intrusive thought. Is it a compulsion if you want to apologize to the person you think you hurt even if this was years ago?

Hi- thanks so much for your response , I’m the op. I struggle because I identify as Asian American and I feel like I sometimes use this identity to claim that I’m not overly racist against POC. What I did was in college freshman fall and I feel like I should have known better given my age/education level. I unintentionally made a huge gaffe and exposed one of my roommates who was black to media that was overly graphic/violent/triggering (even though it was anti racism protest art and something that I had encountered in one of my classes) without considering how it would affect her mental health. She never said anything to me to indicate her being hurt and so I kind of brushed it under the rug at the time without fully accepting how morally fucked up my ignorance and actions were. I too get false memories about my intentions and even false memories about whether or not I knew the extent of what I was doing. I’m just wondering if you’ve had experience in therapy and how you bring something like this up without confessing or seeking reassurance? I’m also wondering is it pointless to try and forgive yourself or is that also a compulsion?

@Anonymous I made a response but my app is bugging so I don’t know if it went through. I haven’t brought it up in therapy before, but I do recognize as wanting to confess as seeking reassurance. Because you want to confess to someone so they can tell you what you did was not that bad or okay so you feel less guilty. I’ve done that so many times and I’m still here thinking about how shitty I am. I think forgiving yourself is important though. It’s hard to with the OCD, but you have to. We all do these things whether we realize it or not. We live in a society that holds a lot of racist ideals and normalizes a lot of behaviors that are racially insensitive. It’s to the point where it’s pretty much inevitable that at some point you do something that is overtly or covertly racist. Even the most “woke” people will have done or said something racist and will continue to do so. You messed up once and you’ve most likely messed up many times in the past and you will mess up many times in the future. Everyone does. Kids and adults. It’s so important to not dwell on these things, but get in the habit of realizing, learning, correcting, and forgiving. We are all in for a lifetime of mistakes and we need to get into the swing of forgiving ourselves. I don’t see forgiveness as a compulsion. I see it as OCDs enemy because OCD doesn’t want you to forgive yourself. It wants you to keep thinking about it and hating yourself for it. Forgiveness is a key. It’s just hard when OCD is battling it. I’ve done well with forgiving stuff I’ve done before, but this particular incident sat with me because it was probably the worst thing I’ve said. It’s hard to get over.

For me separating the actual facts and guilt feelings from the OCD is just looking for OCD trends. Has this thought become something I obsess about? Do I have other OCD related behaviors associated with it like false memories? Do I get intrusive thoughts about it? All those yes answers are OCD. The no answers are not. If I’m being quite honest what you did was insensitive at worst. This is coming from a black person who is easily triggered by that media stuff. It wasn’t the best thing, but it wasn’t horrible. And about the age thing, I don’t really think there’s gonna be an age where you don’t do these things regardless of whether you’re poc or not. Racism is so heavily integrated in everything, that we all do and perpetuate racist things all the time most of it unknowingly. It’s not something limited to kids either. Being an adult is more about having accountability over these things and educating about them, but adults will still fuck up. Poc though not having any power in the system can still perpetuate harmful ideals against other pocs. It’s less about worrying about what happened and trying to be perfect, but acknowledging that we grow up somewhere where this behavior is pretty much inevitable for everyone and you just have to learn and grow and keep doing that. Even the most “woke” people do or say some offensive shit. The more I learn, the more stuff I recognize how bad things are that I did when I was younger or maybe even something I did last week. For me this particular thing from 8th grade I did was pretty bad ngl so I have a harder time accepting it and moving on which is why it’s become an OCD issue. It’s a lot to deal with because normal guilt about this stuff combined with OCD is hell fire and just very confusing, but you gotta take time to tease it out.