- Date posted
- 4y
- Date posted
- 4y
This is some pretty heavy real event, but I relate. I know what it feels like to not be a good person for an amount of time. OCD wants you to feel guilty. It wants you to feel guilt and never let go. No matter how many people forgive you and tell you it’s okay, OCD wants you to be guilty. So to beat it, you need to relieve the guilt. You realized you did something wrong and you apologized (only need to do so once). That’s it. Now time to move forward. Moving forward involves forgiving yourself. I know it’s super hard to forgive yourself when you feel like such an immoral person, but forgiving yourself is key to moving forward. Part of learning is failing. And sometimes when we fail we do really bad shit, but we get the most important lessons from those failures. It’s okay. Any more apologizing and confessing from this point on is just a compulsion. Resist it and work on forgiving yourself and accepting yourself for who you were, are, and going to be.
- Date posted
- 4y
We are not defined by what some people may consider “wrong.” Some people are perfectly confident that wearing a mask was unnecessary, and some people felt the opposite. Who gets to decide what’s right? And don’t we all do things we think may not be 100% “right” sometimes? (For example, we all lie/leave out details of stories). Doing something someone may consider “wrong” or that you feel is “wrong” looking back at it does not make you a bad person. Stop confessing immediately, this is a compulsion. Just so you know, these are my obsessions and compulsions too so I can relate.
- Date posted
- 4y
Yeah I know I need to just accept what I did and just do better. Since posting this I’ve apologized and confessed to two more people that I put at risk. But there’s so many other people at risk abd I’ll never be able to apologize and confess to all of them. Also I’m starting to look insane I think
- Date posted
- 4y
@Anonymous You don’t “need to do better” necessarily. Who is to say you even did anything wrong. Hell, I barely ever wore my mask and didn’t get the vaccine and did not maintain 6 feet distance. Sure, some people will say you did wrong, but some would people say you didn’t. That’s what you need to accept. And no more confessing!
- Date posted
- 4y
@Anonymous I’m going to try to stop. There’s other people I put at risk that I’m so tempted to confess and apologize to but I need to resist. They never even got sick ever but still
- Date posted
- 4y
@Anonymous Morality is confusing and it is impossible to say if you’ve definitively did something right or wrong. For me personally, I try to decide if I did something wrong by considering how it negatively impacts people. So yes, you put people at risk during a pandemic and it is a “bad” thing that you should stop doing but you should stop confessing too. Try to find some forgiveness AND compassion for yourself. It’s hard, but you need to. You can’t change what happened and you already apologized so many times. Don’t give OCD that guilt it wants. Let go. Sometimes we feel so much guilt because we don’t want to feel hated, I know I do. That fear of being judged and hated by others for what we did can be so overwhelming that we choose to feel guilt instead. It’s also hard to grapple with being a “bad” person. We live in a society that puts a lot of weight on morals and being a “good” person, so when we feel like a “bad” person it wrecks us. It hurts. That’s drives that guilt too. Fun fact: I go to a party university. A HUGE one. Do you know how many people didn’t wear masks, partied, went to the club, etc. A LOT. Being someone who worked at a Covid testing center, has health anxiety, and has people in her life who are very immunocompromised, it definitely made me frustrated with those people. I knew a girl who tested positive, knew she was positive, and still went to places and parties unmasked. It infuriated me actually. As much as it made me angry with those people, I wouldn’t say they are “bad” people. They’re PEOPLE who made what I personally consider a bad choice, but they are not bad themselves. It really helped me to learn to separate my actions from myself. You are not your thoughts OR actions. You are a whole being that’s wayyyyy more complex than any of that. That ability to separate actions from the self makes it easier to forgive. You did something that you now consider bad, but you yourself are not a bad person. That person deserves some self compassion.
- Date posted
- 4y
@stop. I like this response. I also appreciate you saying how you feel that behavior was “bad” and acknowledge that other people may not consider that bad. I personally don’t think masks help and that’s just my opinion so I don’t consider not wearing one “bad.” It’s really all perspective.
- Date posted
- 4y
Thanks guys for your responses. They really help. I would wear a mask like at grocery stores and stuff, but I wouldn’t wash it regularly so I don’t know how much it would help. I’m about to write letters to more people to apologize. It’s going to seem weird but I feel like I have to. My problem is that I can’t possibly apologize to everyone and it’s killing me
- Date posted
- 4y
Don’t write those letters. It’s a compulsion. That need to apologize and confess is a compulsion in this case. You have to fight against it. I know it seems hard, but you need to break the cycle.
- Date posted
- 4y
Don’t confess!
- Date posted
- 4y
@Anonymous Guys I’m going insane. I just sent follow ups to people with more details that feel bad about. I’m about to ruin any chance of getting job references from these people abd I don’t even care
- Date posted
- 4y
@Anonymous Stop confessing right away
- Date posted
- 4y
@Anonymous You have to stop. I know it’s hard but you have to sit with being uncomfortable. You cannot keep doing this compulsion.
Related posts
- Date posted
- 22w
I genuinely feel like the worlds most horrible person deeply for my past actions in childhood and general mistakes I’ve made. I feel like I shouldn’t be here or there’s no hope for me despite doing right ( trying to do right ) I’ve wanted to open up to my mom about things from my past but when I was talking to her about a situation that happened just to share, she was like “Thank God you’ve never done anything like that” But really my past mistakes are worst. It’s like I feel like I should disappear. I don’t know how to deal with the guilt and I feel horrible. I’ve made good and bad decisions but despite this being a long time ago ( which doesn’t erase my stupid actions ) I still keep bringing back into the present and I’m filled with guilt I genuinely think it would be better if I wasn’t here. I wake up think about my past things and I’m filled with guilt and shame that maybe I am a bad person and voices don’t stop, they keep telling me a lot of things that I start to believe. It makes me upset that I did something like that in my past and I try to be understanding but I can imagine the reactions of people and being condemned so much. I literally do this to myself every single day and it’s exhausting I don’t know how you guys can treat me with so much compassion and understanding. It really doesn’t feel real or like I deserve it. Like even on nocd, it makes me feel worst because I come across comments that say “as long as it’s not —-“ or something and I compare it to my past and I feel like a horrible unacceptable person.
- Date posted
- 9w
As a teenager and in other ways up until age 21, I was just an absolutely horrible person. It wasn't just a one time event that I regret, it was a lifestyle. I was a hedonist and a narcissist to an unbelievable degree and didn't even realize it. I read people's stories on here related to their real events and I just feel that I've done so much worse so it fuels this feeling that I'm unredeemable. And again it's not like I just made "one mistake." I was living under such a cloud of self-delusion and non-confrontation that I couldn't even embrace that what I was doing was wrong. Something pulled me out of that one night and I was forced to confront my actions (I believe it was God) but I've been living in this hell that is obsession ever since. I'm so guilty and ashamed and I'm desperate to find redemption. I can't forgive myself and I can't understand why I was the way I was or how on earth I even covered up what I was doing from others and even from myself mentally. I would just put a veil in my mind and not even think it was an issue. It's more likely than not that I am what I fear I am, so I guess trying to unconditionally accept the possibility of being what I fear is the only real way through this. Realistically I deserve all the suffering I'm receiving but I realize I can't have that mindset if I'm to have any hope of recovery. This is unbelievably isolating and I can't talk to anyone because of the risks involved. All I can do is try to limit compulsions, try to (somehow) accept the possibility of the worst case scenario and do my best to serve others.
- Date posted
- 6w
Recently I (16m)feel hopeless I feel so sick and sad idk what to do I feel lost I feel like a monster everything has been hell, and I don’t know how to move on from the never ending guilt . I did awful things when I started high school, thinking being sexual was the way to connect.(idk if all of this was because when I was 8 I was shown explicit content by my older brother) I crossed boundaries, overshared, and kept flirting with friends and making sexual jokes, even after they said no (all over text). One friend stopped talking to me and can’t even look at me now. I feel like a monster. Why shouldn’t I be locked up? If I got therapy, I feel like I’d be sent jail. Idk if I can move on. Then there were these 2 guys who were older than me one was 16 one was 17. The 16 yr old was introduced to me by my online friend who is my best friend and I begged the 16 yr old for pics (idk how it started but after my friends ex randomly messaged me and sent me pictures and then blocked me right after I think I became addicted to chasing that high) the 16 yr old eventually sent me a pic but it was real and I stopped bugging him on it after that but i feel so bad I did that but my friend tells me not to feel bad cause the guy was weird but I still feel bad. Then the 17 yr old I did the same thing with him but went too far when I tried getting pics from him by using my best friends ass pics she sent me (she was 15) I don’t think I grasped how wrong this was but that’s not an excuse she eventually found it when I told her after she tried getting pics from the guy herself to try and help me and the guy got mad when she stopped talking to him cause we found it weird talking to him. I told her about how I sent the pics she said she felt sick but forgave me cause she thought I was gonna harm myself. Fast forward the guy told me after I had still been flirting with him that I s@d him (we never met in person ever) and I felt so guilty and apologized a lot and he got annoyed and told me that he had been kinda manipulative to me and kept me in a loop of mystery and I don’t talk to him anymore. But one of my other friends stopped talking to me after I was being by too emotionally taxing on him because I became very depressed and didn’t wanna life anymore and tried to stop lifing a few times. And now idk if I actually s@d someone if I did that to someone and now I think I’m a pdo and I think I s@d my baby cousins and my little brother and now I’m scared bf I can’t even get help because my parents don’t believe in therapy and even if I wanted to I’m scared because I don’t want to go to jail but I think I deserve it honestly why should a monster like me live.i wish I could move on like my older brother and maybe he shouldn’t idk who seems to not feel guilty maybe this is what I deserve idk I feel like I can’t go on I’m in my junior year and I saw one of the people and immediately just got crushed with the guilt and spiraled of how actually shameful I am if I tell any of my friends they’ll just leave or worse
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