Is it possible to eliminate guilt?

OCD brings so much unnecessary guilt and shame, and I understand we need to accept the uncertainty and be able to find forgiveness within ourselves if we are dealing with past issues, but is it really possible to eliminate these negative feelings and be able to focus on the present? I'm always looking back and wishing things had ended up differently. "Maybe if I didn't do this, maybe if these things didn't occur... Maybe." It wasn't always like this for me, and that's how I've been holding onto hope that things will improve if I continue to march forward, seeking help from professionals and people around me. But, I still have those thoughts... That life would be much easier if I didn't have to deal with any of this, and these thoughts act as a weight that tugs me down and keeps me from progression. How do people do it? I flip-flop between this multiple times a day. I'll be hopeful, and then the next second, I don't even want to be here. I'm going to be seeing my psychiatrist in a little over a week from now, but I've picked up so many new fears since my last appointment (a month ago). There's always something... It feels impossible. I know it technically isn't, but still. I've seen people that have more extreme cases than my own, and they've been able to recover. But if it isn't my exact situation, the doubt always finds a way to sneak in, and it makes me feel like I don't deserve a future where I'm not constantly being bombarded by intrusive thoughts and things. Before this, I had intrusive thoughts. It's normal, but I didn't remember each and every one, if any. It's hard to move forward with all of this, coupled with the loads of trauma I have to unravel. I don't feel like a "normal" life is even possible for me. I miss who I was a year ago. I've lost all confidence in myself in the span of seven months. I feel like I have whiplash from how quickly things changed. This post started out with a genuine question, but it turned into a mini vent. I'm sorry😭 I'm genuinely curious if life will ever go back to how it was, or if people just live with this constant voice in their heads shouting at them every day.

ughhhh

Date posted: 34w

Don’t apologize for venting sometimes you need to do it. All these thoughts put a lot of negative energy on you and a lot of us on here understand that personally and perfectly. I know exactly how you feel when you said that you feel like you can’t have a “normal” life anymore. I still feel like that too when the thoughts and memories get really bad. But the good part is that as much as our ocd wants it to be true no one is perfect or has a “normal” life. Everyone has difficult things to deal with. I think that’s something everyone on here is slowly learning to do. I dont know your situation but im familiar with the feelings of guilt and possibly shame. You can’t change the past like you said but-what we can do is to remind ourselves of the facts, possibly give yourself grace and remember your not the same person you were when whatever situation happened. You’re ever evolving and your always changing every day even if your don’t realize it. I think over time those bad feelings will go away but it takes time on learning to forgive yourself and realize your fixing yourself. Dont dwell on the whats ifs focus on what you learned and how your applying that into positive energy. Im not sure if this was very helpful but i know how you feel and i hope you get better. ❤️‍🩹

nae nae

Date posted: 34w

Thank you so, so much! It was honestly really helpful. You articulated things so well. I always appreciate the comments you post. I'm going to start applying more of this into my routine. I feel like I need to write people's comments down on little sticky notes as reminders to myself or something lol

bkelp213

Date posted: 23w

Can’t function for all my guilt

I’ve done things in the past few years that I’m not proud of - only a couple of things I can think of and they didn’t directly hurt anyone at least with is relieving (but maybe indirectly they sort of did or could’ve which makes me hate myself because why did I do that… *how* could I do that…) If I could back and stop those things from happening, I would. I may not have thought about what I was doing at the time, so I didn’t really recognize that they weren’t okay, but that doesn’t excuse them, and I would smack some sense into my past self if I were able. I feel like if anyone knew what I‘ve done, they wouldn’t want anything to do with me. They’d write me off as worthless. And maybe they should to be honest. Now yet another thing has come up - I haven’t done anything, but I had an intrusive thought pop up that made me *think* about doing something and this would be unforgivable in my opinion. Though, to be honest, the things I’ve done before are also somewhat unforgivable in my opinion… 😞 Regardless, I don’t want to do it because I don’t think it’s okay, but I worry deep down that I do. Or that I’m looking for an excuse to make it okay to do. I don’t know, it’s complicated. And I’m upset I even thought about it. I wish I had never seen the thing that triggered that intrusive thought. Yet another thing I would stop if I could. I’ve tried to not think about it or focus on it, but it doesn’t work. Even if it goes away, it just comes back again. I just keep thinking about it and it’s overwhelming. Anyway all of the guilt of this is killing me. I feel like an irredeemably terrible person and it makes me want to give up. I can’t get on with life because it’s paralyzing. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, and at this point, it feels like I don’t deserve to just move on. I can’t live with myself and I feel like I don’t deserve anything anymore. I know a lot of this is probably OCD, but I’m not sure all of it is and I don’t know what to do… if I spoke to a therapist about it, I don’t think I could bring myself to say what I’ve done or what thoughts I’ve had. But if I was told to move on by someone who didn’t know the truth, I would worry they wouldn’t really say that if they knew. Agh, it’s all just a mess 😞

BigGyro09

Date posted: 21w

Life kinda just sucks right now 18+ only

Never feels like I can fully put my mind to rest. The problem with OCD for me is once I'm over one worry there's another buried deep into my mind that I'm not fully over. The two events I'm not completely over is when I tried to help a 17 year old with POCD when I was 19 and the topics unfortunately were detailed and even then I explained to them I wasn't comfortable with talking to them. I guess I just had a hard time saying no to someone needing help but it eventually made me so uncomfortable that I stopped talking with them altogether at some point. Then the other thing is being so worried that I committed a crime because my elbow touched someone's behind when I didn't want that to happen at all. I didn't want to listen to my OCD by saying move my arm or something horrible is going to happen so I didn't and then something bad actually did happen. I thought it would just be a light touch while zipping a bag up but then it was worse than I ever wanted it to be and it was so awkward and I hated it. I feel like I just won't be able to get back to the way I was before OCD started all of this. Aside from that I've just had extreme health anxiety but am too afraid to reach out to a PCP even though I need to. Something deep down is telling me I should do this but I'm just so anxious and embarrassed about sharing things to them. I can't even enjoy the things I used to do because this is constantly just messing up my life. I'm hoping I get a start of positivity next time I see my therapist. This just sucks. Feels like others around me are doing so much better than I am and I'm just kind of stuck on these same problems and feeling absolute shame and guilt from the past over and over again. I'm just so sick of dealing with this every single day so I just use escape whenever I can. Even that doesn't really work. I just wish I could go back in time.

12345678910

Date posted: 12w

Thinking about the past.

I would really appreciate it so much if someone took the time to read this and help me. I don’t know what to do anymore. I haven’t posted here in awhile. I had my OCD managed pretty decently for a year or so on medication, but I had to stop taking it, and after around 3-4 months, the OCD has become unbearable again. It used to be much more surrounding existential themes, eating, and others, not really real event/false memory stuff. But now it’s gotten really out of hand and I don’t know how to do it anymore. It’s surrounding a time of my life a long time ago. It was a dark time. I wasn’t myself and I was going through a lot of things, and I did a lot of things I regret. I self-destructed, embarrassed myself, and wasn’t good to the people around me. I was able to get my mind off of it for a long time, even though I would still think about it a good amount. I was able to be in the present, at least moreso than now. But now that I’m off medication, the guilt has become my obsession again. I can’t move on. I can’t do anything without thinking about all of these memories. I’m obsessed. I’ve started hating myself again, so much so that it’s hard to do anything anymore or believe I deserve anything good. The people around me tell me it wasn’t even that bad, but to me it was. To me, I failed myself, lost myself, and failed everyone around me. I can’t stop thinking about every person I said something wrong to or every time I screwed up. I’ve now started to convince myself I did terrible things I can’t remember, and that my mind just can’t deal with it. And that’s why I feel so guilty. There’s nothing to really support this though. But I’m starting to really convince myself that’s true. I’m trying not to listen to it, because I’ve convinced myself I have hit people with my car before and haven’t remembered when I absolutely didn’t and I know I never have. I drive back over and over to check there’s no one, even though I never heard any bang or felt myself anything. I can convince myself of some crazy false memories. So I know that I shouldn’t listen. But it’s hard not to when I have this guilt gnawing at me constantly. I come to conclusions that this guilt must be because I did something terrible that I don’t remember, even though I already think the things I remember were bad enough. But I would know by now right? If I did something bad I don’t remember? I don’t feel like this all the time. But it’s a lot of the time. But maybe that should be reassuring, that I only start obsessing like this when I think to. The past haunts me though. And I can never be in the present. I’ve started to resort to some unhealthy behaviors to distract myself or help me work towards something. I am starting to hate myself so much and feel like there’s no way I’ll ever be able to get out of this loop. I feel like I just can’t do this anymore. Maybe I need to go back on medication. But I don’t know. I don’t really want to. But will I ever fix this without it? Why do I feel SO guilty, all of the time? I do all these things for people because I feel indebted to them, because I feel undeserving of everything. I feel awful about myself. I don’t know what to do. Does anyone else deal with this?

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Is it possible to eliminate guilt?

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