Help With Real Event OCD

Most of my events (including the one I've been obsessing over today) are from ages 16 - 25. I am a recovering alcoholic/drug user so have a lot of memories where I said or did something bad/cringe/offensive and they really haunt me. I am sober and 30 now, but can't seem to move on. What do I do when a thought like this comes up? I often wrestle between despair, and trying to tell myself "it was a long time ago I'm sure no one cares now or remembers" but then my OCD comes in with the "what if they do though? What if you caused irreversible damage?" Etc. So I feel like my constant ruminating, reframing, is just a compulsion with no end

@Connor OCD Totally understand what you’re saying… firstly keep in mind that pasts are pasts and you can’t bring them back.. we wish but we can’t… so the only thing you have is today, you can’t know the future either. No one is exempt from doing bad things. All of us have done something embarrassing, we said bad horrible things to people, we caused damage unfortunately. Anyone CAN change no matter what, everyone has hope. Even people who did really bad things over time and they were held accountable whether by people or the law etc… even then, anybody can change if they really regret something. So I think the best thing you could do is move on and accept you can’t change it no matter what. Even if the whole world came together they would not change your past. Moving on, you’re a very strong person and you recovered from your addiction which a thing you should be proud of, give yourself some grace, don’t be too hard on yourself. You have OCD, which is very hard because it will throw fake ideologies and fake thoughts to make overthink the “what if” which is a trap and you’re feeding it. Whenever you get “what if” be like “well it didn’t happen that way and I’m not a mind reader I can’t know not now not ever, maybe in the future, but I can’t figure it out now” you have to accept uncertainty. That’s what I did with my case. If you ever meet people you said things too you could always apologize and let them know that you regret it, but still move on regardless of the answer, because we can’t change people’s perspective. A lot of people have done things to me, horrible.. they apologized and I absolutely forgave them and I talked to some of them today. Life is temporary, you have to live the day as it is.

@Connor OCD Also, your OCD throw in fake realities if you think about for a long time, it will change your intentions and start convincing you that’s it’s real and it has nothing to do with OCD. Which NOT true, that’s actually real OCD:) so don’t believe the lies… forgive yourself for the bad things you did and think about reality if things rather with the “if this or if that”

Also self-punishment is a compulsion! That feeling of being undeserving feels so so strong but you deserve to live a good life regardless of what OCD is telling you. It takes a lot of time, but it does get better.