Hey @krystak
Welcome to the forums! Thank you for sharing this with us all. It takes a lot of courage to open up about old wounds, especially when they carry heavy emotions like shame and guilt 💚
I will say that it is rather common for us to carry a delayed emotional hangover from past crises. When we are young kids/teenagers, our brains are still figuring out how to handle big, existential pain, and we often just do whatever we can to survive that moment. Now that you're older and have a toolkit of therapy skills, it is easy for your brain to look back and judge your younger self through the lens of what you know now. But it's important to remember that you didn't have those skills back then. You were doing the best you could with the tools that you had at that time. It's something I've had to come to terms with.
I recommend trying to view your teenage self not as you, but as a vulnerable kid you've been tasked with looking after. If a teenager came to you today describing that exact same crisis, would you meet them with judgment and shame, or with deep compassion? You deserve to offer that same grace to your own past self. And on that note, forgiveness doesn't mean pretending the crisis didn't happen. It means accepting that the pain you were in forced you into survival mode. You can forgive the pain that led to those choices without letting those choices define your future.
When the OCD tries to bring back the shame, try to practice a bit of radical acceptance. Acknowledge it by saying, "There's that old memory again. My brain is trying to make me feel guilty about something that I survived years ago." Instead of debating with it or trying to prove you are a good person, just let it sit there without feeding it. It’s uncomfortable, I know, but it does take away its power over time.
You have grown so much. The fact that you want to let go of this shame shows that your values are aligned with healing and moving forward. Be incredibly gentle with yourself today 💚
