Help with Past Zoophilia

When I was younger, 11 - 14, I was horribly groomed and assaulted and it made me think it was okay to do things with animals. Since then I regret it every day, and I don’t know how to heal or cope with what I did. I feel like I need to tell everyone I get close too, and have them know everything about me, when I know I don’t deep down. What do I do. How do I cope with this. Please help.

Since you're speaking in past tense, I've moved this to Remorse- also you have a lot more company here.

Kids, from what I read here and my own experiences as a younger person, don't even need the excuse of having been messed around with, to do dodgy things with the family pet. In that context I think it's simply kids getting curious, and when kids get curious they experiment, and when they experiment it's with whoever- or whatever- is handy. You'll find many such stories in the Remorse forum.

So, if it's not unheard of.. and you further were sexualised by being a victim of sexual abuse!- what makes you think you have to have been perfect? You can't judge your child self, too harshly. Kids lack filters they lack E-stops they lack circuit breakers to stop them from doing silly/hinky/dodgy/weird/pervy things. You can't judge yourself too harshly because even if you knew better I'd argue that until you developed enough in your brain, you were not really able to not go down the path you did because kids lack the ability to stop and think about their actions, to an extent. That's what adults are for. And well if the adults in your life are grooming you well what's a kid supposed to do?

If this is all past- then it's the past. It's stuff you did as a kid and you're not that kid any longer.

There's a lot of overlap between this forum, and the OCD forum- I'm not saying everyone that posts to Remorse (or you) have OCD, but there certainly is a quality that is obsessive-compulsive to many that post to Remorse for stuff they did as a child, including stuff with animals. They get stuck on that, focused on that, and it becomes this huge mountain in their head, this huge bullseye that you feel hovers over you and well you're just this horribly tainted individual with no redeeming value, even though it's you beating yourself up over this, and few others, if any. If you were such a horrible person, we wouldn't be having this conversation you'd be happily doing things with animals and not in PF upset over it. Cut yourself a little slack, please. It's over and done with. There's no need to tell everyone about it or self-flagellate forever. Don't.. do it any more. Whenever I mess up badly (and I do that a lot) I just try to not do that again. If I punished myself the way I often feel I ought to, I'd never improve because I'd be too busy rolling around in my own poop. I do enough of that without making a point of it, already. Don't be like that, please. Try and put this behind you.

Sorry for putting it in the wrong topic, I’m very new, but thank you. A friend I just got close to (we were close in my mind but we had only been talking for a week or two) has told me that he needs some space after I opened all this to him, and I feel horrible for feeling like I have to bring it up all the time. Is there anything you do to help when you feel like you should tell everyone so you don’t end up telling everyone things that you did wrong in the past?

I'm afraid that I don't usually get that urge. You're going to have to learn to put a sock in it though when you start to say something. Telling someone after you haven't known them too long, whether they really think much about the subject or not, is bound to weird a person out (obviously a place like this doesn't count and it doesn't weird me a bit here- but if we'd become new acquaintances I would be like 'and you had to tell me this why?').

So yeah I'd consider learning to suppress this need to confess continually. That's not uncommon, to read some of the stories in these forums. I don't know if it's a feeling of having to be 'honest' and put those warning labels on yourself from the get-go, or what.

Coming from a more OCD point of view, it seems that some folks that post here especially about sexual things they regret, it's like you feel as if you're a monster, and part of you wants validation of that. A number of folks, when they have a parent or therapist tell them something is nothing, they can't accept that. I mean, if you didn't physically hurt an animal then I can tell you that messing around with it or having it lick things when you were a child is a big nothing-burger when set against the entirety of your life, all day long- but for a lot of folks it seems as if there's this need to hold onto this label they've made for themselves of monster or pervert or whatever. It's like this need to keep self-punishing themselves over and over and over, including confessing it when prudence would tell them to shut the heck up about it.

I've done some pretty shabby things. Remorse- and self-harm because of my remorse- is what brought me to Psych Forums a long time ago. After a while I just had to let the reason I came here, go.

Have a sense of proportion. People lose all sense of proportion sometimes.

thank you for the advice, it’s genuinely deeply appreciated. i’ll try and scroll through and find people with similar stories and actions as well. thank you, again.