bad people and doing bad things **trigger warning**

I found out about something that happened years ago. A situation in which I did something that was inappropriate and possibly hurtful to another creature (a pet). I'm pretty sure a very young part did it.
I love this pet dearly and I couldn't ever have imagined doing something hurtful to them. So, I've been struggling with a lot of shame and shock and anger about it. The pet never changed their behaviour so I guess it wasn't that bad? But to me that's just no excuse.

I don't know if I'm numb from it by now, or if I've accepted it, but I have many thoughts about it that are devoid of feeling.
I think that it is impossible to recognize bad people at first glance. In a lot of ways, they are just the same. They like TV shows or love their wife or have a passion for fishing... whatever. Just a normal person in a lot of ways.
It is the same for yourself. You always have the capacity for evil and you have to watch out for that. You can't think yourself to be "safe" just because you love people or are generally kind, or because you have empathy.
Ultimately, other people are unknowable.
Ultimately, you yourself can be unknowable.

How can one ever forgive themselves?

A T once told us that seeing the world as made of good and bad people is the world view of a child. Everyone is more complex than that.
When we told him about something terrible we did he asked about our age at that time and just shrugged and said that that was about age-appropriate behavior. kids are cruel and they don't always have the capacity for empathy that is needed.
lastly, we can see that some of the not ok things we did to pets were re-enactments of trauma. that is terrible but we didn't even know that that was not ok back then.

we read Viktor Frankl writing about life in concentration camp and how some prisoners would become the meanest guards to safe their butt. when we split, we probably also split into parts who are capable of the violent stuff. they might even look more extreme because they are not balanced through connection to other parts.

I think it is good to keep it in mind, that being a victim doesn't make us one of the good ones. way too often it leads us to creating more victims because that is what we learned.
it is not a reason for shame though. there are good reasons for that that others don't have.
we can only try to repair things where we have failed. and make better choices.
the dark inside needs to be befriended. the more we disown it, the more it will wreck havoc

Thanks for understanding and hearing me.

The responsible part is only four years old, so he probably didn't know any better. But looking at the whole system - I just wish things would've gone differently and someone would've stepped in. I'm still responsible, even if it wasn't "me".

How do you own the darkness? I guess by having compassion for it. And by actively taking action to ensure better choices.
I'm ashamed because of the lack of control I feel - heck, I didn't even remember that this happened for so many years. The pet has even been dead for years by now.

Maybe it's just important to keep working on the system stuff. Better communication. Even if only for this purpose.

back then you were probably not as knowledgable about having a system and how to be there for each other. can you be guilty when it was dissociated and you didn't even know it was happening?
that is like calling someone guilty for things that happened while they were unconscious.
yes, it sucks that it happened. but we can have grace for the poor 4 year old who didn't know any better. you are right, compassion is key. and taking good care of that part so they can learn more loving ways.
when I think of what happened with us and some parts... I actually cry over them, for the place where they have been, the things they knew as normal, the whole situation. there is always a context to consider.

Yeah, I get that.
Thanks for being so compassionate.

I told my T (not specifically what happened, but kind of) and she didn't understand why I was upset about it. She said lots of kids do things like that.
But I don't, don't, don't want that to be true.
I really hope that the 4 y/o was misguided and it is not normal, because otherwise; those poor animals?!

I wish it wasn't true/it hadn't happened.

uhm... kids are monsters. they don't understand that their actions can hurt others yet. no empathy. just being the center of the world and almighty.
if there is something evil about it we overcome that by learning social skills.

**** trigger warning****
we used to catch flies and halfway drown them, to 'make them obey', because that is what we learned, how you train someone. but they would never fly the way we commanded them, so they had to be drowned some more. or wings had to be ripped off. or legs. this is how we spent our free time, like a hobby, fly trainer.

****end trigger warning****

kids are little monsters. and then we learn better. and then we are sorry for all we did. and we never do it again.
in a slightly disturbing way all kids go thru this phase. they are cold-hearted, full of petty revenge and laugh about the pain of others. children are no little angels. none of them. that is the normal state, not whatever advertisers like to show. that doesn't make them evil. it makes them very very inmature.
it took us a while, to understand that we were just a child, with some natural development and some dark phases. but it puts the experiences into place. they were not a sign of a character flaw, it is just the inmature wickedness of those whose brain development isn't very advanced.

Yeah. I relate to that story. But those things kind of make sense. I can have compassion for them. I remember when I was five I started horse riding and I would yank the bit and hit them with the whip because "that's what you get for not listening". When I was about 9 I switched to a different stable where they taught natural horsemanship and they taught me that if a horse doesn't listen, it is because they may not understand what you want from them. That quickly changed my mind and way of thinking.

I can live with that having happened. I understand that I was just playing out what I knew.

But this...

*** trigger warning ***

It was sexual.

***end trigger warning***

It's too specific and too accurate and I don't know how the part would know about that stuff. That's what scares me. And also that I was an abuser. At least at that instance. How is that normal?? Maybe I'm making the story too big, attaching too much meaning. I don't know.
Either way, I still just want it to go away and I would very much like to disappear as well. :')
It's very scary to me.

we have some of that kind of mistreatment of pets in our history too.
I would invite you to continue a conversation via pm if you want to talk about it.

I feel like this often had have done some bad things in my life. I love animals. I spent 11 years in the animal field. Have owned many pets. I love animals so much that I used to kiss every animal that came in the clinic lol. My dark part has hurt them. I am not happy about it. Your alter is young try to have compassion for them. Self loathing really gets us nowhere we deserve to let that go and move on. I have learned that in therapy. Take care.

Locked at the request of the OP.