Guilt

Looking for a little input, here. I'm recovering from dissociative amnesia. Frankly, I'd almost rather stay in the amneisa. I'm absolutely overwhelmed with guilt.

I was raped when I was quite young, a teenager. I was absolutely, wildly in love with someone at that time with whom I hadn't had sex. I was a virgin. To make a long story short, I behaved so badly towards this person after the rape, and he was amazing. We were both kids, he was even younger than I was, and he soothed me and sheltered me and bascially kept me from going completely crazy.

And I yelled at him, I hurt him, I tortured him by sleeping with other people (not him -- I wouldn't use him that way; even I realized that what I was doing wasn't making love by any stretch of the imagination) and telling him everything.

There is no way I can ask him to forgive me. We have no contact. How do I come to terms with this guilt? Cry? Pray?

He was everything to me. I'm almost shell-shocked at the stuff I'm remembering. It doesn't seem possible. If this keeps up, I'm going to dissociate again, I'm afraid. It's just all too horrible.

There is no way I can ask him to forgive me. We have no contact. How do I come to terms with this guilt? Cry? Pray?

Alethiea,

I am deeply sorry to hear about your anguishing story. I can only try to empathise with you. As a guy, I sympathise with your friend and your treatment against him but I do understand the reasons for your actions. I am no psychologist though, nor am I remotely close to anything that resonates to that (I only just turned eighteen and am studying accounting & management - nothing that constitutes to the field of psychology).

You've identified where this guilt stems from, now you need to find a resolution to it. If you want to come to terms with your guilt, you have to firstly, accept the existence of it. All this is very difficult to consume and bring into practicality but you'll be able to exercise it in due course.

Next, once you have accepted that your guilt is present, you need to come to the realisation that your actions were wrong but concurrently, you also need to understand that it was in the past and there is simply nothing you can do, given your circumstances. Once you've acknowledged that, you can move on and release yourself from the guilt that cripples you.

I don't know how much this will help you, but hopefully, it will. I want to commend you on your steady recovery from dissociative amnesia. I can't begin to imagine how you would've been feeling after such a traumatic episode. I hope you find a way to purge yourself of this guilt.

Keep on recovering and don't give up.

infekt