How to remove this guilt

I previously posted in the OCD section but feel like my problem may be more appropriate here.
I suffered from a serious bout of OCD relating to intrusive thoughts and guilt over my past 3 years ago and since then have managed to keep it under control until now.

My guilt relates to certain sexual fantasies I had when I was in my early teens - I don't want to disclose what over as I don't really feel comfortable doing that but one day, when my mind was looking for more things to feel guilty over, it hit me as the fantasies were deeply immoral and disgusting.

At the time I didn't really think twice about them and in real life found them abhorrent and would never want them to become a reality - yet in my sexual fantasies they were a source of arousal (due I think to the fact that I didn't actually find them attractive, if that makes sense)

For the past few years I have acknowledged at various times these fantasies but not thought about them as deeply as I am doing now and due to this I have dug up about 100 more reasons to feel guilty and it really is getting exhausting.

I feel like if people knew they would think I was so perverted. I am, for the most part, completely normal and lead a happy life but I feel like this is a dark secret that I carry about with me and is such a stain on my moral conscience. Since developing OCD, my morals have been so high and I just feel like everyone else leads such a perfect life and I have this hanging over me. Confessing, I feel, won't help because confessing used to be a compulsion and I feel like it is not the fact that people don't know that is the issue - it is the fact that I cannot accept it nor forgive myself for it.

I think to myself this was years ago, you would never do anything like that now it was just your hormones etc. but it genuinely makes me feel like the worst person ever. I think to myself why would you do that, you're the worst person ever, a monster etc. and it makes me feel so down and guilty. I do feel like I think I know the reasons as to why I found it attractive etc. but thinking back to the fantasies makes me feel ill, and I frequently get flashbacks every day recently.

I know there is nothing I can do to change it and the only option left is to move on. The problem is I feel like by accepting it and forgiving myself I am therefore saying that it was somehow okay to do it, which I do not believe. I want so badly to be a good person and feel like now that I am older and mature I genuinely am, but then I attach what I did and thought years ago to myself now and it really makes me feel like the worst, most immoral person in the world.

I want more than anything to live a guilt free life but a part of me says I deserve to feel guilty and stops me from moving on. Obviously I want to see a therapist but won't be able to for a while. Any advice and words of wisdom would really help, as I feel terribly alone with my problem.

Please don't feel guilty for obsessive thoughts. They aren't hurting anyone, save yourself. Morality is about other people - whether you have done harm to others. You haven't. You know that your obsessive thoughts are not your fault and that they just exist to torment you.

I have O.C.D. too but I actually did something heinous and criminal (I had an under-age girlfriend 16/17-years-old when I was 21... years later she says she is fine and doesn't feel like she was a victim of child molestation, but I know that the law is black & white on this issue) so I know what it is like to be constantly plagued by endless obsessive guilt. However, you did nothing to deserve this. It makes me sad to think that someone should suffer like this without even having done something wrong. Please just remind yourself that your thoughts are not a crime, they haven't hurt anyone else, and that you are a good person worthy of happiness.

-- Mon Jun 09, 2014 8:50 am --

It's just the OCD octopus with its evil tentacles.

Thanks for the reply sprock. To me, your crime really isn't one as I have known many girls with older boyfriends and it is a common occurrence, as where I am from 16 is the age of consent. Even still, to me it does not seem bad, whereas if people knew the sexual fantasies I had I know they wouldn't speak to me.

My problem is that although I know thinking in itself is not bad, to me I committed a really bad moral crime in my head and through my actions and so it's really hard for me to let go. I know I am not perfect and can never be and I know other people have immoral sexual fantasies as well but it just literally makes me skin crawl to think that I was that perverted when I was in my early teens. At the time, like I said, I thought nothing of it but right now I'm having a hard time dealing with it, rationalising it and in some ways justifying it even though I feel like I am a bad person for trying to relieve myself of the guilt.

I go round and round with my thoughts, some that used to relieve the guilt will do so on one occasion and not another and I've always got one little voice belittling all my justifications and rationalisations. Relief from guilt will last a while and then it will be back. Even though I have no intention of ever telling anyone, I just imagine their reactions all the time and think "if they knew" etc. which doesn't help.

The guilt has lessened a little bit in the last few weeks and so I'm not sure if this means my episode is going to begin trailing off, I hope it does. Still though, I feel it's one of those things I'll always be guilty over and sometimes I feel like I've ruined my life!

First, the OCD is the issue here, not the fantasies themselves.

Secondly, if you are the type of person who has more "risqué" fantasies, you need to be fully aware of this and extra vigilant with ensuring the line between fantasy and reality is not crossed.

Most adults can do this no problem, because (for example) masturbating to the thought of it is enough of a thrill and they can enter freely in and out of the two "worlds" (fantasy/reality) with a morally distinctive clarity.

In other words, "know thyself" is the #1 rule for those who dare to explore the darker regions of the mind.

But to the general point...

There is no such thing as an "immoral fantasy" and any notion of thought control, whether through law or mere social pressure, is abhorrent.

No matter how sick, perverted or "immoral" you think your fantasies are/were, they are just thoughts. As long as you are vigilant with controlling the physical manifestation of those thoughts, don't discriminate. These thoughts just arose, innocently and without any intention to be judged.

It would help to be around open minded people (there are plenty of us around ). My very "vanilla" partner was so understanding of me and I am grateful for that because I've had some... weird sexual fantasies throughout my teenage and adult life. I could only open up to her about one or two of them, but I am glad I did.

I am convinced that repressing thought is, not only futile, but far more dangerous than letting it arise naturally. You didn't do anything wrong by letting these fantasies play out. In fact, it's probably a good thing you did explore them fully. There is good science to back that up.

The more we repress thought, the more we push things into our unconscious mind, where they fester.

That's when things get nasty.

Let the thoughts be but stop identifying with them (you are not your thoughts!). Doing so may create more noise in your mind, but it's far better than repressing them.

Thanks for the reply. There was never a trace of me that ever wanted them to come real they were purely for "getting off purposes", I would think them and then just forget about them. They were not obsessive fantasies and were part of a whole host of other, more vanilla fantasies.

They did arise innocently and like I said at the time I didn't think twice about them. To most people they would be really disgusting though and I feel like I should have known better, I should have known they were off limits and immoral in nature and I shouldn't have even gone there.

But I did. My theory is that I was young, hormonal and had had a somewhat difficult and disruptive childhood and early teen life and these fantasies were perhaps a manifestation of the problems that I had from that time, which gives me a slight comfort but then I start feeling bad because I think to myself that I shouldn't even bother justifying it.

I think what you said about we are not our thoughts is something that I am struggling with. Not only am I struggling to accept and forgive myself for my past conduct and thoughts, but I also have trouble taking that part of me that I feel was sexually perverted and realising that I do not think this way anymore, one day I just stopped and never revisited these fantasies after I had matured, and that I will never have them again. Still, I feel like for some reason they are still a part of me even though rationally I know they aren't and I get flashbacks when triggered.

It may just be something I will always struggle with and it's hard for me to think how I would react if I didn't have such an obsessive mind. For example, I just never revisited these fantasies and forgot about them. If they had resurfaced without me having an obsessive mind would I feel the same amount of guilt and remorse I do now? Would I even recognise they were bad? I don't see how I couldn't but then again I will never know!

Just hoping that one day I can come to peace with it and recognise I am a good person now. In the meantime, I find writing it on here a little therapeutic!

ella123 wrote:They did arise innocently and like I said at the time I didn't think twice about them. To most people they would be really disgusting though and I feel like I should have known better, I should have known they were off limits and immoral in nature and I shouldn't have even gone there.

The point is that you couldn't not have gone there, if you get me. They just arose persistently and they were potent enough to entertain that space in your mind.

Given that inevitability, you have two choices: you either let those thoughts arise and be or you make efforts to repress them. I contend that repressing dark thoughts is always worse than letting them "play out" in your mind. It's the lesser of two evils, in other words.

Anyone who thinks another person is "sick" or "immoral" for what they think is simply not aware of the complexity and impulsiveness of the human mind. A neuroscientist, for example, would never make such a judgement, because they know too much about how the mind operates.

ella123 wrote:I think what you said about we are not our thoughts is something that I am struggling with. Not only am I struggling to accept and forgive myself for my past conduct and thoughts, but I also have trouble taking that part of me that I feel was sexually perverted and realising that I do not think this way anymore, one day I just stopped and never revisited these fantasies after I had matured, and that I will never have them again. Still, I feel like for some reason they are still a part of me even though rationally I know they aren't and I get flashbacks when triggered.

Yes many people, including myself, struggle with dis-identifying themselves from thought. In fact most people do not even see this as the problem, because they have had a lifetime of conditioning to believe their existence is wholly defined by their thoughts, traits, material acquisitions etc.

The problem here is that we are completely (and in many cases, obliviously) at the mercy of our conditioned mind. If a dark or unwanted thought happens to arise into consciousness, and we feel so dominated by it that we have to resist or repress it, it suggests we are still bound by that conditioning.

Like I said in my earlier reply, the issue here is not the nature of your thoughts, since there is much you can do to detach yourself from thought (i.e. meditation)... it's the fact they are arising compulsively - the OCD factor. I believe that thoughts are disempowered through seeing them for what they are (a conditioned neurochemical response), and although I can't predict the outcome for every individual, the path of least resistance is to work on making that disconnect between your awareness of thought (what you are) and the thought itself.

In other words, the more authentically you can position yourself as "the observer" rather than "the thinker", the more space you will have for these thoughts as they take their natural course of passing and, eventually, dying, like all things in the universe.

But of course, someone who has suffered from OCD will be able to better inform you of more practical ways in which to dissipate unwanted thought patterns.