For those who feel intense guilt/remorse

I havent been on here since last year, but briefly reading through the posts I realised something and thought I'd share in case it helps anyone.
I significant number of posts on here seem to be very symptomatic of Pure-Obsessional OCD. I have suffered from this for years and so it is very easy to pick up on it in others. Many (not all) of those in this forum seem to be experiencing EXCESSIVE guilt and obsessing over minor situations, or ones that happened as children. They also make reference to this affecting all aspects of their lives, losing their 'identity', cognitive dissonance, ego-dystonic feelings etc, which are all huge signs of OCD thinking. This is all extremely common with Pure-O, and I believe many people are on a spectrum with OCD, on a scale from minor to severe. And most people won't recognise it as that as OCD is generally referenced to in the media etc as excessive hand washing etc.
So if this sounds like you, it might be worth realising that Obsessive Compulsive thinking can warp your version of reality. Pure-O OCD preys on guilt and fear, and will blow all situations out of proportion.
I am not suggesting that everyone on here has not done anything wrong, but OCD thought patterns seem to be thrown in the mix in a lot of cases. And from having it myself, I can understand how much it devastates your life and confuses your reality.
Anyway, I hope I made sense in some way. And hope this might help someone who is feeling unnecessarily tortured.
Lots of love x

That was a compassionate message. I agree that OCD is very guilt-oriented. It's tricky though because someone with OCD can also deserve to feel great guilt and remorse. I was diagnosed with OCD very young (about 10, I think) and my mum (who is a therapist) reckons I started displaying symptoms as young as 2 or 3... but I simultaneously feel that the behaviour I feel guilty about was genuinely really #######5 and should disrupt my sense of welbeing for life. I think the main difference is that most people who don't have OCD will still get regularly distracted by other thoughts even if they otherwise feel awful (?) ... so, even the remorseful murderer in prison will sometimes get distracted with thoughts of what they want want to eat, or how they miss their family (I assume) ... whereas, if you have OCD it's really pretty constant and it takes a great deal of will to force yourself to focus on other things. Like, even just working at a supermarket at the moment, it's often very hard for me to focus upon counting up money or serving customers because my brain is so busy with self-recrimination... the tasks are really simply and I've still made mistakes simply because my brain was too densely packed with guilt to focus on the task at hand. It's kind of like having constant hiccups or tinnitus.

I guess people with OCD are very 'all or nothing' about punishment? I feel like punishment somehow has to be absolute else it ceases to be punishment... that's why I'm always shocked by people who can say in such a blasé manner that 'Hell doesn't sound so bad' or 'Hell would be an interesting place to go to' because often times the only thing that helps me relax is the knowledge that there is highly unlikely to be an afterlife after this one... if redemption isn't possible on Earth then at least in death I'll stop being aware of the fact that I can't be redeemed, I hope.

Sometimes I feel that I it would be 'ok' (morally speaking) to feel less bad, but then I always start feeling scared when that feeling arises. I guess it's very hard to know if you have a warped version of reality when your reality is always your own and, furthermore, there are so many competing truths to claim from... every individual is going to differ at the point at which someone is irrevocably evil / past the point of the moral event horizon. Who should one believe?

sprock - your posts were one of the ones that made me write this post. I have a lot I'd like to talk with you about, but not sure I have the time or the energy right now! lol. So I'll try and be concise.
I am no expert, but I personally feel that a lot of your situation is based on OCD and cognitive distortions caused by OCD. I believe that OCD can take a situation, even if there was some wrongdoing, and blow it out of proportion. Your preoccupation with justice, law and punishment is very typical of this, and is EXACTLY what I was like earlier last year. To the point where I was admitted to a psych ward and was convinced I needed to go to jail for something that (after weeks of meds and convincing by family members and professionals) turned out to be nothing. I could not, and still cannot, believe how much OCD warped my thinking. To the point where I look back and think I was bordering on delusional. Scary.
Being as brief as possible (sorry), if I could give you any advice it would be this: try and stay off all forums, at least until you are better. They are a compulsion and feed the guilt etc. in a reassurance cycle. Seek CBT therapy for your OCD if at all possible. If you are on medication, perhaps review it. There are some great medications out there for OCD if you are open to meds. Cut the ruminating...if you find yourself obsessing or going over and over something, stop. No OCD sufferer ever recovered by obsessing...you will NEVER get a satisfactory answer as that is how your brain works. When you obsess or ruminate you are feeding the monster.
Feel free to pm me if you like. I dont get on here too much anymore but I get notified of any pm's.
I hope you are well, all the best x

Thanks - I didn't expect that my posts would have been on your mind since other people on here have done far less than me (especially those posters who feel remorse about fantasies or their behaviour as young children). You post seems really perceptive though and I'm glad you're in a much better place than you were last year.

It is hard for me not to want to visit places like Psychforums as such places can help me feel less alienated... however this reassurance is certainly very momentary and I've engaged in some behaviour online over the last couple of years in particular which seems foolish in retrospect and which my parents were pretty upset / angered by when they discovered, such as trying to poll people online as to whether I deserved to commit suicide or not (about 96% of people felt that my behaviour was not something to be suicidal over... but of course I ended up focusing on that remaining 4%).

It's also simply hard to escape material that reinforced my intense feelings of guilt - here in Britain the Prince Andrew sex abuse case is regularly front page news and since it involved the statutory rape of a 17-year-old, I can't help but draw comparisons with myself, though I know the situation isn't exactly the same, especially as I would have been a couple of decades younger than Andrew, at least.

I may well PM you at some time but I totally appreciate that it takes time and effort to reply and I can be quite singularly intense! I need to learn to stick with C.B.T. but I always find exceptions - ways of thinking myself out of it working. It seems quite faith based to me (plus I'm not very keen on the tendency to convert things into numbers - saying that my anxiety is '9' doesn't make much sense to me, as it feels a lot more varied and complex than that).