My guilt has almost finished consuming me

Recently I have been going through yet another bout of depression. I believe that this is at least the 3rd or 4th time I've gone through this, though this is the first time I have really ever been treated for it. I have recently begun seeing both a psychiatrist, who prescribed antidepressants, and a therapist. My therapist has been asking me to journal and think about what triggers my various emotions. This has brought to the surface some things I have never been able to deal with.

I believe I took advantage of my younger sister when I was younger. I only really have one fuzzy memory of it, but it had to have been when I was 11-14 years old somewhere. She is about 5 years younger than me. In the memory we were playing a game and I had her undress and lie down. Then I touched her inappropriately with something soft and fuzzy and asked her how it felt. I was aroused, then I think I went to the bathroom alone to masturbate. I don't remember anything else. I don't think it ever happened more than once or twice or ever went beyond touching, but I feel extremely guilty about this, so much that a lot of the time I cannot deal with it. I have no other memories of being sexually attracted to my sister or to any children in general.

I believe I have repeatedly repressed or suppressed this memory because I cannot seem to function once I recognize it. I don't know if my sister remembers anything, but we get along fairly well now. She is fairly well adjusted, has a long term boyfriend and has graduated from college. I think she may have some latent anxiety issues which I truly hope were not a result of this. I'm so sorry for what I've done, but I'm not sure it would ever be helpful to bring it up to her or even if I could.

I have vague memories from my later teenage years of hearing news stories about child abusers and people would say that they deserved to die or be tortured or burn in hell for all eternity and I felt like that was me.

This is all compounded by the fact that in my early 20's I spent 3 or 4 years as a basically an alcoholic. I was typically a happy drunk, it was truly the only time I can remember since being an adult that I felt good about myself, or at the very least not bad. I may have been doing this to escape these feelings of guilt. I was a binge drinker and would consume obscene amounts of alcohol for 1 or 2 or 3 days and then sober up for a day or two. I've been told this about the worst thing you can do to your brain. Coming off of a bender I would get extreme panic attacks, things I would not wish on anyone no matter what they had done, which would last for hours or days and would bring up all my worst fears and memories in almost like a hallucination/nightmare. I would get flashes of insects or dead rotting things, etc. This would usually be after I was blackout drunk, so my mind would fill in the worst possible things for my missing time. I would think I stole things, or beat someone up, ran someone over, or killed someone or raped someone and that the police would put me in jail. Nearly all the time I was alone in my apartment and I am 100% sure I never left and I have never done any of those things sober. Now whenever the memory of my sister comes up, or even if I just think about thinking about it, a lot of these feelings of horror and panic come up with it.


So layer on the severe guilt I have about this time abusing alcohol and what it did to my friends and family. It has really messed with my head and fractured a lot of my memories. Sometimes I don't know if the memory with my sister is even real, but I think it must be it has so much guilt accompanying it.

Now I'm a 30 year old guy, and had never told anyone any of this until recently I felt so bad I had to call one of the suicide hotlines to help me calm down (it felt like either do that or get blackout drunk, and there was no way I was going back to that living hell). I feel like I destroyed my life at such an early age.

I am still a virgin, and never had a romantic relationship with a woman, though I have been friends with some. I am socially repressed, and really have no close friends anymore, only people I talk to work about or go out to lunch with. I quite often, almost compulsively, tell my self to shut up, that no one wants to hear me and that I am worthless and no one cares.

I feel so lonely sometimes it physically hurts, but at the same time I feel I deserve to be alone forever.
I feel that I deserve all the pain and suffering the universe can find for me.
I feel that I deserve to fail at everything I do.
I can't imagine a person or scenario where anyone would ever love me.
I hate myself. I hate being male.
Sometimes I don't think I deserve to be alive, but that I should stay alive so I can suffer more.

I want to talk to my therapist about all of this eventually if I can ever bring myself to. If I tell my therapist about this will I be labeled a sex offender and be reported to the police? I am also desperately afraid my therapist will be horrified and not want to talk with me anymore. I am not sure I could handle that.

I'm sorry to waste your time with such a long post. I don't really have any hope that things will get better. Is there any way out of this mess, or have I finally dug the hole too deep?

Hi, darkwaters42. I think now is the time to open up to your therapist. Believe me, they have heard a LOT worse. Don't worry. They are trained in dealing with these things and, although they will treat you as an individual, I'm sure they will also be more than familiar with your situation. There is no risk of the police getting involved as both you and your sister are adults now and there is no present risk - it will be purely confidential.

Ignore the "hang em, flog em" brigade and focus on who you are today, right now and your raw potential as a human being, which is infinitely vast, if you'd just look outside your mind for a moment.

You need to stop identifying with your thoughts about yourself. Thoughts about self do not represent who you are or who you can be, they just repeat the past like a bad movie. You don't have to watch it just because it's there. Yes, it might get annoying as it keeps popping up, but again, you don't have to follow it into the depths - you know where it goes and you've already been down that road countless times. Enough!

It is thoughts that tell you you have destroyed your life - why do you necessarily believe them? Question these thoughts - you didn't create them. Don't just accept them as the truth. Really, how have you destroyed your life? When you wake up tomorrow, what is stopping you from going out and being the person you want to be?

What is really stopping you from being a good person?

What is really stopping you from loving someone or someone loving you?

What is really stopping you from succeeding in life?

Question the power your thoughts really have over you in this moment. Watch them for a moment. You are here, right now, alive and aware. A thought arises, a thought passes. Another thought arises, and passes. Why do you feel so attached to these passing objects in your mind? How are they stopping you from doing anything? How do they truly change anything within your present conscious experience?

What does "worthless" even mean? So you're worthless. And... what? All that means is you have a huge empty space upon which to build up your worth. Your house has crumbled so now it's time to start building. You will not do that if you shut yourself away and keep scrabbling around in the ruins of your past (which only exists in the form of thought).

Who you are can only exist in this moment. Your potential as a human being exists now and always will. Keep flogging your past self if you must, but he is dead and won't respond. Suicide is all the more tragically futile because the person we really want to kill - our past self - is already dead. Yet the present self, the actually-existing-self, is pure, alive and filled with potential.

The time is always now.

Thank you epiphany55 for the feedback and advice. I have been a bit hysterical the last few days and it helps me sometimes to write these things down, though in the future I think I will do it in a less public space. I understand that most of my guilt and self flagellation is not serving any useful purpose anymore. I understand it intellectually, but not emotionally. Actually getting myself to that point is an entirely different thing. What you describe seems similar to a lot of mindfulness techniques that have been somewhat helpful with my depression.

That's a great point about intellectual vs emotional understanding. I think emotions serve a useful purpose - they make us human and emotion is what initially triggers remorse. But I also see remorse as a doorway to a more rational view of life and the human condition.

I find it helps to extend this rationalism into ALL areas of life. Practice taking emotion out of the problems of life, big and small. The more you stimulate the rational part of the brain, the more dominant it will become (in theory). You will start to see the relationship between your past and present more rationally (i.e. a life lesson or a necessary "rite of passage" to your present self).

I've found reading scientific/evidence based and evolutionary explanations for our emotions has given me more respect for my remorse and helped me to see its value and utility, to see it as a friend rather than a foe. It's made me philosophically question concepts such as free will (what makes good people do bad things?) and the nature of the self (are we authors or merely deterministic vessels?) - things I never thought twice about before. Now every time I get emotional about my past, I can clear the fog a lot quicker and see what it's true function is - survival. This is your brain telling you that you are at risk of losing your social support network if you continue to do things that weaken those bonds. As social animals, it's easy to see why remorse was so crucial in our evolution and why remorse makes us think about how others think of us.

Basically, applying more critical thinking to life and your place in the universe forces you to look outside your self, outside that box of self-perception. It makes you realise just how much conditioning has been unquestionably accepted as part of "who I am". But most importantly, it makes you fully realise your present potential and that remorse was wholly necessary in that transition.