how to handle guilt over the past

i've posted about this before but i still feel really guilty,i'm a [mod EDIT: adolescent] girl,but around the time i was 10 or so i found porn and smut stories and i guess i found lesbian porn was curious about how it felt and when i was 11 my cousin was about 8 we did things like kissing and it was all done with consent one time i asked her to lick down there and she asked if she had too and i didn't say anything in reply but she did it once and we stopped.
i feel horrible about this still and i feel like in the future everyones going to call me a molester,i try to be there for her when i can but i don't know how to stop feeling bad about this and reading about josh duggar and lena dunham and things like that kind of confirm what i feel

I can provide you with a different perspective.

I have a form of Defective Automation Syndrome, meaning I don't really understand regret, remorse, or many other feelings people take for granted.

Although I understand the biological mechanism behind regret, it seems illogical to me. I don't buy it when psychologists claim guilt is an essential emotion- I function perfectly well without guilt.

But, I have to frame this in a way you would understand, as a person who feels guilt.

Contrary to popular belief, you don't really need guilt in order to change the future, because as humans, we have our neo-cortex for logical reasoning. Hence, the function of guilt can be simulated.

When we lacked a fully functional neo-cortex, guilt was a necessary, rapid-fire response.
Just like you can train a house-cat to behave logically through positive reinforcement, I suspect you can try to override your guilt using your neo-cortex. Of course, this is easier said than done.

I know how you feel. What I want you to do is remind yourself of all the positive things you are as a person.
We all stuff up. What matters is that we learn from our mistakes, and I can tell that you truly have.
You were a child. You didn't know what you were doing, you were curious, fair enough. Don't let this ruin your whole life. You've spent too much time feeling guilty about it already.
I can tell you are not a horrible person, a horrible person would show no signs of remorse for what they had done. I'm 18 and have been struggling with a similar guilt for seven years. It's not worth it okay I know at the moment you are still young, and being ten doesn't seem that long ago, but before you know it you will be 18, 20, 30, and you'll realise how much of a child you were at 10. Look at other 10 year olds around you? They kind of all seem like clueless idiots to me. So remember that you were probably like that too, and so was I. So don't feel bad, forgive yourself.

I hope you feel better about this situation soon you deserve to be happy

Ask yourself what it really means to "handle" guilt. You are handling it right now. Handling or dealing with something doesn't mean you have to feel fine about it.

You just have to surrender to your feelings and let time put these past actions into a wider context. As you get older and see the results of your productive actions come to fruition, past mistakes or guilt from wrongful actions will become more and more valuable, as difficult as it is to see that right now.

Your task now is to create as much good in the world as you can, to inquire into and explore your full potential as a human being. The more value you can add to other people's lives (and your own) from the catalyst of this guilt, the more you'll start to realise that the guilt, and all the pain, were an essential part of that goodness.

All the bad in your life can be converted into energy for positive action. That is the only productive use of it. That is the true gift of remorse, whether you believe it's from a god or nature. You must accept it as a gift, rather than a burden, and pass it on in the form of love.

When you realise that guilt/remorse can be converted in this way, you'll no longer see your past as a weight dragging you down, rather fuel for the productive fires that burn within you. Eventually, you will see no distinction between "positive" and "negative" emotions in terms of how they fuel this fire. It's all neutral. Only your conditioned thoughts about the emotions turn them into suffering and dead weight.

Emotional pain is an important part of growing as a person. Our natural instinct is to run away from or try to suppress pain, but when it's mental pain that's not always possible or even healthy. That pain is a warning signal, it's trying to tell you something - in a word, change and start building positive relationships. It's very primal and part of our evolution as a species, which is why everyone has that potential.

You can't make yourself let go of it or forget the past. Your heavily conditioned mind won't let you. But you can change how you relate to your past, from the perspective of your present self.

That change of relationship can be crystallised in how you deliver that energy into the world around you. Don't absorb it further into yourself (suppression), instead feel the burn as intimately and purely as you can, without the mind-made story behind it, release it and see its true potential with your own eyes.

It's just energy. Use it.

a+bc wrote:I know how you feel. What I want you to do is remind yourself of all the positive things you are as a person.
We all stuff up. What matters is that we learn from our mistakes, and I can tell that you truly have.
You were a child. You didn't know what you were doing, you were curious, fair enough. Don't let this ruin your whole life. You've spent too much time feeling guilty about it already.
I can tell you are not a horrible person, a horrible person would show no signs of remorse for what they had done. I'm 18 and have been struggling with a similar guilt for seven years. It's not worth it okay I know at the moment you are still young, and being ten doesn't seem that long ago, but before you know it you will be 18, 20, 30, and you'll realise how much of a child you were at 10. Look at other 10 year olds around you? They kind of all seem like clueless idiots to me. So remember that you were probably like that too, and so was I. So don't feel bad, forgive yourself.

I hope you feel better about this situation soon you deserve to be happy

thankyou so much,i hope you feel better about the situation you're going through too.

-- Mon Sep 21, 2015 12:48 pm --

a+bc wrote:I know how you feel. What I want you to do is remind yourself of all the positive things you are as a person.
We all stuff up. What matters is that we learn from our mistakes, and I can tell that you truly have.
You were a child. You didn't know what you were doing, you were curious, fair enough. Don't let this ruin your whole life. You've spent too much time feeling guilty about it already.
I can tell you are not a horrible person, a horrible person would show no signs of remorse for what they had done. I'm 18 and have been struggling with a similar guilt for seven years. It's not worth it okay I know at the moment you are still young, and being ten doesn't seem that long ago, but before you know it you will be 18, 20, 30, and you'll realise how much of a child you were at 10. Look at other 10 year olds around you? They kind of all seem like clueless idiots to me. So remember that you were probably like that too, and so was I. So don't feel bad, forgive yourself.

I hope you feel better about this situation soon you deserve to be happy

thankyou so much,i hope you feel better about the situation you're going through too.

epiphany55 wrote:Ask yourself what it really means to "handle" guilt. You are handling it right now. Handling or dealing with something doesn't mean you have to feel fine about it.

You just have to surrender to your feelings and let time put these past actions into a wider context. As you get older and see the results of your productive actions come to fruition, past mistakes or guilt from wrongful actions will become more and more valuable, as difficult as it is to see that right now.

Your task now is to create as much good in the world as you can, to inquire into and explore your full potential as a human being. The more value you can add to other people's lives (and your own) from the catalyst of this guilt, the more you'll start to realise that the guilt, and all the pain, were an essential part of that goodness.

All the bad in your life can be converted into energy for positive action. That is the only productive use of it. That is the true gift of remorse, whether you believe it's from a god or nature. You must accept it as a gift, rather than a burden, and pass it on in the form of love.

When you realise that guilt/remorse can be converted in this way, you'll no longer see your past as a weight dragging you down, rather fuel for the productive fires that burn within you. Eventually, you will see no distinction between "positive" and "negative" emotions in terms of how they fuel this fire. It's all neutral. Only your conditioned thoughts about the emotions turn them into suffering and dead weight.

Emotional pain is an important part of growing as a person. Our natural instinct is to run away from or try to suppress pain, but when it's mental pain that's not always possible or even healthy. That pain is a warning signal, it's trying to tell you something - in a word, change and start building positive relationships. It's very primal and part of our evolution as a species, which is why everyone has that potential.

You can't make yourself let go of it or forget the past. Your heavily conditioned mind won't let you. But you can change how you relate to your past, from the perspective of your present self.

That change of relationship can be crystallised in how you deliver that energy into the world around you. Don't absorb it further into yourself (suppression), instead feel the burn as intimately and purely as you can, without the mind-made story behind it, release it and see its true potential with your own eyes.

It's just energy. Use it.

thankyou i think that will work shifting my guilt into something that can actually change the things around me and turn it into something worth while,have a good day,thankyou again

Great comments here that I agree with!

I just want to add that I feel very strongly that the Josh Duggar and Lena Dunham cases are very different to your own. In both cases, there was a pattern of abuse that went on over several years. Personally, I think Duggar was the worst offender of the two since Dunham only seems to have engaged in any genital contact when she was 6 or so, certainly very young.

However, with both Duggar and Dunham some degree of abusive or inappropriate sexual behaviour continued up to they were 17. Now, a 17-year-old is still a child, but they should be held to a very different moral standard to a 10-year-old. They have a lot more life experience. You were not an older adolescent child, you were a young child. There is a difference and it is important.

sprock wrote:Great comments here that I agree with!

I just want to add that I feel very strongly that the Josh Duggar and Lena Dunham cases are very different to your own. In both cases, there was a pattern of abuse that went on over several years. Personally, I think Duggar was the worst offender of the two since Dunham only seems to have engaged in any genital contact when she was 6 or so, certainly very young.

However, with both Duggar and Dunham some degree of abusive or inappropriate sexual behaviour continued up to they were 17. Now, a 17-year-old is still a child, but they should be held to a very different moral standard to a 10-year-old. They have a lot more life experience. You were not an older adolescent child, you were a young child. There is a difference and it is important.

thankyou over the past couple days i've been feeling better and not thinking about it and have realized at least for now what i did was wrong but wasn't the end of the world i really appreciate the advice

Aw that's great to read

But if things get hard and you want people to talk to again just remember that we're always here!

sprock wrote:Aw that's great to read

But if things get hard and you want people to talk to again just remember that we're always here!

thankyou i really appreciate it