Dear Rainbow:

Four years ago you made some posts on an internet forum on a sensitive topic. You believe that you were preachy and came across “all righteous” in those posts and that you “definitely hurt and caused confusion to so many people.” For two years after the posting you went through “a bad psychological phase”

You often think about going back to the forum, four years after posting there, to apologize. Following the postings, people on another forum have given you the following input on the matter:

1. Your guilt is exaggerated.

2. Some situations in life remain open ended.

3.  It is impossible to change the past.

4. If one person liked the posts you made, then they weren’t that awful.

5. You are not a superwoman, and so, you are not powerful enough “to cause divisions in a community”.

You wrote (four years after the posting): “I just kept falling deeper into the pit…  obsessive thoughts that I could make such a huge mistake… after this incident I feel like I am just existing, like a zombie…I have wheezing, migraines and some sort of chronic pain.”

Clearly your guilt predates those internet postings and has nothing to do with it. It only latched on those postings of four years ago and it feels like those postings are the cause, a terrible wrongdoing on your part. But the guilt is from before. It likely came about in the context of your relationships with either one or two of your parents.

To forgive yourself, which is your quest, got to identify the origin of the guilt: would you like to share about your perceived wrongdoing earlier in life, in the context of your relationship with one of your parents?

anita