Do you get really guilty about messing up?

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Sometimes, I feel really guilty when I say something that accidentally offends or upsets someone. Like, I say sorry, and the person seems ok about it, but for me, the guilt stays with me, sometimes for weeks or months, even when the other person has probably forgotten all about the event.

I feel awful that I have messed up and accidentally hurt someone. I should be more careful with my words etc

Do other people feel this?

Yes. I have this problem, too. I don't know what advice to give you, other than to tell you you're not alone. Is it because of our obsessive nature?

I don't generally feel guilty for accidentally offending someone.

Daily, if not hourly.

It's not so much that I offend people by things I say... I really don't give a crap if i do... If you're offended by words then it's you that's offending yourself, not me offending you. You're too sensitive to ideas and concepts.
(However... this could be a defense mechanism within me to help me deal with guilt issues... also not sure this is AS related, I was raised catholic.. and it's effect on me was very bad... Guilt is a core concept of Catholicism and it's means of propagation)

To me it's social blunders... DOING the wrong thing, not saying it. Though being misunderstood in what I SAY does still have this affect on me. If I'm misunderstood, that's my fault... if you just are too sensitive.. that's your fault. But this guilt can last forever with me... I've seen myself getting mad at myself years later for a social blunder... I still do so for things that happened over 20 years ago.

Could also have something to do with our difficulty with emotions, maybe our brains have a harder time differentiating between "embarrassment" and "guilt"

Guilty NEVER.

Frustrated> yes

guilt or frustration, often guilt though. It can kind of spiral out of control if you let it. Just try and be rational and remember whoever it was probably has forgiven you a long time ago.

I do this... But I figure I started doing this cause I didn't know about AS growing up and it's sort of a means of compensation about my "unpredictable" screw ups.

Other than that, I dunno why I am like this. I am very emotional

I also feel very guilty for messing up. It's okay for somebody else to mess up, but it's not okay for me to mess up. If an NT messes up, they're off the hook. If I mess up, I get a big screaming lecture about it. No wonder I beat myself up, when I mess up, whether I get in trouble, or not.

what is sounds like to me is that you are too hard on yourself. Part of the journey is learning to accept the fact that you have social difficulties. The guilt you feel is not guilt that you hurt someone (although that may be so in the short term) but in the long term it is an unacceptance of who you are. The guilt you feel is not for them, but for yourself for not being "normal".
Normal is a dial on the washing machine. No one is normal, in fact, the most seemingly normal people have more skeletons in their closet than those who let it all hang out.

I know a woman who married a man because he seemed so "normal". He ended up being a serial child molester. So much for normal, huh?

Once you come to fully accept who you are in terms of autism, the guilt will go away. Been there, done that, but once I forgave myself and accepted who I am...the guilt went away.

Jojo

This is pretty much how I feel. Especially with my family--now that I am older and from their perspective not "getting over" my issues or maturing, they're getting more and more critical and determined to normalize me somehow.

But somehow even if I were to get diagnosed, I'm not sure I would want to tell them. Even trying to explain that I was a synesthete went badly enough.

i don't have that each and every time. Depends

but sometimes, yeah, something will stick with me for a while and make me feel guilty even if it was a small thing,

Yes, and it tends to replay in my head.

Yes. I think that my own bluntness and insensitivity often make it quite easy for me to experience those long-term and uptight feelings of guilt.

I feel guilty at the smallest of things, even when they're not really my fault and even when I have made a genuine apology and the other person has fully accepted it and is content with me again. I think I just have such a strong sense of right vs. wrong that I get really unbearably guilty when there's even the vague possibility that I've done something that might fit into the "wrong" category. I spend all day saying "I'm sorry" to my boyfriend and he spends all day saying "What are you sorry about?" or "Don't be sorry, you've got nothing to be sorry for!"

Out of all the problems I have day to day, this is the one that has the biggest impact on me. It doesn't have to be that I've upset someone either. As an example, I play badminton every Monday night and I'm reasonably good at it. If I play a bad shot, I will remember that shot, feel like I've let everyone down and think about it for hours or days. Same with throwaway remarks in conversations, which is what I think the original poster had in mind. Hell, I can remember sentences from conversations I had literally MONTHS ago and I cringe whenever I think about them, even when the other person probably wasn't offended at all and even if they were, will have forgotten it within a day.

By ignoring the things I do well and focusing so minutely on things I do badly (or I believe I've done badly) I've completely undermined any self-confidence I might ever have had, which makes work hard. Even something as trivial as a spelling mistake in an email or a stupid but easily-fixed error can send me into a spiral of self-doubt and depression. Even if I know it doesn't matter or that no-one other than me has noticed (or could possibly have noticed) it just doesn't matter.

I pride myself on being intelligent, logical and reasonable, but that all goes out of the window when it comes to myself. If I play two hours of badminton and play one bad shot, it's ridiculous to focus on it. It doesn't make me a bad player and it doesn't mean I've let anyone down. I know that, it's obvious, so why does it upset me so much?

I'm not sure it's about "right and wrong" for me, so much as holding myself to impossible-to-reach standards and then punishing myself when I "fail".

Usually if I offend someone, it's because they deserve it.