Been Having a lot of flashbacks lately

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I hate it, there are so many things I just want to forget about but can't. Many of the flashbacks are from High school and well into my 20s(I am 40 now), dumb things I said, being too open about obsessive interests, reacting badly to things... etc.. . Every time I think about it I turn red with embarrassment and sometimes a minor panic attack.

If I even start thinking about a few of the incidents I start sweating. It seems this is happening more and more to me as of late.

This happens to me too (a lot). Both with things I said/did and even more traumatic things that happened in my past. There was something I said in elementary school that still makes me cringe and wish I hadn't said it. I guess I'm not very good at letting things go.

This happens to me too. I done a lot of stupid and embarrassing things when I was younger that I am not proud of and it does come back to haunt me from time to time. People say "they've probably forgotten about it" but what if they haven't? People don't forget everything, just like I don't.
As a kid my maturity of self-awareness was about 3 or 4 years behind my peers. I was well in my teens before I learnt that people you do not know judge and ridicule those who aren't conforming to their standards. I always thought that only your friends and family or other people you knew only judged you (good or bad), but strangers didn't notice or care. Obviously that was not the case, and in fact I learnt that strangers are the ones that judge you more than the people who know you and love you.

I think that is why I've become an adult who is super self-conscious of how I appear in public. I blame my younger self for making me develop such a mindset.

Stupid, idiotic 14-year-old me.

Stupid, bratty 4-year-old me. If I didn't behave so out of character when I first started school then I probably wouldn't have gotten this stupid label so early in life.

I'm not sure I would characterize them as flashbacks but certainly there are times something old will surface in my memory...and, yes, it is usually something I regret. (Hmmm...I say "usually" but, offhand, I can't think of any that aren't associated with regret.)

I almost never get an audiovisual memory, it's more often data points. Sort of like having lists of facts in my memory instead of pictures or sounds.

For me it's like someone recorded every cringey, stupid, weird, or down right unexplainable thing I've ever done, made a youtube channel about it, and posted all the videos of it. It's like it plays in a constant loop. I vividly remember where I was and sometimes around the date it happened.

I look back on stuff from my 20s and think "how could I be so stupid?". I also have this paranoid complex about everyone remembering it as well as I do and the fact they know.

As I say, some of it's my own paranoia but in my work place for example, some people never let you forget it, even though it could be something that happened years ago.

Interesting timing for this to be posted. Recently, a lot of cringe-worthy things that happened years ago have resurfaced in my mind and it's been bothering me too. They consist of:

Times where I made such a big deal about such small things
Times where I said or did something cringe-worthy
Times where I had tolerated being made fun of by my peers
Some ladies who I wasn't interested in then, a couple of which were interested in me back then, who I find attractive now.
When I didn't go out for football in 7th grade, even though I had a clean slate at the time. Would've been a good opportunity to try to not be an outcast amongst my peers.

Yeah I have a lot of "should of's, Could of's" and I missed out on things because of my own social mess ups.

I have had these all my life. I re-live the trauma, the hurt, the embarrassment, etc., pain, etc. Over and over. I have constant anxiety worrying about if incidents I can't foresee will happen and I think it is my mind trying to figure out what happened and looking for ways to avoid the experience in the future. CPTSD and PTSD in there somewhere.
Once I learned of my autism,
( Diagnosed at age 67, days before my 68th birthday, and I am 69 today)
I was able to have new perspective on so many struggles and painful experiences from the past.
I was finally able to see how autism had worked 'behind the scenes' to make things turn out as they had.

I was able to consciously create a mental file called "finished business".
I can look at those memories now as they come up and ask myself if there is anything I can do about it today? If the answer is no, I deliberately (metaphorically) put that memory in my "finished business" file.
If it comes up again I re file it, saying firmly it is finished business. Little by little all the old traumas are beginning to recede and I am living more in peace and less pain in the present.
Without the knowledge of my being autistic I was stuck in a pattern of intrusive flashbacks and bad memories, constantly trying to resolve the pain and distress.
Now I know about my autism and can see how it was involved/behind many of the traumas and pains, I can understand and move forward. What a relief!

Never a day goes by without me going over things that have happened in the past, mostly aged 11-16 and usually associated with regret, guilt, anger or embarrassment. I find myself going through alternate scenarios (whilst stimming) to fix the problems and then I'm left with the feeling that I'm going to wake up any day from this present day dream, I'll be 11 again with the opportunity to correct all of the mistakes, having finally worked out how to deal with life at school and being a teenager. Maybe that's the next life.

It's been really bad for me as of late for some reason, some of its things that I am sure everyone(but me) has forgotten. 25-30 years later I still turn bright red thinking about it. I'm very good at remembering bad things.

I believe in this philosophy/credo:

In order to be REALLY good, one has to have been at least SOMEWHAT bad.....

Can you try to focus on pleasant things that happened in the past instead? It's partially perspectives anyway. Like "Oh ya I used to do this stupid thing, can you believe that? Ha ha." You know, making it seem funny.

I think it might be helpful to write down your experiences. Write a short story for each incident, save them in a flash drive, and put it away. I took a memoir writing class and I think all my classmates were there to process things in their personal lives. Nobody intended to publish a book. Writing can be very therapeutic.