Excessive Guilt All the Time/ Doubting my autism

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I feel guilty constantly, for real things and for imagined things, all the time. Randomly, a memory from when I was little or from a few months ago and I will realize how horrible I am. I do not even have the best memory, but, occassionally, a memory will appear, like farting in class while we are watching a Disney movie in second grade and blaming my fart on another student that I knew nobody liked because I wanted to be liked-- like what the f**k is that? What kind of horrible person does that? And then I will remember other things-- like participating in gossip in my former workplace or simply just passively listening to it. Then how me and my best friend when I was in fourth grade were trying to rescue these little frogs, that had just transformed from tadpoles only to find days later that their pond had dried up and so we had tried to carry them from one pond to another and then I squeezed too tightly in one hand-- as I can never tell how strongly I am grasping something-- and I squeezed two frogs to death... i remember weeping... I was a murderer or recently when I killed an ant to save a catepillar that it was attacking, meddling in nature in this way... Or the time I refused this boy's flower because my friend told me to do this and found myself crying in the band director's office and apologizing to the boy when I was twelve...

Apologizing does not make the guilt go away... I was constantly told when I was little and when I was a teenager, especially after fits or meltdowns or whatever they were, when I would go crazy and scream and throw my body on the ground or thrash around and hit and kick my Mommy or lock myself in the bathroom so I would not hurt anyone, after I would feel so bad and apologize again and again while crying-- after the hour long meltdown passed and I would apologize, my family members would tell me that they did not believe me, that it felt like my apologies did not mean anything because I keep doing the same things again and again... And I do... I keep doing the same things again and again-- less so the lying, unless it is just to get someone to cease talking to me-- I have never been a very good liar anyway and would often cave in and start crying if I was questioned too much-- and I am never going to gossip again, ever (the problem now is figuring out what qualifies as gossip-- is it simply speaking of someone in their absence?)... I am not sure... I just do not understand why I keep doing the same things, the same behaviors, such as thrashing out and hitting people still sometimes if I am in a place where I cannot get away...

And somehow, the most anxiety inducing part of all this, all this guilt, is that I feel like I do not have a reason for being such a bad person no matter how much I want and I try to be good... I am not sure if I am autistic... I was diagnosed almost three years ago, yet, it does not seem to fit... I had friends-- at least two best friends-- and several casual friends in school... I was bullied alot, starting in Junior High and several people called me a b***h in Intermediate school... And then alot of bullying in high school for being weird or speaking funny or dressing too colorfully or for being too obsessive... Most of the time, however, I did not know I was being bullied and I just thought the people were being either nice-- such as when they threw a jacket with a unicorn on it-- or stupid when they would get the entire back of the class to laugh at me while I was interpreting the quote in my world history class to the point where the teacher had to pause the whole class to tell them that they were being horrible... I did not know that they were even making fun of me until my teacher, Mr. Grotz pointed it out... I was also called crazy ALOT... Crazy and weird were the top ones... But this could also be from being ADHD or it could be from having both... I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was six, had my first mental breakdown at twelve where I began cutting myself and constantly wanting to self harm, and my first mental hospitalization at sixteen... What is wrong with me? I need to be autistic to explain it and, yet, I just lost my longest and most treasured friendship of almost four years-- with an autistic woman. Her husband, who is also autistic, and my friend I met after my third stay in the mental hospital in a sexual trauma support group, who is also autistic and who I introduced to that best friend and her husband also will not talk to me anymore... I was horrible... So so horrible... I randomly start fights with people-- the best friend does too... We are both incredibly combative... And then I get off the anxiety medicine I have been on for seven years and I am constantly getting into fights with her-- trying not to, but continuously doing it because everything, every little thing makes me anxious now to the point where I am constantly masking when I am around people now-- similar to how it felt like in high school-- and then I will reach a breaking point and have to be alone, have to hide, have to fight... I do not know what is wrong with me... I do not know if I am autistic... I do not know where I belong if I belong anywhere... I am horrible and a horrible human and I deserve all the horrible things that have happened to me...

I think I need help... My old psychologist has not seen me in almost a year due to issues with insurance and while there was physical college at UTA, I was having trouble seeing a therapist at the school because I did the opening assessment and she told me that she could not see me because I am autistic... but I cannot even go and do another assessment to get a therapist and ask if she would be able to see me if I did not think I was actually autistic, if I was just crazy because the coronavirus has moved everything online and I have no motivation to do any school, but instead just keep doing research on autism and cross referencing my experiences through the search engine of Wrong Planet trying to prove my autism-- and occasionally on my writing (mostly poetry and some prose) and axolotls, which are the two most important things to me...

I want to focus on the things that I want to focus on, but this other thing, this fear, this trying to figure out what is wrong with me-- a search I have been on since I was thirteen-- still feels unresolved and I am driving myself mad again...

Last edited by SweetOnSylvia on 21 Mar 2020, 10:36 pm, edited 3 times in total.

Excessive guilt is often a result of CPTSD.

https://www.dis-sos.com/guilt/

Here's just one article to discuss it, but you can google scores of them.

In the Catholic tradition this is sometimes related to the spiritual weakness of scrupulosity. Lots of people struggle with this.

Thank you so much for this article and for your response... It was actually helpful... Here is my response:

I read a little bit of the article and I often feel helpless, but then other times I feel as if nothing could possibly hurt me-- less manic invincibility and more obliviousness, like being in my world prevents the world from hurting me... Yet, I have been like this since I was a child, a very precocious child who would wander off and had to be kept on a child leash and did not believe the world could hurt her... I did have a traumatic childhood-- although, it was not until this past year that I was able to recognize my father's violent behaviors-- such as hitting my Mommy and sometimes hitting my sister and I and filling the house with horrific screaming (I too would feel the house with screams-- mostly hyperventilation and asthma attacks)... And then when my mom finally kicked him out, after he got arrested for trying to break back in, after two years of only being able to see him with a social worker while he was getting help, we were finally able to see him...

I remember often being scared of my dad growing up even though I live with him now and he is mostly better. I have, however, finally recognized that alot of my issues with men does come from my proverbial Daddy issues... This is wrong... I recognized this when I was fifteen when I was trying to classify this phenenomenon of "phantom fathers" as I called them, realizing that it occurred often with other girls that I knew-- of having this father that was in the background while the mother stood in the foreground...

I am not sure... I have heard that CPTSD can cause autistic traits, but I think my autistic traits may have happened before the trauma. Also, I went to a world renowned trauma hospital-- specifically for the traumatic event of my adolescence where I was sexually abused by my teacher-- and they diagnosed me with Chronic PTSD not Complex PTSD even though I had similar experiences as some of the women who were diagnosed with CPTSD... Maybe I just processed things differently as my sister, who is younger, was far more aware of the trauma of our childhood than I was up until recently... I seemed to be more disturbed about the constant absence of my father through alot of my life from ten to sixteen...

I am not sure... I feel like I am being annoying...

Nobody thinks you're annoying.

The better you know yourself, the more you will be able to handle these feelings of guilt.

I used to feel excessive guilt a lot.
It eased enormously with my 3 years of therapy.
Yes, the source was CPTSD from emotional abuse I received.

I feel guilty everytime I throw away any plastic. I picture it sitting in a landfill for a 1000 years. I keep visualizing a gigantic mound of garbage that I have generated over my lifetime and I feel awful that I am contributing to the destruction of the planet. That's generally what I feel guilty over.