User deleted post
View all comments
Feel like your anxiety and self issues are (as with many of us) the big problem in the room here. That's not to say you did things you wish you hadn't etc. more that your state of mind right now makes everything worse and terrifying regardless of how you might see it if you were in a more balanced state of mind and you feel at the mercy of it.
I don't think you have anything to be guilty about or ashamed of, I know that won't cut through the way you see yourself but I genuinely don't. We all have our own ways of coping and you described yourself above the feelings that doing these things helped you to deal with or placate. It sounds overall like you need and deserve some professional help to deal with those underlying issues, to take the energy away from them and allow you to stop being plagued by them. It's technically possible to just be like "oh I should just stop doing this - and so I will!" The end. But not for most of us. If life was that simple everything would be different hah, so don't be hard on yourself :)
I guess for now the thing is to make sure you don;t add to the stuff that bothers you regardless of what anyone says, allow some distance to form between you and what hurts you. I'm sorry you keep running into nasty predatory types, I suppose maybe that helps them deal with something too but that's their battle and they should get on with solving it so they aren't hurting others.
As much as anxiety makes us hyper focus on our issues, there are simple facts of reality that protect us to an extent. We (mercifully) aren't the center of the world, the stuff that completely dominates our own mind may not even be on a single other person's right now. How we see things defines them. If you don;t care/mind about things they have no power. It's not as simple as just turning that on, but with some processing of it (maybe therapy type stuff or just time and state of mind) you can have genuine peace with it. Hopefully in the near future it'll be filed away in your brain as merely a symptom of where you were during a hard time. There's nothing for you to be ashamed of, anyone with a heart will understand that (in the extremely unlikely scenario that they ever even need to know) and anyone who doesn't isn;t worth knowing, the problem solves itself! If it was me telling this story and you reading how would you see me? Would you think "oh wow what a terrible person" or would you feel sympathetic and only annoyed at the people who used your struggles against you? Most people will be on your side with this.
Not sure what the law is where you are but it may be worth going to the police about or looking into that side of thing at this point. While yes what you shared is your own free act, what they're doing now may constitute stalking/blackmail etc. Pretty solid and reliable way to ensure that it goes away if it becomes literally illegal for anyone to share or possess it and all originals are required to be destroyed.