How to forgive myself?

Among many, many other things that I regret doing, there is one event that burned itself into my mind and even after years doesn't let go of me, the problem with it however, is that it is mostly my own fault. When I was much younger than I am now, I was active in a group chat, wherein some member of it, wanting to meet up with me. Without much second thought, I collected all my money to buy a train ticket and went there the next day. He just wanted to hang out with me, he said. We spend an okay day together just chilling and walking through the city, but after the day was over, I noticed, that I missed my train back. Within the day he tried to get closer to me and behaved in my eyes in a very clear way towards me. Even though I am now heterosexual, was heterosexual during my whole puberty and it seems my homosexuality was just a fade during latent psychosis, I at the time, enjoyed at least somebody getting closer to me. This desperation mostly stems from the fact, that I was browsing Incel forums and such at the time and was very sure I would never lose my status as a KHHV. So, when the moment seemed good to me and the signs of his obvious, I tried to kiss him for some unexplainable reason. Following this, he didn't kiss me, but kicked, beaten me and insulted me (not because he wasn't homosexual, unlike me, he actually was a true homosexual). I remained silent for the next few hours, while we awkwardly walked the path to his house. There he wanted me to stay and we ended up sex. I woke up and he was in good mood again and we spend the rest of the day waiting for my new train. The rest of the day was eventful, but not important for this story. Fast forward, we stopped talking rather quickly after that and cut all contacts. I was at the same position as before: NEET, Incel for life as you might say and generally just a bitter loser, with the little exception that I'm not a kissless virgin anymore. I don't know why this is such a big deal for me, but this event fuarrrks with my head greatly. I have been thinking about it multiple times daily since it happened and it has been several years ever since. Frankly, I wish I could undo it and make myself a virgin again. Those blackpill forums have implanted this idea at the time, that I will never get love or affection, that I thought this would be a good idea. These days I realized that I'm a loner, that thrives in solitude, so I don't mind having no girlfriend, friends or any social contacts for that, yet this event feels in regards to that, so maximally out of character for me, that it just makes me angry, sad and disgusted just thinking of it. For myself, I found that suicide is not the way out of this situation, nonetheless I don't know how to cope with it. I don't want this crap to be part of my life, yet it's there to stay my whole life. I think for the most part I could file it under "stupid things I have done, while being psychotic", but this doesn't help me, as it was still me doing it and I could have decided against it, if I wanted to. How do I forgive myself, Lainons?

accept the fact you are probably part homo or full homo even. do you have a rational reason for feeling bad about it? if you moved on with your life and continued having new life experiences you would not care but because you are sitting around stewing this incident is consuming your mind.

>>86783 cuddling >>> sex i never left my bedroom tho

In general, the way to overcome past trauma/psychosis is to enhance biological energy, by increasing fructose/caffeine intake, and then ceaselessly and violently propel yourself unconditionally into the abyss that is the future by means of Labor. Do Work that Matters. Some extent of psychological scar tissue is likely, because living is development. But you can definitely reconfigure to the point where, like most scars, it barely matters if at all. Without getting into doxxable details, I've been similarly psychotic/homosexual/failing. But am now by any conventional understanding a successful person with good personal relationships. Read Ray Peat.

>>86786 this is horrible advice. please ignore it. using caffeine and Projects to distract yourself will only cause your insecurities to come out in judgment of the project, resulting in forms of self-sabotage. furthermore overdoing it on stims will make the scars worse as they burn your neural circuits out and build a dependence. what you must do is the exact opposite. focus on meditation and tranquility in your life, you need to not run away from the fears but embrace them. you'd be surprised about what you can think through if you set aside some time to focus and observe your own feelings, doing nothing else during this time period. although you can also think of these things while doing inconsequential things, like reading a book or playing videogames, i would suggest doing it solitarily as anything else going on will alter your thoughts and judgment.

>>86786 >>86787 >using caffeine and Projects to move forward >focus on meditation and tranquility in your life, you need to not run away from the fears but embrace them I'd say it's a balance of both things. Yes, it does requires a lot of pondering and meditation, but after coming to terms with things, you must find something to hold to, something that gives you a higher purpose, so important to you you'll ignore the little shame left after the meditative phase, and become someone different enough from that person you'll just feel detached from the event, like it was just a bad dream. rinse and repeat, between meditation, body/mind improvement, and working on something bigger than yourself. that's the way to move forward.

It sounds like the problem is >you don't sound like you knew each other well >you were acted on with violence for first time trying to express affection to anyone >you were lowering your standards >you two didnt keep contact which is understandable on your side but from his side it may have been negligent to care for you You're reacting the same way a lot of people react given those circumstances even without the going outside your expected sexual interests. Understanding why this occurred should be of some help. I'd say it isn't anyone's fault except him kicking and beating on you. Maybe he has his reasons though. You have your reasons. Next time you remember it imagine it like a video playing. Picture the volume turning down, the picture because desaturated more and more. The image is moving further and further away from you and with it your negative emotions from it feel weaker and weaker. See the memory fade off into the distance.

>>86783 While I can't give a real answer, try and read this book. I promise it'll be worth it even if you think it'll say the same soykaf you think it would say. I was in an existential angst and self-judging myself. I wouldn't say I've been cured or anything, but at least I feel much less worse than before.

>>86783 Hi, lain. I went through something similar myself. The only way out is to confront the reasons why you feel ashamed. That means, as another lain mentioned, long periods of honestly talking through things with yourself and focusing on the subject. This will almost certainly be incredibly painful at times, perhaps far more so than any pain brought to you by just letting the shame be a normal part of your life. But the eventual grief, and it is literal grief, that comes from the experience will be liberating. It's important to remember through this that the ultimate goal isn't to be filled with joy, and that many moment throughout will certainly be the opposite, but to escape the crushing pain of shame. But the crucial thing is that it's less about "forgiving" oneself and more about grieving a coalescence of things (the incel ideology, being beaten, having regrettable sex, the years of holding these things against yourself, etc.) Forgiveness can come only after grief, and it comes naturally after it as well. >>86789 I get the shtick you're pointing at, but no. Externalities like this can help fulfill other, unrelated mental needs, such as the need to complete fulfilling work that you mentioned. This can probably improve overall mental condition, but will do absolutely nothing for the actual issue that OP is fretting over, and as another lain mentioned the shame OP feels can (and likely will) spill over into these facets of life as insecurities as well. In that way, otherwise healthy things can actually become unhealthy fixations that distract from the actual trauma at hand.

>>86797 we live in a despair filled reality

>>86800 The path to the cessation of suffering is paved with the suffering of all beings. Namo amituofo.

Remember that all image board advice is schizo advice and is only there to be laughed at, not taken seriously. ~ Socrates

>>86804 you dont know what you are talking about

the you from then is in fact very different from the you now. I have many similar moments for me as part of my identity I have just internalized I am capable of anything. Most of the things that make me, me, are not things I even see. What I want to be me and what I think is me is likely very different from what other people see, in fact I know it is. Your identity is a fluid thing and it's half out of your control, you could tell this story to one person and they might completely change how they see you; you tell it to another and they might say "that doesn't surprise me". All that matters for you is that you have made the decision you didn't like that experience and won't do it again, and thats all you need to say its not you concretely. You didn't make that decision before you make it now.

>>86800 >pic that better be a man <3

>>86814 it is ,a handsome dragon <3(fafnir dragon maid)

>>86816 oh... i'm gonna go do... some stuff...

>>86817 he is into men too xD

>>86784 >if you moved on with your life and continued having new life experiences >do you have a rational reason for feeling bad about it? The problem herein is though, that I never wanted such an experience. It was completely out of character for me and under normal circumstances this would have never happened. I understand your logic, that it would be probably make me think of other stuff, if I were to have a relationship, so to say, but I really don't want to do any of those things. Everything about the thought of having a partner (of neither sex for that matter), having sex, physical contact, all those emotions involved, all this stuff, it repulses me. I just want to be left alone and I think that is what is best for me. I think you are very right about me probably not having to think too much of this event, should I enter a relationship, but that's where the problem lies in first place, why I have such a problem with this event. >>86790 >It sounds like the problem is >>you don't sound like you knew each other well >>you were acted on with violence for first time trying to express affection to anyone >>you were lowering your standards >>you two didnt keep contact which is understandable on your side but from his side it may have been negligent to care for you I agree with this post as well. Besides the problem, that it was out of character for me, additionally the whole situation was sub optimal to begin with. If I have had a normal relationship with him and everything would have went normal, it probably wouldn't be as bothersome for me, as it was now. >See the memory fade off into the distance. The problem is that, I have been trying to distance myself for several years now and those thoughts about what happened are still intrusive, if anything it worsened. While of course the situation wasn't good and it's difficult for me, because what I did and what happened, doesn't go well with my self-concept, it's still a matter of fact, that my worries and thoughts are completely out of proportion in their quality (how negative and bothersome they feel) and quantity (that I have to think of it daily multiple times).

>>86787 Nah, work is still necessary. You should use your real name and publish the results in as permanent a way as possible. And work with other people so that you can't just disappear without it being a massive cost to your reputation. Like an academic paper. As such, self-sabotage will simply not be an option. Put your back against the wall in a way that utterly erases all of your frankly, ultimately unimportant subjective scar tissue. Simply make it not matter anymore. You propose to contemplate the problem more. But the OP's issue is exactly that they can't quit thinking about it. Prescribing more thinking, to a person stuck thinking, is "stiff upper lip" fascism. Just Grind It Out Bro. No. Move forward.

>>86783 > I tried to kiss him for some unexplainable reason. Following this, he didn't kiss me, but kicked, beaten me and insulted me lol get dunked on you filthy scrub

>>86800 >we live in a despair filled reality Devils' words, for in their incompleteness they weigh on the spirit. No doubt the world contains many thorny problems which in their own bounds are practically unconquerable. At the same time, there is always something which promises to go well and end rightly. "Despair" is what we call a kind of selective blindness to possibilities which are always present, and even when it afflicts us its grip is not total. Can any living person pass even a week without perceiving a glimmer of hope? A day? Make your cell just as airtight as you like, blocking up every gap; the light will shine in still in pinpricks. How can your description reflect the truth when hope insists on being found everywhere, in every life, even if only in minute proportions?

I don't understand why this is a problem for you. Just don't do it again. Simple. Thinking about it makes you uncomfortable? Don't think about it. Simple.

>>86946 Classic toxic positivity response.

>>86783 It sounds like part of your problem is internalized homophobia and being unable to reconcile it with your sense of identity. The other part is the gravity a sole sexual experience takes on. You say > I don't mind having no girlfriend, friends or any social contacts for that, Which could very well be true, but this is a clear reason for the past to haunt you; the people you connected to before fill a space in your mind which has nothing else that can occupy it. I feel kind of like this personally; years ago I had a relationship, my first and only, with a woman I met through an imageboard. It wasn't all bad, but it was a bit exploitative, ended badly. I haven't been with anyone in the years since and she still haunts my dreams, and much of my concept of myself and my life are defined by her. I think maybe it wouldn't be like that if I connected with more people.

>>86956 The reply is easy: Classic toxic negativity response. Not only negative but negatory, as negation is all that that "spirit" which "possesses" you knows to do. Whatever passes between us, the truth is the same: hope abides. Try to kill it, even within yourself, and you will find that so long as the body supports the mind it remains. Where there is both awareness and time, hope appears; where awareness is not, there cannot be despair. So what then is despair, and how can we say that reality is filled with it if we wish to speak truly? To explicate despair is to destroy it as such, to banish that long shadow which gives it its apparent and most terrible form. "So, to the actively eternal Creative force, in cold disdain You now oppose the fist infernal, Whose wicked clench is all in vain! Some other labor seek thou rather, Queer Son of Chaos, to begin!"

>>86877 > I have been trying to distance myself for several years now and those thoughts about what happened are still intrusive, if anything it worsened. I've noticed that if we try to suppress memories or try to forcefully forget about them they come back harder. That experience is core memory. I don't think you'll able to forget it. You need some new intense experience to overshadow it.

I haven't been in a similar situation as you OP., But... Sometimes I feel so guilty about everything I have ever done (and even things that I haven't done) that I would like to hurt myself in stereotypical Opus Dei style (think DaVinci Code).

>>86783 you can stop thinking unpleasant thoughts - read about meditation, dharma

You can not recover in a sick society.

>>87021 >I've noticed that if we try to suppress memories or try to forcefully forget about them they come back harder. painfully this. you got to fully submerge yourself into it and hope you can come out less fragmented than you were before. >>87049 and this. because its so out of your character and it bolted right out of you, now you have to rearrange that, which has changed its form and cannot be integrated back in with your character. and then good luck grappling with it for all eternity. society acts like a buffering concept, to take those parts of you and reframe it, so that you can rearrange it back together. but the more contrasting that part is to society, the less chance you have to recalibrate. the reality is, one is going through this alone. if its any comfort, you are definitely not alone.

>>87042 Absurd post. The dhamma is not about removing unpleasant or disturbing thoughts, because these things are uncontrollable. You do not have command over your thoughts or emotions, and the Buddha was quite clear about this. The goal of the dhamma is to break down our attachment to having pleasant thoughts and our attachment to not having unpleasant thoughts so as to become unaffected by either. Of course, don't believe me, believe the Buddha, as this is precisely what he said in many suttas, but especially the Adittapariyaya sutta, the fire discourse, SN 35.28. This is a very different goal. Also, meditation is an advanced practice that is secondary to studying the dhamma and developing an innate understanding of it, and it should only be done under the provision of a skilled teacher who can guide you when you inevitably are subject to a "dark night of the soul," to use Christian parlance. Pseudo-Buddhists are so dumb.

>>87079 Weren't the jhannas described as ecstatic (therefore pleasant) experiences? Is it like an ironic thing where to experience the most pleasant experiences you have to not be "attached" to them or "desire" them?

>>87080 Yes, they were, using phrases like "there is nothing of his entire body unpervaded by rapture and pleasure born of composure." And of the final steps to unbinding, letting go of the pleasure of the jhanas is among the hardest. It is a paradoxical thing where the jhanas can get you there, but you cannot be there while in the jhanas.

>>87081 oh dang. And then I guess you get no-self'd and then permanently never suffer again cuz you don't exist

>>87082 Anatta (non-self) is a property of all of existence, all dhammas. Rather than zero-summing per se, you break the chain of dependent origination. When craving unfurls, so too does birth and rebirth. When ignorance unfurls, so too does craving. Only an arahant would understand the fullness of what is unfurled now and what is unfurled later, but the end of suffering comes before the end of existence. Kamma can no longer take root and thus ends at the final death, parinibbana.

>>87083 oy, no-self is a translation of anatman. one of the discourses of the buddha is an angry rant about translating pali to sanskrit, which introduces much confusion, don't do it > If we see Atta more like a noun it might be translated as ‘essence’ and if we translate it like a verb it might be translated as ‘to take/have control/ownership of.’ Together we have the notion that if something has a real immutable character or ‘essence’ to it that we understand, then we can really control it and that this control won’t be subject to change. The point is to notice the mental event that represents objects or concept as though they could or should be inherently or essentially controllable/ownable. This faculty of mind feels like one of those child’s car seats that has a fake steering wheel on it, made famous by The Simpsons opening credits. The mind either deludes itself by carefully moving the fake steering wheel in line with what it sees so that it can pretend it has control, or it strains itself throwing its weight ineffectually into cranking hard on the wheel when the car goes places it doesn’t like. The point is to spot the mental moment of playing with the fake steering wheel instead because it is easier.

>>86877 >It was completely out of character for me Then why did you do it? You only think it's out of character because you spend so much of your time isolated from other people, you clearly did have some sort of feeling towards him or within you a capability for having romantic/sexual feelings towards a man and you should probably just accept that. That being said, from what little you describe it sounds as though this particular man responded to your affection with cruelty and coldness that was followed up by sex, perhaps you think about this badly because you feel used or dirty. This sort of interaction isn't inherent to homosexuality though, you likely feel guilty because you feel like you volunteered to be abused by having "gay thoughts" when you obviously did not.

>>87206 Could you cite that discourse, please. I have a hard time believing it exists given that looking it up didn't turn it up. I'm also a bit skeptical given that scholars don't actually know what language the Buddha spoke. Pali is simply the ecclesiastical language of Theravada that underwent at least a couple hundred years of development before our oldest written canon was created, and we don't even know what Pali was in the days of the Buddha. I would also be very surprised if the Buddha was a linguistic purist to boot, especially given that the Buddha Shakyamuni himself said all languages were themselves irreconcilably imperfect vehicles. I'll also add that your point makes even less sense when you consider that Pali and Sanskrit as languages are even more closely related than Portuguese and Spanish, and atta and atman are direct cognates, so both anatman and anatta translate to the same thing anyways. The quote you gave is from a pseudo-zen new ager who has fallen for the nonsense of a teacher that charges more per hour than my doctor for useless crap, which only increases my suspicions of the claim

>>86783 he beat your ass and you had sex with him anyway? man I'm sorry that happened to you but I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around that level of desperation.

>>87254 It turns me on somehow. Power dynamics and sex are weird, like bdsm stuff