I know children's memories aren't always reliable, especially for things that happened a long time ago. But as an adult trying to understand what I did as a kid, I don't know what to do with that uncertainty. I read other people's stories here and wonder if I did things I just don't remember, or didn't register as wrong at the time because I didn't understand yet. I can't figure out whether the fear is anxiety making things seem more real than they are, or whether there's something serious I've genuinely blocked out. And I also wonder whether I should reach out to the people involved to find out how they were affected, or whether bringing it up could hurt or confuse them. I can't seem to imagine myself as not having been harmful.

Thank you so much for reaching out to us. The question you're sitting with, whether the fear is pointing at something real or whether the anxiety itself is generating the fear, is one of the hardest things to sort out from the inside.

Here is something worth knowing about how childhood memory actually works. It is not a recording that either plays back clearly or goes silent. Memory is constructive, meaning we build and rebuild it each time we access it, shaped by everything we have learned, felt, and been exposed to since. Research on this is consistent. What is far more common than genuinely repressed harmful memories is anxiety filling in gaps with feared content, especially in people who are already prone to intrusive thought loops. When you read someone else's story and feel the pull of "maybe I did that too and just don't remember," that pull deserves some gentle curiosity rather than immediate belief.

The pattern you're describing, where uncertainty about the past generates fear, fear generates checking and analysis, and checking provides only temporary relief before the fear returns louder, has a name. It looks a great deal like what clinicians call harm OCD or moral OCD, a form of OCD in which the mind latches onto feared moral questions and demands a certainty that simply is not available. Naming it is not meant to dismiss what you're carrying. It is meant to help you understand why thinking harder about it has not been making it better, and why it won't. The mechanism of OCD is such that the more you search for resolution through analysis or reassurance, the more the brain learns to generate the feared thought again. The absence of a clear memory of doing something harmful is not suspicious evidence. To an anxious mind it can feel that way, but it isn't.

On reaching out to people from your childhood...I would hold back on that, and I say it with care. Even when it comes from a genuine place, contacting someone to ask whether you harmed them as a child centres your need for resolution, not theirs. It could arrive as destabilising or confusing for them, regardless of what actually happened between you. And for the pattern you're describing, it would not bring the closure you're hoping for. It would function as reassurance-seeking, which feeds the loop rather than quieting it.

The sentence you wrote, that it "almost seems impossible to not see myself as not harmful," is worth bringing exactly as it is to a therapist, and specifically one who works with OCD. The most effective treatment for this is an approach called ERP, exposure and response prevention, which works by gently building your capacity to sit with uncertainty without performing the checking behaviours that keep the fear alive. It is not easy, but it is built for exactly this. You deserve support that actually matches what you're dealing with. Thank you for trusting us with this.