When I was around 8, I used to play-wrestle with my younger sister, who was about 3 years younger than me, and I remember kissing her and touching her chest during that. My parents stepped in and told me it was inappropriate. When I was 12, I apologized to her, and she told me to get over it. I've talked to my therapist about it and they said it was normal behavior, but I can't stop worrying that I caused lasting harm to her. I also remember something similar happening to me around age 6 or 7 with a classmate, before any of this. I am terrified of being an abuser. What do I do with that fear?

Thank you for trusting us with something this heavy. What you are carrying, the fear, the guilt, the uncertainty about who you are and what you have done, is an enormous weight. The fact that you are sitting with it rather than running from it says something real about your character.

What your therapist told you matches what research tells us about sexual behavior in childhood. Children who have been touched in a sexual way by someone else will often act out a version of what happened to them with other children. This is not an excuse, and it does not erase any impact on your sister. It is also essential context. When you were eight years old, you were a child who had already been touched inappropriately by a classmate at six or seven. Children are not small adults. Their brains are still developing, and they do not yet have a full understanding of consent, which means the ability to freely and knowingly agree to something. Children learn by repeating what they experience. When what they experience includes sexual contact, it can come out in exactly the way you are describing.

What happened between you and your sister was sexual behavior that was not appropriate between siblings, and it should not have happened. At the same time, it happened in a context where you yourself had already been harmed, and you were a child who did not yet have the tools to understand what was right or why. Both of those things are true at once.

Your therapist, who knows your full history, has told you this falls within the range of normal childhood behavior. Your sister, when you apologized to her at twelve, told you to move on. Those are two people directly involved, one as a professional and one as the person you are most worried about, and they are both telling you the same thing. That matters. Your sister's response deserves respect. People who have experienced harm from a sibling during childhood can feel many different ways about it, and you cannot fully know her inner experience. What you can do is continue to be the kind of person who takes this seriously, who respects what she has told you, and who would never repeat that harm.

The fear you feel right now, the terror of being an abuser, is one of the most painful things a person can carry. And yet the intensity of that fear is itself meaningful. People who genuinely do not care about the harm they cause do not lie awake questioning themselves with this kind of anguish. The fact that you sought out therapy, apologized to your sister at twelve on your own initiative, and are still asking these questions now reflects a conscience that is working exactly as it should. That does not mean the guilt should simply be dismissed. It means your guilt is pointing somewhere useful rather than just somewhere punishing.

It might be worth exploring with your therapist why this fear keeps coming back even after receiving reassurance from multiple sources, including your sister herself. Sometimes this kind of relentless self-questioning is connected to anxiety, and specifically to something called moral OCD or scrupulosity. These are terms for when the mind locks onto fears about having caused harm and keeps returning to them even when there is evidence pointing the other way. If that resonates with you, consider naming it directly in your next session. There are specific approaches that work well for this pattern, including one called Exposure and Response Prevention, which helps people gradually face fears without acting on the urge to seek constant reassurance.

You also mentioned being touched in a similar way at six or seven by a classmate, and that experience mattered. It affected you. Sometimes in conversations about harm we have caused, we skip past harm that was done to us first. Your own experience deserves as much attention as the guilt you carry about your sister. If you have not already explored it fully with your therapist, that may be a meaningful place to go.

If you ever want to go deeper into this particular kind of fear, the Stop It Now helpline (1-888-PREVENT) offers confidential support for people who are worried about sexual harm they have caused or might cause. They are experienced with childhood-to-childhood situations and speak without judgment. Our Wave's community at ourwave.org is also a place where you can share and connect with others who have navigated complex experiences of harm, including people who have held both identities at once.

You were a child who made a mistake, was corrected by adults, took accountability on your own initiative at twelve, and has been carrying guilt ever since. That is not the profile of someone who causes harm carelessly or without remorse. Growth is possible, and healing is possible, and neither requires you to be defined forever by what happened when you were a child who was himself being harmed. You are not your worst fear about yourself, and we are glad you reached out.