Afraid of telling T about something that I need to talk about

When I was about 14, I inappropriately touched a female friend's butt while we would walk home from the bus stop. She told me to stop and we never talked about it again. We remained friends like normal. I'm 30 now and ever since the past few years I've been experiencing guilt and shame over this and it's causing me severe depression and self esteem issues. I apologized to my friend in a message about a year ago but I feel like I need to talk to somebody about it. I am seeing a new therapist now and I want to talk to her about it, but I am afraid that she might write me off as a horrible person and no longer be committed to helping me. I have lots of other concerns that I need help with and I'd rather not have to find a new therapist. Does it make sense for me to be concerned about this happening? How do therapists usually respond to things like this?

I'm having deja vu... did you post about this before?
Looking back in your history, you have. Like 2 years ago.
Apparently, I DO have a memory.

A therapist will ask you questions to help you explore how YOU feel about it. The therapy will be focused on you, not on the therapist, although I'm sure you can ask about the therapist's reaction and talk about your fears surrounding his or her reaction.

Yeah I posted about this a while back when I was talking to an online therapist. I told her about it but she wasn't very helpful. Now it's bothering me again and I want to tell my new in-person therapist about it but I'm hesitant. My fear is that she won't be interested in helping me anymore because she will feel that I don't deserve it.

I can only tell you that every therapist I have worked with would gladly help you, and I am certain your therapist will too.

What's concerning is that I rarely ever read about stuff like this being talked about in therapy. It feels like it's something so taboo that it's even off limits for therapy.

In the older thread, you said you told your old therapist and she said it was nothing she would have to report. In other words, you are not a current danger to anyone, nor was the offense so criminal that it needed to be reported in any way. Your new therapist will almost certainly have similar take on this.

It was, in relative terms, a minor offense, and most likely more of an awkward teenage blunder.

It seems odd that you have stayed so fixated on this one event now for over two decades. I would assume your therapist will reassure you that you are not a horrible person because of this one event, but she will also delve into why this one event seems to be driving the status of your mental health and will guess that this fixation on this one error is a symptom of something else going on.

This gets talked about ALL the time in therapy.

Roachbourne, I don’t mean to invalidate your concerns, but this sounds like a very minor offense by a teenager. The fact that your friend told you to stop and you did suggests to me that you were actually reasonably respectful at the time. Could you possibly view it as that you made a misstep, your friend corrected you, you heard her telling you she didn’t want you to do that and so you stopped, and so it wasn’t much more than a learning experience of the sort that lots of teenagers have to go through before they figure out how to approach people they might be interested in?

We all make mistakes as we grow up- I would imagine most therapists would understand that.

You're right, it is not something she would report. What I'm more concerned about is that she would see me as a horrible person who deserves to suffer and she will no longer try to help me or maybe even covertly try to sabotage my mental health.

I actually didn't think about this for time. It just didn't really cross my mind. Then maybe a few years back I started to remember it but I wasn't fixated on it. Then when the conversation about sexual misconduct started a couple years ago I started to fixate on it. Then I stopped thinking about it as much for a while, then recently it's resurfaced. I have major issues with depression and self esteem aside from this, but I feel like this is making these issues 20x worse now.

Roachbourne, what do you think would make anyone believe you were a horrible person who doesn’t deserve to be helped? It feels to me as an outsider such an extreme reaction that would be totally out of balance with the rather minor long-ago offense.

Do you see the difference between your own actions and those of the people highlighted by the #metoo movement? In those cases the transgressors were adults with power over their victims, not teenagers clumsily learning to navigate social and sexual mores.

Yeah I know I didn't do anything like Harvey Weinstein or Bill Cosby, but I still feel it's something horrible compared to anything else I've done or the image/identity I cultivate right now. I feel like it challenges my perception of who I am. I also feel horrible because she was such a nice person and she was friends with me even though I was an awkward loner in school. It feels horrible that I treated her like that.

I've found it incredibly helpful to be able to tell my therapist what I feel are my deepest most shameful horrible secrets, things I fear will make him recoil in disgust and tell me what a bad horrible person I am... and have him react compassionately and completely without judgment. One of my most shameful secrets surprised him, not because he thought it was horrible, but because he was surprised I would consider it horrible and shameful. His response was a much more tactful version of "wait, really? That's it?"

I can't speak for your therapist, but I think if you bring it up you might have a similar experience.
Speaking completely personally, my reaction to reading your "admission" of the event was "wait, that's it?" I can't imagine a therapist holding it against you, let alone believing you to be a horrible person for that. As others have said, it sounds like normal teenager stuff. You listened to your friend when she expressed her wishes, and it sounds like you learned from the experience.

I think a T would be a lot more interested in why you're judging yourself so harshly for something like this. I don't think anyone else would condemn you for this. It's the kind of thing that makes for an awkward memory that you cringe at, not the kind of thing that warrants pervasive shame and guilt years later.
I really hope you talk to your T about it and she's able to help you with this.

I think when you project your sense of being horrible onto others, that's horrible (for you), and if you haven't talked about that, it's a good subject for therapy. It might be important for you to understand what happened at the time-- why you did it-- although sometimes the why is elusive. 14 is a child, btw, not an adult, and hormonal and sexual curiosity probably start to peek at that age.

Why not talk about how there is something in your past that makes you feel like a horrible, not-yourself person? You don't have to reveal the specific thing unless you want to.

I doubt the therapist will think you're a horrible person. It's not like you raped your friend. I'm not trying to minimize what you did, as I think it is morally correct to recognize it wasn't an ok thing to do. I don't particularly agree with the idea that it is acceptable to learn how to act as a young adult by doing stuff like this. To me, that reflects more of a "boys will be boys" attitude. I would prefer that people be taught from a young age that this sort of thing isn't ok, rather than learning by trial and error. But I would suggest that society is partially responsible for this transgression and your ignorance that it wasn't ok, and that what is required of you is to recognize the error and learn from it - which you have. Unfortunately, it is likely that this wasn't the last time your friend endured unwanted physical advances. I doubt that what you did stands out in her mind to a degree that your immense guilt is warranted.

Try not to beat yourself up. We can't change the past or the things we have done. We can only take responsibility for our past actions. Remorse is appropriate, but wallowing in self hate is not proportional or productive. Hating yourself changes nothing and serves no one. I would be very surprised if your friend wanted you to be this hard on yourself.

I took the leap and told my therapist today. She was very helpful and non-judgemental. I am hoping that working with her can help me to process this differently because right now I can't seem to get past it.