AM I A BAD PERSON?

My Anxiety’s Favorite Question

Sometimes I will be on the phone with someone I care about and I will want to get off. I either have something I need to do or I have reached the end of my social battery. But as soon as I hang up, I start to feel a nagging sense of guilt. Was I just rude? Did I offend them? If my husband overheard the conversation, I’ll check in with him to make sure I didn’t behave badly. When I was younger, I got in a habit of calling my parents to apologize for how I hung up only to repeatedly learn they hadn’t thought twice about it.

My life-long obsession with being “good” is likely tied to my OCD. My disorder, brought on by PANDAS, made it very difficult for me not to see the world in black and white, which meant things were either good or bad: including people. A large part of my healing has been accepting that life isn’t that simple. People aren’t that simple. And yet, I often return to this old refrain. Am I causing more harm than good?