Guilt over lockdown breach

[evolve]

What if you've been following the social distancing guidelines for three months, not seen anyone except your housemate and strangers in the local shop.. but then one recent afternoon you've met up with your mum in her house, along with your sister and niece, given very emotional hugs to each other, and gone for a walk. How to deal with this guilt of something that is officially wrong? Feeling like you've endangered people, that you're a bad person, that people would hate you if they knew?

I can get my head round dealing with guilt over something that you shouldn't feel guilty for somewhat, but now I feel I should and it's crippling me.

[Ashley]

Hey Evolve,

I hope you're ok.  Try not to beat yourself up, you did what you felt was right, and if that maintained your mental health survival for a few more weeks then it was perhaps the right thing to do in that moment.  But it's done, you can't change it so don't let the OCD make you feel guilty. The guilt serves no positive purpose so try and tell the OCD to do one if it pushes that on you!

I think at some point every single one of us has accidently breached the recommendations, inadvertedely in some cases. I guess the important part is recognising what we have done, and doing our best to try not to repeat the breach. It's happened, we can't change that, but provided we learn from it and don't make it a regular occurrence then we have to accept and move on, it's all we can do.

Look after yourself.  

 

[dksea]

I agree with Ashley. 
No one can realistically avoid every possible behavior that MIGHT create some risk. OCD demands absolutely perfection and certainty and that’s just not possible. 
 

The goal of social distancing is to reduce, not 100% eliminate the possibility of spreading things. Elimination would require EXTREME measures that would likely do harm. Do your best, but it’s also important you stay emotionally healthy. 
 

A good analogy I can across just yesterday. It turns out that whole mask wearing is generally not an issue for most people, for those with asthma it can be problematic. So if a person with asthma has to go out, say to shop, they might not be able to wear a mask the whole time. It would, of course, be best if they could, but since their health is negatively affected by using the mask, in that case you make an exception. 
 

Do your best, but don’t try and be perfect