How to help someone cope with a mistake in their past (sleep, trigger)

[MrJones17]

My good friend has been going through quite a bit lately. Something triggered her to remember an incident in her childhood where she did something morally wrong without realizing it at the time. I don't want to get into specifics, but she was a child and didn't realize what she was doing. Yet recently she has been losing sleep, calling out of work, and not able to function overall. This has been going on for nearly a month.

Everyone she talks to, including myself, have told her she is a good person and she was a child when it happened so she can't blame herself for it. She's still having trouble overcoming it and has been extremely negative which is not like her. As a matter of fact, I've never known her ever to be negative in any way.

I figured I'd reach out on here to see if anyone else has either gone through this and overcame it or helped someone get through something similar.

Thanks!

[WorldKlas]

Sometimes, to be “right” with ourselves we have to make a genuine effort to rectify things we did in the past. I know I will aways regret allowing my father to ground all us kids until someone confessed to messing with his razor. It was me and I never confessed. I told my brother a while back and he didn’t even remember the incident. I’m sure your friend’s lapse in judgement was much more severe to be bothering her now. Since she cannot turn the clock back the best she can do is make her apologies, confession or perform a solid good deed that entails personal sacrifice as some kind of retribution.

[Parnassia]

Originally Posted by MrJones17

Everyone she talks to, including myself, have told her she is a good person and she was a child when it happened so she can't blame herself for it.

Just an idea to consider;

She might not believe this hearing it from the people who know her. She may dismiss it, assuming they are already on her side, biased in her favor, or are just trying to comfort her. Also, she cares more about the opinion these people have of her so admitting this unintentional act to them makes her feel even worse. She's "stuck" and so are the people trying to help.

Sometimes family or friends are harder to talk to about something like this. Too much of the rest of their relationship gets in the way. If she relates the same account to an impartial person such as a counselor and that person also tells her the same thing, it might give it more weight. She might believe it more hearing it from a person who doesn't know anything else about her (the good or bad). She may end up realizing that if a stranger is able to see that she was not to blame, maybe it's true. Then of course a counselor can help her clarify what the real issue about the memory actually is, plus give her tools to change how she views the whole event and how to come to peace with it.