Yes, it is wise to take responsibility for your own actions, in fact, you have to. “Someone else made me do it,” isn’t a legal defense. With that said, I would ask the court to consider the toxic manipulation and abuse your subjected to, and how it affected your judgment. If evidence is present, the judge will find you guilty. A decent judge would likely put you on some kind of short-term probation and require you to get the help that you need. Because the judge ordered it, odds are the state would have to pay for it.
That’s not to say that I believe you did something against the law, but the above rationale, to some extent, is analogous to the decisions involved when we judge ourselves.
In some areas, the criminal justice system is in lockstep with the for profit prison industry. Hence, the court systems are oriented towards guilt, punishment, and maximum sentences. In an attempt to maximize recidivism, terms for probation are nearly impossible to meet.
In other places, the criminal justice system focuses on rehabilitation, and in many cases, offering education that offenders would never have had opportunities to receive outside of the system, due to poverty. These more progressive systems also offer mental health services and other forms of counseling.
One might feel it to be counterintuitive, but the more progressive and compassionate criminal justice systems are far more efficient, and in the long run, costs their communities less than half as much as the more draconian systems first described.
Within our own mind, we have a justice system. We can judge ourselves harshly, beat ourselves up, debilitate ourselves with guilt, remove both confidence and hope for positive change, not unlike the harsh criminal justice system described above. We can even apply our own form of probation, complete with impossible expectations, ultimately leading to future offenses and harsh self judgments.
If your minds justice system is more compassionate, taking responsibility is still necessary, but when the consistent focus is on healing, and nurturing positive change, even if it takes a while, odds are you will be successful in making such changes.
I love dogs too. Were not in a very good position to have a dog, but I do get to pet a lot of neighbors dogs and give them treats when we go for a walk.
It’s unfortunate that you have cat allergies. As a child, my son did too. He owns two cats now. He pets them occasionally, then washes his hands. I guess there are different kinds of cat allergies. One is dander, the other has to do with some kind of protein and cat saliva, that ends up all over them as they groom.
Human’s relationship to pain can be really complex. I will say, based on a lot of discussions and reading, attraction to pain is not that unusual. There are a lot of theories as to why so many people want pain of one kind or another, and I suspect there is at least some validity to most of them. I would like to think that talking to a therapist about it would be helpful.
You have a lot of self understanding. Consider how you were thinking and feeling six months ago. I imagine that you can recognize that you have undergone a lot of change and evolution of insight. Six months from now, you will have changed even more. For that reason, I’m confident that your life will improve.
I’m glad you’re not a cannibal!