@AliceKate I’m not sure if this is helpful (I don’t fully understand what happened in your past) but myself I always find it helpful to remember that we often do the best we can in the situation we find ourselves in. That doesn’t mean we did everything right - not at all - it means we did the best we could with the resources we had at the time. Resources meaning our family of origin, our education, social background, that sort of thing. It all feeds in to how we cope and react in any given situation.

If you think about that maybe it’s true there were factors beyond your control that lead to you making certain choices or reactions? This doesn’t mean you don’t take responsibility- you can still do that, but perhaps you can begin to understand the path you took a little better. In turn maybe self compassion may develop (don’t worry if it doesn’t at this point).

You write you are concerned about volunteering for an NCO, what if history repeats itself, you aren’t sure you trust yourself. I wonder if there are safeguards you can put in place to ensure that if there are signs you aren’t behaving as you would want to that you can take a step back and reflect? Maybe this is something you could work with a T with?

There are people who have committed serious crimes and they have served their sentences and worked on making a better life for themselves - even in these serious scenarios there’s hope when someone wants to change.