Imagine the version of you that started this. Fourteen, fifteen, maybe younger. Alone in a room with a screen, stumbling into something their brain wasn't ready for. No one explained what was happening neurologically. No one said "this will get harder to stop." No one gave them a single tool.
Now imagine that kid is sitting across from you. Would you call them weak? Disgusting? A failure? Or would you tell them: "This wasn't your fault. You didn't have the information. And you're going to be okay."
Self-compassion isn't soft. It's honest. The adult you is dealing with a pattern that started in a child's brain. Punishing yourself for something that began before you had the capacity to understand it isn't justice — it's cruelty.
You owe that younger version of yourself one thing: the grace to finally deal with this without the self-hatred that's been riding shotgun for fifteen years.
You're an adult fixing something that started in a child's brain. That deserves grace, not punishment.
Close your eyes. Picture yourself at the age you started. Say to that version of you: 'It wasn't your fault.' Mean it.