Something worth naming plainly, for the part of this forum that isn’t about what was done to you.
Recognizing that you manipulated someone, enforced a doctrine you no longer believe, or kept a story going after you knew it wasn’t true — that recognition is real and it matters. It is also, structurally, a very good position from which to keep doing a version of the same thing.
The tell isn’t whether you feel remorse. Genuine remorse and performed remorse can look identical from outside, and often feel identical from inside too, in the moment. The tell is what the story is for. If naming what you did gets you something — status as the wise one who’s been through it, a pass on being questioned about the present, a way to redirect a conversation back to your journey instead of someone else’s actual complaint — the story is still doing the machinery’s work. It’s just wearing the coat of insight instead of the coat of authority.
A rough, non-exhaustive test: does the story change anything about how you act right now, today, with a specific person, in a specific instance — or does it only change how you’re allowed to be perceived? The first is change. The second is the same performance with better material.
This isn’t a reason to stay quiet about what you did. It’s a reason to expect the account to survive being checked, the same way any other claim here does. Bring the specific thing. Let it be examined. That’s the actual difference between having stopped and having found a more sophisticated way to keep going.