Thanks everyone, for the great responses.
PK: what was a powerful share. I'm sorry that you had to go though all that but am glad that you found peace and your place after all.
BigS: yes it's good to be careful with the guilt, it's an emotion that can lead us to self-destructive thinking and behaviors for sure. By default, I'm a very self critical and guilt-prone person, and while this sometimes has positive consequences and leads to constructive change, it also has the potential to drive us to destructive coping mechanisms. The famous self-acceptance we talk about so often is definitely a challenge for me.
Yeah I am trying to react to all this as healthy as I can. A few years ago I would have never admitted and discussed things like this so openly and publicly. I definitely used to have a problem with overly guarding myself and showing vulnerability. Like Justin said above, hard to be rejected if we do not allow ourselves to be sensitive to it... In fact, depression was the experience in my life ~2 years ago that finally brought those walls down, simply because I had no choice.
I know that there will be a couple more aspects of my work that will suffer similarly longer than I would want it... but oh well, we need to deal with the consequences of our behavior. I'm fine with that, what bothers me more now is that other people, who got into my projects "innocently", are also affected by it. Again, I try to take this as an incentive to become a better person rather than let the guilt affect my enthusiasm and willingness to do things differently.
Thanks again for the encouragement. I think I overreacted a bit yesterday, simply because this is s soft spot for me due to the past, but I'm glad I posted about it here.