“Force-pushing a fix feels like hiding the evidence”

The Paper Trail Isn't a ConfessionYou got the fix wrong on the first try, then right on the second, and now your branch has both commits sitting in order. Before you open the PR, you rebase, squash, force-push, and the first attempt is gone. The thought underneath is that a visible wrong turn isn't a normal part of solving the bug—it's evidence a jury could use against you, so it has to disappear before anyone is allowed to look.

Why Every Commit Reads Like a DepositionThis runs on the same rigged math as review anxiety generally: you assume the reviewer is building a case on you, not just reading a diff, so any earlier attempt gets treated as material fact instead of ordinary iteration. Once you believe the history itself will be cross-examined, tidying it stops being style and turns into damage control—you're not shaping a story, you're destroying an exhibit.

Let One Messy Commit SurviveIn a throwaway local repo, make a deliberately rough first commit, then commit the real fix on top without squashing or force-pushing. Read the log back as a stranger would. Most logs like this just show someone working through a problem in order—not a case file. One quiet read won't dissolve the habit, but it gives you a real data point next to the imagined one.