Counselling and courses

 I realised that although I thought my relationships were healthy, I couldn't deal with my emotions in a healthy way. So I had become distant and withdrawn, my way of release was through alcohol, gambling and illegal images of children.The images of the children started of quite soft images like modelling sites and the more I looked at these images, the more links that I found leading me to harder material. I didn't even realise that I had found myself on the dark net. I never paid for material. 

This was part of one of the courses and it looks at how your behaviours, feelings and thoughts are all connected. This is true for me with my problems of alcohol, gambling, drugs and sexual interests.

I soon realised that I had problems with self negative talk, some examples were; I am useless, I will never understand, who would miss me. These thoughts created negative feelings which I couldn't handle and I preferred to lift myself through immediate highs such as alcohol, gambling when with others and sexual fantasy and masturbation when I was alone.

This then lead to shame and guilt which quickly moved onto negative thoughts, I'm never good enough and the cycle would start again.

You can easily justify things and trick your mind into doing things (some of these justifications will be more difficult to understand than others).

 If you are speeding: You can say things like; the roads are quiet, other people drive faster than me, it's only a little over the limit by having these thoughts, you will soon convince yourself to go quicker.

If I was looking at images and videos, I could justify my actions; I am not physically abusing them, they are enjoying it, other countries allow younger ages, hundreds of years ago there were very few restrictions.

At the time of my offending, I could not see anything wrong in what I was doing, the material was out there and I spoke to other people with stronger opinions than myself, so I believed my own lies. I had serious issues with consent e.g. if the sex was none consensual, I deemed this as wrong whether it was between adults or children but when it was consensual sex with other adults or children, it was perfectly ok. I completed a rapid response questionnaire asking questions about consent, while I was going through the survey, I started to realise that my opinions were wrong and shocked that I could ever think that a child could give consent to sexual activities.

This is a model that there are eleven things that make people happy. As we are all different, we all desire some of these elements and they will be different for everybody but you can achieve these elements through healthy or unhealthy ways. People who offend have a tendency of getting these goals in life through the unhealthy ways.

Within the online course all of the offenders gave  different areas more importance. Some of my more important goals were healthy living so I signed up to a gym, community so I joined a choir and inner peace so I went to a local church which led onto spirituality and  purpose in life.

This has different stages to it, going through your own own morals and beliefs, looking for material, fantasy, grooming, physical sexual contact such as touching and penetration. Once you have started on the cycle, it is very difficult to stop by yourself.

I am very grateful that I had a knock on the door at 5.45 because I was on that cycle and I would like to think that I could have stopped before physical sexual contact but after doing these courses, I realise I was trapped and it would have been unlikely to stop.

This is also true about the justification in some thoughts such as,  well what is the difference if I am caught with one photo or ten. I had also created a fantasy that I thought could never happen in reality where a girl would take the lead in a relationship. I hadn't taken into consideration that there might be girls that are being abused by someone else and also have a messed up view of a healthy relationship.

If you have doubts about your own behaviour or that of others (it is quite often easier for other people to see the problems). An addict can be so wrapped up in their own life that they can not see the direction that they are going in. Please visit this site for more professional help Stopitnow