The ‘Offline You’ (Part 1) Part 2 here.
Just as it helps to know how you are when you’re online and actively involved in child-sex activity, it’s important to have a clear understanding of your everyday identity – your ‘Offline Me’. Most of this information will come from your working the ‘Self Awareness’ section on ‘Help! I want to STOP’ so here we’ll look at the relationship between your online, child-sex focussed you, and you as you are offline.
Just as it helps to know how you are when you’re online and actively involved in child-
Relating to your ‘Online Me’
There are two key ways to consider how you relate to your ‘Online Me’:
· objectively
o take a step back and look
o compare the information presented
o look for points of comparison and difference
· subjectively
o how do you feel towards your ‘Online Me’ (positive and negative)?
o how does he (you) impact on your life (positive and negative)?
o do your feelings change in different circumstances?
Keep an open mind and don’t be surprised if you both like and dislike your ‘Online Me’ just as you might like and dislike your ‘Offline Me’. If, for instance, you feel more ‘alive’ due to the risk-related thrill of child-porn, you might want to find a way to re-create that stimulation which doesn’t involve child-porn, whether sexually with your partner(s) or non sexually through, say, extreme sports.
TOP TIP: Compare the Johari’s Window for your online and offline identities and draw out the characteristics you want to enhance and those you want to play down, or stop. Incorporate these lists into your stop goals and regularly check how you’re doing.
Protecting your secret
It’s not just online that you protect your secret life. The following are examples of offline behaviour which support and protect online child-sex activity:
· not telling anyone about what you do.
· presenting an image where others feel ‘you couldn’t possibly have a sexual interest in children’.
· hiding your child-sex multimedia library.
· backing up your library so it’s not lost.
· keeping separate computers/memory cards/hard drives etc.
· making preparations to quickly destroy your computer or library if you are raided by the police.
· controlling who has access to your computer and when (or under supervision).
· threats or controlling behaviour if anyone comes too close to the secret.
· encrypting your files or computer.
· Creating secret partitions or files within files.
Have you ever considered how much admin your child-sex life actually needs to run without detection? It’s not just the time it takes up to adequately catalogue your files so they are retrievable and meaningful, it’s the mental energy. If you are one of the many men who feel compelled to have complete series of pictures, films or stories then this requires a good understanding of what is in your library – if you have thousands of files, this is not likely to be an easy task.
TOP TIP: Consider how much time and energy goes into protecting and administering your child-sex activity and personal collection. How would you be able to use this time is a more positive and healthy way when you stop? How will it feel not to have the anxieties about ensuring your collection is safe, catalogued and complete? Add this to your list of reasons to stop.
© Chris Willoughby 2008-
