Prepare Yourself
Take stock of your motivations
If you have gone through part one of the self-help programme, Motivation, and are comfortable with part two, Preparation, then it’s time to take action and stop. The ‘top tips’ throughout part one and two encouraged you to write things down – to make lists of your positive and negative motivations and note aspects of your personality and behaviour. This is important because now that you are going to stop you may find the process unsettling and confusing at first – you may forget some of what you’re stopping for. It’s ok to forget and ok to feel confused but having your motivations and thoughts about yourself written down should make it easier to stay on course.
TOP TIP: if you feel it’s safe enough, make up a folder with five sections corresponding to the five parts of the ‘Help! I want to STOP’ programme. Write out and store your ‘top tip’ tasks so you can easily refer to them every day (and especially when you’re feeling a bit wobbly.
How are you going to measure your progress?
There are two simple measures of progress when quitting child-porn – your behaviour, and how you feel. Behaviour, however, isn’t like flicking a light switch on or off (you’re either using child-porn or you’re not) – there’s at least one step in between (I’m not using child-porn, but I’ve substituted something very close). In many addiction programmes, this would be called ‘risky behaviour’ or ‘pre-relapse’ behaviour, for instance:
Take stock of your motivations
If you have gone through part one of the self-
TOP TIP: if you feel it’s safe enough, make up a folder with five sections corresponding to the five parts of the ‘Help! I want to STOP’ programme. Write out and store your ‘top tip’ tasks so you can easily refer to them every day (and especially when you’re feeling a bit wobbly.
How are you going to measure your progress?
There are two simple measures of progress when quitting child-
· Switching from collecting child-sex images to collecting child-sex stories.
· Looking out for 16 year old girls in the chatrooms rather than 12 year old girls.
· Getting involved in school or sport activities to be near children rather than viewing sexual images of kids on the net.
TOP TIP: When you stop, pay close attention to the ‘in-
Measuring how you feel about yourself or your progress is a little more complex, but you can keep it simple too. It’s more complex because your mood will affect your judgement of progress – for instance you might have two days of very similar behaviour, but one day you’re feeling depressed and the other you’re feeling optimistic. Your judgement of progress on the day you’re feeling low is more likely to be negative than on the optimistic day. A simplified way round this is to write down in advance a series of measures of how you feel so you have a guide to work to. For example:
· Level 1 – still using child-porn but thinking about stopping. Feel bad, eg….
· Level 2 – still using child-porn but thinking about stopping. Feel good, eg….
· Level 3 – not used child porn today. Negative thoughts, eg…. Feel bad, eg….
· Level 4 – not used child porn today. Negative thoughts, eg… However, start to feel positive, eg…
Etc.
TOP TIP: Consider writing up some scales for your own behaviour, thoughts and feelings. Give a typical example for each scale, for instance if you have a scale of 1 to 5 for each you might set 1 to be ‘no change’ and 5 to be ‘positive change’ with 3 steps of evidence in between.
How are you going to record your progress?
If you are going to set up a way of measuring your progress, the next step is to keep a record to so can step back from time to time and see the ‘bigger picture’. This could be as simple as three numbers in your diary, eg (B)2, (T)4, F(3), but remember to keep it meaningful as you’re likely to forget individual actions, thoughts or feelings when you review them days, weeks or months later. A daily diary can be very useful – the more detailed the better, but you might want to balance getting on with your life and following your programme. It may be for some that so much effort goes into recording progress that it interferes with daily living and leads to the whole idea of quitting child-porn coming to a halt. For others it might be that the pull of child-sex on the net is so powerful that an intensive and structured programme is what it will take to move on and that a short-term fixation on restarting a better life is an acceptable compromise. In each case you could benefit from seeking professional advice to help keep you motivated and your programme in perspective.
TOP TIP: Set up a Word or Excel (etc) document as a daily diary to record your thoughts, feelings and behaviour based on your own scales (or ones that have meaning for you). If you’re setting up a table in Word, you can copy and paste it onto a new sheet for each day. As you get more comfortable with measuring your progress, you might find that your table becomes more complex and specific to your needs, or where you are on your programme. Keep an open mind and be flexible, but the most important thing is to build up a routine of recording your progress. If you’re worried about exposure you can password your document.
TOP TIP: Consider writing up some scales for your own behaviour, thoughts and feelings. Give a typical example for each scale, for instance if you have a scale of 1 to 5 for each you might set 1 to be ‘no change’ and 5 to be ‘positive change’ with 3 steps of evidence in between.
How are you going to record your progress?
If you are going to set up a way of measuring your progress, the next step is to keep a record to so can step back from time to time and see the ‘bigger picture’. This could be as simple as three numbers in your diary, eg (B)2, (T)4, F(3), but remember to keep it meaningful as you’re likely to forget individual actions, thoughts or feelings when you review them days, weeks or months later. A daily diary can be very useful – the more detailed the better, but you might want to balance getting on with your life and following your programme. It may be for some that so much effort goes into recording progress that it interferes with daily living and leads to the whole idea of quitting child-
TOP TIP: Set up a Word or Excel (etc) document as a daily diary to record your thoughts, feelings and behaviour based on your own scales (or ones that have meaning for you). If you’re setting up a table in Word, you can copy and paste it onto a new sheet for each day. As you get more comfortable with measuring your progress, you might find that your table becomes more complex and specific to your needs, or where you are on your programme. Keep an open mind and be flexible, but the most important thing is to build up a routine of recording your progress. If you’re worried about exposure you can password your document.
© Chris Willoughby 2008-
