Externalization as a self-help tool

I have been taking a course on narrative therapy this quarter and I find that several of the tools in this modality of therapy could be useful for treating people with paraphilias and might be useful for those who do not have safe access to therapy (or feel safe). One of the first narrative techniques that seem really applicable is the idea of "externalizing" the problem.

As I have read through the posts on this board (mostly related to pedophilia) I have observed that a great many people with paraphilias seem to view their attraction as a fundamental part of themselves. While any particular person may be happy taking the view that they are a pedophile/ necrophile/ somnaphile/ zoophile etc, I tend to find that defining oneself by one part of your personality or experience can be harmful and limiting in practice (this is also true for people without paraphilia. If you currently tell yourself you are your paraphilia, and it is not increasing your happiness, I would like to invite you to try to step out of being the condition (or problem) and rather try to create some mental distance between "you" and the "paraphilia."

We sometimes have a tendency to oversimplify ourselves and the world but the fact is, no matter who you are, that your paraphilia is not all or even most of the person you are in total. Even if society wants to view you as only being the condition, you surely have thoughts, interests, behaviors, habits, and passions that are not related to your attraction to "x."

Externalizing the "problem" begins with a simple philosophy: The person is not the problem, the problem is the problem.

What you want to do from there is to think about the "problem" as something outside of yourself that you "have a relationship with." This may initially feel a little weird, because the problem feels very internal, but if you can begin to view the problem as something separate from you then you will be able to examine it more fully and with less emotional content attached. So, if you have pedophilia, you might think about pedophilia (as a thing/ noun) and the history of your relationship with pedophilia.

If you were in a conversation with a narrative therapist about this subject then the conversation might go something like this:

Therapist: I understand that you are telling me that you are experiencing a lot of personal suffering because of the pedophilia. I'm interested to know more about what it has been like for you to have pedophilia in your life. Can you tell me what it is like for you when pedophilia is around?

Client: I feel like the pedophilia is always around, it's a part of me, and it makes me feel so ashamed and guilty. I feel like it's not fair for me to feel this way, I hate feeling this way, and when I think these things about a child-- Only a monster would think things like this! And I have to hide this, who could love me or even like me if they knew the kinds of thoughts I get in my head.

Therapist: Wow, that must be really overwhelming for you. I wonder if you can think back to a time before you noticed the pedophilia.

Client: well, before I was interested in sex and romantic stuff I guess.

Therapist: Ok, that makes sense. I'm interested to know how the pedophilia made itself known to you.

Client: At first I didn't notice it so much. I just thought little girls were pretty and it didn't seem that weird, I wasn't that much older than them anyway. Then I was getting older and thinking about having girlfriends and kissing and sex and stuff and the little girls I was attracted to were still the same age and I was hearing other guys talk about girls but they all talked about the girls in our class, our age, and never about the little girls. At first I didn't really "hide" it, I just didn't mention that the girls I liked were so much younger. After a while though, it seemed really important to hide it, that it was really bad and shameful to feel this way about a little kid. Then I started to hear about how everybody hates "child molesters" and "Pedophiles" and at some point I just realized that they were talking about me. I guess it started getting really horrible once I connected my feelings about little girls to everyone else's hatred of "child molesters."

Therapist: I really can't even imagine how painful it must have been when you made that connection. How did you see the pedophilia changing the way you lived when you first realized it was in your life?

Client: Hmm. I had a really hard time then. I was so scared that my parents and friends would somehow know this terrible thing about me and I felt like I was this horrible person because I couldn't get rid of my feelings. It kind of snowballed and broke down everything. I felt like I couldn't trust myself, since I couldn't escape these thoughts and feelings, and that I couldn't trust anyone else because I knew they would hate me if they knew. So I kinda had to hide my real self from everyone and live with this mask of being someone else. I think it made me become two people, the inside me and the outside me. And it really made me completely alone ever since then, at least in real life, because I don't think any normal person could love someone like me.

Therapist: That's really sad and I'm sorry you have had to experience this. I just have to tell you that my experience of you is that you are tremendously sensitive, compassionate, and thoughtful. I think that a lot of people could love a person like you, though I don't want to discount your experience and fears about people judging you just for this one thing. I find it really interesting, though, that you say it has made you two people, the inside and outside you. Are they both you?

Client: Yes. But the outside me isn't the "real" me. He's not the pedophile.

Therapist: Can you tell me more about the inside you? What is he like outside of his relationship with pedophilia?

Client: Actually... I don't know if I can separate him from the pedophilia. Maybe he "is" the pedophilia.

Therapist: That's really profound! So I wonder if it is possible that the thing you think of as the "real you" is not actually you at all, but is really just your relationship with pedophilia? Could it then be possible that the "real you" is the outside you?

Since I've never done therapy or talked about this with someone with pedophilia I fear my made up conversation might be off the mark of the actual experience of pedophilia. I hope, however, that it adequately illustrates the conversation you might have with yourself about your problem and help bring your mind to a place where you can look at the paraphilia as not a part of the "real" you.

The value of this, in my opinion, is that it might help you view yourself with more compassion and less guilt and shame. The "real" you didn't deserve this problem and doesn't deserve to feel pain, guilt, and shame about something you didn't volunteer for. If you can begin to externalize the problem, and understand that "you" are not the problem, then it may become easier for you to manage intrusive thoughts and feelings that have historically been very hurtful or destructive in your life. It's much easier to manage things when there is a little space between them and our very emotional selves.

I hope this will be interesting and maybe even useful for you. I'd love to hear your thoughts about this post and if you feel it would be helpful for me to post things like this in the future.

Good luck

It's interesting how some people choose to define themselves according to a certain preference they have.

It occurs not only in sexuality, but also musical tastes, dress sense etc.

I have an attraction to dead women, therefore I am a necrophiliac, but that doesn't define me as a human being. I have many 'normal' interests. I go to work. Pay bills. Watch sport. Drink with friends in the pub. Spend quality time with my daughters and my family. I follow the news and politics. I worry about the world my daughters are growing up in.

We are all so much more than what turns us on sexually, or any other aspect of ourselves for that matter.

I like this manner of addressing it, myopicdreams. It's so easy for a person to get caught up in defining him/herself once they realize they have a paraphilia and the implications of that. Thanks for posting this, keep the positive thoughts and ideas coming.

I'm a hebephile, and it's been interesting to read myopicdreams' posts.

I'll read through most of those later, and one thing that I am interested in, is self-help.
Now, myopic, you're pretty big on compartmentalization, right?

I don't do compartmentalization (for example if you enlist in the military you're a murderer in my book), so I can't really use the "I think it made me become two people, the inside me and the outside me." for anything.

What tells me who and what I like, that's simply my heart. Me. Not something divisible, separate from the me that is me.

I'm slightly uncertain if I may have misunderstood you, but surely you agree that the best thing to do is accept and love yourself, in spite of everything?

mxy wrote:I don't do compartmentalization (for example if you enlist in the military you're a murderer in my book), so I can't really use the "I think it made me become two people, the inside me and the outside me." for anything.

What tells me who and what I like, that's simply my heart. Me. Not something divisible, separate from the me that is me.

I'm slightly uncertain if I may have misunderstood you, but surely you agree that the best thing to do is accept and love yourself, in spite of everything?

Hi Mxy, I'm glad you're enjoying my posts

I would agree that it is best for us to accept and love ourselves but I don't think that means that we have to accept and love everything we think or do-- for example, I smoke. I accept that I am a smoker and have been for many years, I would like to not be a smoker and it is something I have been working on for some time now, but being a smoker is not how I define myself. Smoking is a fairly easy thing to externalize, though, and it's not too crazy to say that I have a relationship with smoking because it isn't typically a thing one would use for self definition. Sexual orientation (or attraction) however may seem to be much more of a defining feature of oneself and seems much more likely to be used as a factor of personal identity.

The main message of externalization is that you are something separate from your desires and behaviors (and feelings). Most of us would probably say that we are our feelings, fantasies, beliefs etc.. but let me ask you: Would you not be you if tomorrow you woke up and found yourself strongly attracted to a 60 year-old? Would you stop being you if you were to form a friendship with someone in the military and discover that they are not a murderer and that most people in the military will never murder anyone? Would you stop being you if you decided that you don't have to "love" feelings and desires that you happen to have but that are potentially very harmful to yourself and others?

For each of us, even those of us without paraphilia, there are dark things that we accept are a part of being who we are but choose not to believe make us who we are (not the fundamental "me") and we also choose not to love those things or allow them to become a part of our behavioral autobiography. I was abused as a child, I sometimes have urges to physically punish my child just like I was punished (it did make me more pliable after all), but even though I sometimes feel compelled to hit or shake her when she is being difficult I have the choice to not include those thoughts and urges in my self-description. I don't accept that I "could" be a child abuser-- though it would be far easier to be so-- but rather view those thoughts and feelings as things I can't help thinking but have the power to ignore and consciously avoid in real life. Because I am committed to not letting that part of myself become a reality of my parenting, I do a lot of studying and mindful consideration of what my child needs and what will best prepare her to have a happy and fulfilling life.

I have to tell you, though, that as much as popular psychology recommends teaching our kids (and ourselves) to unconditionally "accept and love yourself" the truth is that the unconditional part of that has tremendously increased the sociopathy of our society. As a parent, I work hard to help my child learn to love and accept herself but the real way to do that is to teach her how to be the kind of person who is lovable and acceptable. This doesn't mean that I am teaching her to conform to society's expectations-- I wouldn't know how to teach that even if I wanted to-- but rather I teach her to be kind, compassionate, and patient with things and people even though she doesn't naturally want to share, wait her turn, say please and thank you, or apologize when she has hurt someone's feelings. She is a toddler, she doesn't "want" to do any of these things and they are not a part of her internal urges or fantasies yet (well, they're starting to be), but if I don't teach her how to be considerate and kind then she will not be able to have empathy or compassion when she gets old enough to be dangerous (failure to teach this is one of the routes to Antisocial Personality Disorder, AKA sociopath, BTW. The other is pretty severe/abuse neglect which pretty much teaches the same thing).

So the main thing is that we have to find a balance between accepting/loving ourselves and kindness/empathy for others. We can accept that we sometimes have an urge to hit someone, we can even accept that we are a person who sometimes has those urges, and still not accept it is a thing that makes us who we are. You are a hebephile, I hope you have not acted on your attraction but even if you have I hope you can look at yourself as a person who is MUCH more than what turns you on. If you came into my office, no matter what you had done in the past, I would look for who you are all of the time you are not giving in to your hebephilia.

Also, it is important to me to make a clear distinction between "compartmentalization" and "externalization." They may seem to be closely related, at least on the surface, but there is a very important difference-- in compartmentalization you are boxing off something about yourself (like putting it in another room, excluding it from other parts of your experience, making it inaccessible to the rest of your experience) and that is not a healthy response, in externalization you are simply taking an internal step back from the "thing" so that you can view it more objectively-- like taking your cellphone out of your pocket so you can measure the screen instead of guessing how big it is. When I say that my tendency to compartmentalize will be helpful for me in working with pedophile/hebephile or sex offender populations, I do not mean to imply that it is a good thing for my experience of life. I like to make lemonade with my lemons and "compartmentalization" is a huge lemon in my life-- it means I can't think and feel at the same time-- so in my personal life it means I could either react to a given stimulus on a purely emotional or a purely intellectual level. Using this board, different post, as an example, there was one thread where someone wrote something that put a very unwelcome and graphic image into my thoughts. The first time I read the sentence I was just shocked and I was not sure how to feel/think about it. The second time I read it I "turned on" my emotions and was very upset. The third (and final) time I read it I "turned back on" my intellectual/regular mindset and sat back to try and decide what to do. I had to read it 3 times to get to a place where I could even begin to understand/process the statement-- because I couldn't understand how I felt until I consciously went to the apartment building where I keep my emotions (all in their own little studios) and convened a group consultation in the lobby (sorry for a cheesy metaphor here). I then had to decide if it was more important to be sensitive to possibly hurting his feelings, and thereby allow myself to simply repress my emotional reaction, or if it would be worth allowing myself to emotionally process the statement/image so that I could help him understand how his actions/ that hypothetical scenario actually end up tearing the hypothetical child (in this case me) into little pieces. I decided to go with doing the emotional process thing-- which is not fun for me, even if it's a "good" subject.

So what I mean when I refer to my own compartmentalization is my inability to spontaneously feel, coupled with the fact that I have to actually work (thus choose) to even have an emotional response. With a "difficult" client population (people who emotionally "typical" people would be very reactive to) that means I can meet the person just as I meet everyone else-- with no emotional content attached-- and hopefully keep myself from having to deal with the emotional reactions I might have if I was a spontaneous feeler.

God, this is much longer than I intended-- I need to learn brevity.

If you put your thoughts/feelings into little boxes (or even big apartment buildings like I do) then you are exposing yourself to more problems down the line (though I'm not sure an adult could learn to compartmentalize/dissociate to the extent I do). What you want to do is not tuck it away, deeper in yourself, but rather bring it out into the open so that it has less power (and danger) and you have more choices about what to do with it.

Does that help explain? I sometimes feel like I make things more complicated than they need to be

J

Wow, you sure are a chatterbox. Hope you had a good smoke after that.

myopicdreams wrote:The main message of externalization is that you are something separate from your desires and behaviors (and feelings).

Ok, that's what I thought you meant... well, that will never work for me.
I'm a cognitive empath; I feel way too much. For example, I can make myself cry on command in under a minute, just by putting on some music by Mike Oldfield or similar.
And that's probably also a reason why I have problems with adults, I'm simply deadly afraid that they will understand exactly how advanced and developed my emotions are.

myopicdreams wrote:Would you stop being you if you were to form a friendship with someone in the military and discover that they are not a murderer and that most people in the military will never murder anyone?

Then I would already have stopped being me.
For they have given their unequivocal consent to killing on command, for no good reason other than adhering to social conditioning. That is unethical cowardice.

myopicdreams wrote:I have to tell you, though, that as much as popular psychology recommends teaching our kids (and ourselves) to unconditionally "accept and love yourself" the truth is that the unconditional part of that has tremendously increased the sociopathy of our society.

Yes, well that's neither here nor there.
I know what a psychopath is.
That's a guy who is divorced, and tells you out of the blue that "somebody" has taught his three year old son to recite to his mother "daddy kill mommy".

A psychopath isn't a person who has understood, that if you want to follow the recommendation love thy neighbour as thyself, then you actually need to start by loving yourself.

When I opened my eyes to facing that I had this kind of preference, I stopped smoking almost cold turkey, and also lost sleep etc..
But I can't go around and dislike myself, that simply isn't healthy.
And if I do, I am afraid I am going to stunt my growth in other areas, such as ethics and social growth.

myopicdreams wrote:You are a hebephile, I hope you have not acted on your attraction but even if you have I hope you can look at yourself as a person who is MUCH more than what turns you on.

I have not, and I take responsibility for handling this issue.
And yes, I AM so much more, which is why I don't feel like worrying too much and just make this preference double, if you get my drift.

Also, I saw the line which hurt you, I hope you can still find it in you to endure such lack of tact.
Myself, I will try and go to a psychologist, but I don't have much hope that that is going to help, so if you have any other types of advice, they would be most welcome.