In order to understand where your problematic sexual behaviours began, it is helpful to identify what was happening in your life at that time. This exercise gets you to look back over your life and reflect upon how your sexual thoughts of children began and developed over time.
In each box write a brief description of a key event in your life, marking a progression in your sexual thoughts and behaviour, eventually leading to your recognition that this was a problem. Have a look at the example below to help you get started. We recommend completing your timeline in the following order:
- Your current situation (at the far right)
- The first time that you were aware of having sexual thoughts of children (be sure to highlight this point on the timeline)
- Your first memory of being sexually aroused, be it with pornography or another stimuli (will likely be near the far left)
- In between each of the above, identify other significant key events that you believe can be seen as ‘signposts’ in your life for where you broke down a barrier (in your head or in your actions) and progressed to more problematic sexual behaviour. Remember that this is your timeline – if you feel that you need more boxes to tell your story, feel free to add more.
Exercise
Have you recently had a fantasy about a child? If you have, then without thinking about it in too much detail, work through these questions one at a time and see if these help you think about your fantasies differently.
- Where is this fantasy situated?
- What are you doing there?
- Who else is there? What are they doing there?
What this fantasy says about you
- What role does this fantasy place you in?
- How does this fantasy compare to the type of person you are generally?
- How does this fantasy compare to the type of person you want to be?
- How does the fantasy of the content compare to real life?
What this fantasy says about how you view others
- How do you treat the people in the fantasy?
- How do they treat you?
- What if the roles were switched?
What this fantasy says about your view of the world
- What sort of world would it be if you or other people were able to act on this fantasy?
- Is this really the type of world you’d like to live in?
- What is the likelihood of your fantasy ‘expectations’ being met and would you want them to be met?
- What would your close friends and family feel about this fantasy? What would they think?
- How would you feel if your son or your daughter acted out this fantasy with another adult?
Were you struck by any of your responses? The above exercise has helped people identify needs met by fantasy that are not being met in the real world. These are not necessarily sexual needs. For example, some people identify that in their fantasy life they are able to take the role of someone more in control or confident than they feel in their day-to-day life and relationships.
The exercise can be used to work out how healthy a fantasy is. For example, if on reflection you feel it would be unpleasant to be treated in the fantasy the same way you act towards the others in the fantasy, or if you would be ashamed of others knowing about the fantasy, you may decide this is not a healthy fantasy.
The content of a fantasy is one aspect to consider in deciding whether the fantasy is appropriate or inappropriate, but in the next section of this module we explore other reasons why fantasy might be a problem.
