Self help modules:

Triggers and warning signs

This module will help you to explore different types of triggers and potential warning signs of sexual abuse.

Objectives

This module will help you to explore:

  • different types of triggers
  • your own triggers
  • potential warning signs of sexual abuse, including grooming
  • situational and environmental risks

Module chapters

Types of triggers
‘Triggers’ are what precede (come before) your thoughts, feelings and behaviours, and can cause emotional and behavioural responses
Warning signs
Warning signs are the things that alert us and other people that something is wrong or that there this a potential danger or hazard
Triggers: situational and environmental risks
Situations can provide the ingredients for a chain of unhealthy behaviours and trigger the offence cycle

Types of triggers

‘Triggers’ are what precede (come before) your thoughts, feelings and behaviours, and can cause emotional and behavioural responses. Alternative words for triggers include ‘cues’ and ‘prompts’.

Internal triggers means that they come from inside of you and include thoughts, feelings and attitudes linked to lifestyle problems. Examples of internal emotional triggers are feeling discontented, frustrated, bored, resentful, stressed and anxious.

External triggers come from outside of you and include things that can be seen or heard, like a police car with its sirens on. They can be situational and come from our daily routines, e.g. walking through the kitchen may trigger us to open the fridge; walking in the park may trigger sexual thoughts about children. They could also include drugs, medication and substance misuse.

Triggers often come at the beginning of a behavioural cycle; prompting a specific behaviour and a subsequent behaviour chain. For this reason, being aware of your triggers is essential so that you can increase your ability to stop the cycle at the earliest opportunity.

Exercise

On a piece of paper, create a table like the one below and make a list of your ‘internal’ (including emotional) and ‘external’ (including sights and sounds) triggers. It is likely that you will come up with a number of triggers; some will be unrelated and work in isolation to each other, whereas others will work in combination.

InternalExternal
LonelyWalking past a school
  
  
  

Warning signs

Warning signs are the things that alert us and other people that something is wrong or that there this a potential danger or hazard. With regard to sexual offending it includes physical, behavioural and emotional signs in children and adults. Physical warning could be noticing a person has stopped shaving and looking after themselves Behavioural warning signs could be that a person is refusing to leave the house Emotional warning signs could be that a person gets angry very quickly Here is a list of warning signs that a person might recognise in themselves:
  • Experiencing sexual thoughts about children that are difficult to manage
  • Experiencing thoughts that justify sexual behaviour with children
  • Isolating themselves
  • Making excuses to be around children
  • Seeking out the company of children, particularly alone with children
  • Making excuses not to see family/friends
  • Experiencing the urge to go online and view sexual material
  • Masturbating to fantasies about children
  • Engaging in increased masturbation
  • Feeling anxious about their thoughts and feelings
  • Experiencing negative feelings e.g. stress, loneliness, anxiety, depression, angry, hopelessness
  • Not allowing a child sufficient privacy or to make their own decisions on personal matters
  • Insisting on physical affection such as kissing, hugging or wrestling even when the child clearly does not want it
  • Spending most of their spare time with children and having little interest in spending time with people their own age
  • Treating a particular child as a favourite, making them feel ‘special’ compared with others in the family
  • Becoming fixated on a particular child
  • Feeling depressed
  • Feeling sad
  • Feeling lonely
  • Feeling angry
  • Feeling isolated
  • Feeling suicidal
This is not an exhaustive list. The warning signs will be different for everyone so it is important that you consider what your personal warning signs are. There are likely to be other warning signs which are relevant for you. Positive feelings also influence behaviour. It is not always obvious what people are feeling but there can be ‘clues’ based on body language and on what people say and do. It is important that you consider those ‘clues’ so that they can help you manage your thoughts and/or behaviour when needed.

Exercise

Write a list of your physical, behavioural and emotional warning signs and answer the following questions.

  1. What would you do if you recognised these?
  2. Who needs to be aware of these signs?
  3. What might others observe in you that could indicate a warning sign to them?
  4. How might others be able to help you?
  5. What are the benefits of someone in your support network knowing about your problematic behaviour?

Triggers: situational and environmental risks

Some places and situations present specific risks for individuals who:
  • have sexually abused children
  • have the urge to have sexual contact with a child
  • have sexual thoughts about a specific child
  • have sexual thoughts about children generally
Some examples of such situations include attending a family wedding where there are lots of children present or being asked to baby-sit; and these situations become even riskier if combined with inappropriate thoughts and feelings towards children. Situations can provide the ingredients for a chain of unhealthy behaviours and trigger the offence cycle. With this mind, it is vital to recognise what places and situations would be risky for you.

Exercise

On the worksheet:

  1. List what these places and situations would be
  2. Why they are risky
  3. What you would do to manage them
Place/SituationHow to manage
At home late at night, alone, with opportunity to masturbate.                      Do not masturbate, have a bath, read a good book.
 At a family wedding, children around, experiencing sexual urgesEnsure not left alone with any children, ensure there are always adults present, distract attention into adult conversation

Concerned about your thoughts or behaviour?

Self-help, information and support for people troubled by their sexual thoughts about children and young people.

View modules

This module aims to help you explore and gain understanding of:

  • Why immediate gratification is so powerful
  • how to manage the desire of immediate gratification
Immediate gratification
understand why you prioritised your immediate needs despite the consequences
What can you do?
One way to counter the power of instant gratification is to think about how you will feel if you do the behaviour, compared to how you feel if you don’t

This module will help you to explore, different types of triggers, your own triggers, potential warning signs of sexual abuse, including grooming and situational and environmental risks.

Types of triggers
‘Triggers’ are what precede (come before) your thoughts, feelings and behaviours, and can cause emotional and behavioural responses
Warning signs
Warning signs are the things that alert us and other people that something is wrong or that there this a potential danger or hazard
Triggers: situational and environmental risks
Situations can provide the ingredients for a chain of unhealthy behaviours and trigger the offence cycle

This module aims to help you explore and gain understanding of Immediate changes to help you take control of your behaviour How you may have used justifications to allow your problematic behaviour(s) to continue

Making changes
Change can be hard and take time. It is important that you have strategies to manage your behaviour in the short term whilst you work through the modules
Minimising or excusing behaviour
If you do something that you know is wrong and does not fit with your values and beliefs such as harming a child, then people will often use excuses, justifications or minimise the impact of their behaviour

This module will help you explore and understand your current sexual and non-sexual fantasies, and the link between your fantasies and your online behaviour

Fantasies
In this section, when we are talking about ‘sexual fantasy’, we are referring to something that is imagined which you find sexually arousing
Appropriate versus inappropriate fantasy
So what are appropriate and inappropriate fantasies? We split inappropriate fantasies into three sections
Exercise: appropriate versus inappropriate fantasy
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
Exercise: When fantasy becomes a problem
A good starting point in considering if your fantasies are problematic is to look at your fantasies in more detail.
Exercise: a fantasy management technique
Many individuals use fantasy management techniques to help stop having these harmful sexual fantasies.

This section is designed to help you explain terminology around unusual sexual interests (paraphilias) and learn how to lead a healthy life with these interests.

Terminology
A paraphilia involves persistent sexual arousal toward something seen as unusual or outside the norm. This can vary over time, place, and culture
Exploring your sexual interest
A person can have different sexual interests that include a wide range of preferences, but there might be one group that holds the strongest appeal
Practice self compassion
Living with a sexual interest in children has challenges
Make a promise to yourself
If you find yourself struggling with a sexual interest or preference for children, you may have encountered challenges along this journey

This module aims to help you explore and gain understanding of problematic sexual behaviours, motivations, patterns and trends.

Motivation
Sexual behaviour is influenced by your thoughts, feelings, beliefs, values and experiences; however, it is not beyond your control
Exercise 1: making your timeline
In order to understand where your problematic sexual behaviours began, it is helpful to identify what was happening in your life at that time
Exercise 2: digging deeper
To further explore and reflect on your timeline, think about how each point on your timeline made you feel
Problematic behaviour
Although sexual behaviour can be influenced by numerous factors, it is not outside of your control
Cognitive distortions
Cognitive distortions are thinking errors which we use to minimise, justify and excuse behaviours
The offence cycle
A ‘cycle’ consists of a pattern of behaviour where the end leads you back to the beginning and the whole pattern repeats itself over and over again

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