Harmful Sexual Behaviour - Dealing with resistance - my own.

Initially published on 11 June 2024 on LinkedIn.

I am a social worker in private practice where I sometimes deal with children with harmful sexual behaviour (HSB). This is an article on dealing with resistance in this context. This is some of my learning, about my personal journey of resistance. Please let me know your thoughts and experiences, other articles and resources!

I'm going out on a slightly vulnerable limb here and admitting that in dealing with HSB, I have had to encounter and work through my own resistance and not just that of the child (as I wrote about previously).

Does it ever feel good to hear stories of children involved in HSB? - no. Absolutely not. Does it bring up all sorts of unanswered questions, shock and concern for our children and our world? - Yes.

I am a feeler. I have to deal with that, to process my emotions so that I can access my thinking brain, and start to regulate myself through this process. And ask for help when I just can't.

This brings to mind work that I did for a child protection agency over 18 years ago. I loved the work but it was really hard and as it was focused on abuse, it was taxing. For various reasons, the supervision was ad hoc and really incomplete especially given that I was a social worker of 5 or so years experience at the time and this was my first job on the therapeutic side of dealing with abuse.

I look back now and wonder at how crazy it was that I had so little supervision for issues so massive that impacted me on a personal level. No one helped me navigate through the cognitive distortions that come with dealing with abuse day in and day out. It was overwhelming and started to take a toll on my body (even at that young age!).

I never had a chance to consider my own feelings of resistance because there was no one to help me normalise and navigate through it. The job simply had to be done.

Thankfully, I am older and wiser. I know myself a whole lot better. I have more information, and I have a whole lot more practical tools at my disposal. I have learnt that I need not journey through the emotional side of my work alone. I know how to ask for help, from whom and when. I'm in private practice, but I am not alone. I have a small, safe and powerful tribe of support and I am incredibly grateful to them.

I know feelings of resistance that arise are normal and that they are a signal from my being that I need to stop and pay attention. This helps me equip myself for potential challenges that lie ahead, and it also alerts me to the fact that if I am experiencing resistance as a professional outside of the situation, then those inside the situation may well be experiencing all sorts of resistance and then some.

Resistance for me has initially felt like disgust, despair, deep sadness. (These are children. Children who are designed to play, and play and... oh yes, play! But instead they're navigating a whole world they're not actually ready for.) Resistance has been the voice in my head "I DO NOT want to deal with this!" "I can't, these are children." "I don't know if I can actually believe this, it's too much."

I have found that paying attention to my resistance has enabled me to process my emotions and this then makes way for compassion, understanding, and empathy. There is also an energy that is released to act and be present to children, their parents, their teachers and other systems with which they interact.

Practitioners, do you ever experience resistance at dealing with certain issues? How do you process your resistance?

Post-Script

Since this article was first published I have become a co-founder of an organisation called Khanya Collective. We help schools build early intervention and prevention responses to harmful and inappropriate sexual behaviour. The learning and growth is continuous. Personal and professional reflection is vital.