Effects a Teen Porn Addiction Has on Families: How Porn Addiction Erodes Family Relationships
The impact of pornography addiction on families, highlighting how it creates distance, isolation, and secrets within the family. The addiction contributes to shame, destroys trust, and makes building trust with teenagers more complex. Family therapy is recommended to address family system issues related to problematic pornography usage, helping parents evaluate their parenting role and beliefs about sex and pornography. Parents may experience feelings of betrayal, shame, and fear, and there is a lack of specialized parent support for dealing with problematic pornography usage by teens.
The pervasive influence of pornography addiction touches countless families. It erodes trust, fosters shame, and distorts healthy relationships. It’s important to understand how family dynamics play a role in helping your child heal.
Join Tiffany Herlin, LCSW, and Meredith Barney, the Clinical Director of Oxbow Academy as they discuss:
- Effective strategies for rebuilding trust and nurturing understanding.
- The imperative role of professional family therapy in confronting these challenges head-on.
- The transformative power of open dialogue and the pursuit of forgiveness within the family unit.
Concerned about your teen's escalating sexual behaviors? Don't wait. Get the support you need now. Oxbow Academy can help. We offer personalized support for families facing these challenges. Call 855-676-4272 to learn how we can guide your family toward healing.
Introduction
Tiffany: All right, welcome back to our third episode. My name is Tiffany Herland. I'm a licensed clinical social worker and I'm interviewing Oxbow Academy's clinical director Meredith Barney, who's LMFT, SUDC and also a CSAT I. So let's go.
Please remember that this podcast is not a replacement for therapy. Please always seek a mental health professional for your specific situation.
Okay, for this episode, we're going to be talking about family systems, which is what you do.
Meredith: It's my favorite. I love family systems.
Tiffany: And I'm excited. I love family systems too and love learning from you. So we're going to talk about how porn erodes family relationships, how it affects the family systems, and the role of the parents and the teens in all this.
The Impact of Pornography on Family Relationships
Tiffany: So, how does problematic pornography usage affect family relationships?
Meredith: Well, I think the obvious place to start is to see the negative impacts on it. It creates distance, it creates isolation, the family is separating apart. We're looking at secrets in the family, close communication, behavioral act outs. It's just a huge stressor on the system. It causes distress.
Tiffany: Like we talked about in our last episode, it also contributes to shame and secrets, which I think contributes to destroying trust and open communication in the family.
Meredith: Right. And we already are struggling with trust with teenagers. It's really normal for them to lie and have secrets and be working on finding themselves. So to add this into it, it actually can make building trust and safety so much even more complex than it already is with a teenager.
There's another side to look at here. Those are some of the negative impacts on the family system, but if we zoom out a little bit and we look at other potentials or functions of the behavior in a system, if I have a kid who's struggling with child pornography, maybe I'm communicating more with their parent, their other parent, and their kid is seeing this, "Oh, my parents are getting along," or, “They're coming together to help solve this problem of me,” so it actually can have this function of bringing a family together in a way, which we actually see quite a bit. I've seen that quite a bit in the time that I've been doing therapy. A lot of times it's actually to bring the system together. We're all rallying around one person. We're all here, we're here to support you, we're all coming together to save you.
So that's one of the encouraging outcomes of it that a lot of times, people don't see or are unable to see, but when we're looking at functions of behaviors within systems, that is a big one we see with, not just with pornography, but behavioral issues, addiction issues in teens is it's actually going to bring the family together versus pushing them apart.
I mean, both things are possible, but a lot of times we're going to rally. We're going to support this person.
Tiffany: I love that perspective. And again, it goes back to that this is a whole system and each moving part affects one another.
Understanding Pornography as a Family System Issue
Tiffany: So why is it a family system issue and not just an individual problem?
Meredith: Cause it helps us really look at the different components of a family system. We're looking at communication. We're looking at safety. We're looking at healthy or unhealthy attachment within a system. We're looking at what are the rules and roles within a family system, and those are all really important things that all play into the function of the behavior, the addiction issue. It helps us highlight the bigger systemic issues that are happening.
Tiffany: So what can parents do to address the family system issues?
Meredith: Go to family therapy.
Tiffany: So if you've never been to family therapy, what is that? What does that look like?
Meredith: Yeah, well, it's really just zooming out a little bit. When we're in it and our emotions are heightened and "I'm really angry because my kid is not doing what I say," family therapy is something that helps us zoom out a little bit. In family therapy, we talk about process over content all the time. We're looking at the actual process between two people versus what words are being used. Words are important, but really so much of communication is actually my body language, my tone of voice, how am I actually engaging with the other person?
So if I'm coming to you as a parent, and you're the teenager, and I'm like, "Well, tell me about your porn use," that kid is not going to. Or like, "This is a safe place to talk about porn." They're not hearing that message at all. And so, it's when we can zoom out a little bit or have someone help us zoom out, we can start looking at the messages we're actually giving each other.
We can actually start really hearing and listening to each other, because it's not that my kid told me to “F off” and I'm the worst person in the world, it's, "Wow, they must be really hurting so bad that they're rejecting me right now because they don't want me close to them." If we can shift our perspectives like that, I can start seeing my kids' behaviors in a different way.
Tiffany: And that helps you be able to address them differently rather than personalize them and take them to that level. And I think you've already touched on this, but addressing family therapy is going to help you see your own parenting role, what you play in it, and then have you evaluate your own beliefs around sex, pornography, around how do you guys address these issues at home? I mean, it's hard because it's holding up a mirror, not only to your kid, but also to yourself.
And I think that's the hard part with family therapy. You're asking parents to not just say, "Hey, send me your kid and I'm going to fix them and then send them home". Because that doesn't work, especially if you don't fix the system. Why is that?
The Importance of Addressing Family System Issues for Lasting Change
Meredith: Because every person has a role in the system. If you take a person out of the system and it's dysfunctional, that person will actually get better. So you'll see this when kids go to residential treatment. They'll actually start doing better because the function of their role in the system is no longer there for them. So they will actually start getting better. And this is why continuum of care is so important. We want to slowly put them back into the family so that the family can adjust to all the work that their kid has done or else the kid will end up in the exact same space. That's why family therapy is so important so parents don't put their kids back in these roles. The kids don't comfortably slide back into these roles that they've played for however many years.
Tiffany: Yeah. I think you talked about it, that if you take the one kid out of the system, fix them, they're going to go back to their old behavior eventually. So if we don't ask parents and families to take a look at themselves and the whole system, then we're not going to have lasting change for their son or daughter.
Meredith: Absolutely. Yeah. And that's the big thing is I see the most success when parents are willing to do the work. When they're willing to say, "I'm lecturing you again. Oh, my bad. Hold on. Tell me how you're feeling. I'm not going to rescue you from it this time." With families, the way is always paved with good intentions. I'm helping. We're going to change the way you're feeling. We're going to solve this problem. But a lot of times kids don't need that.
What they need is a parent to say, "Wow, bud that sounds really hard."
Tiffany: To validate and hold space for them.
Meredith: Just listen. And so, to tell a parent, "You need to stop doing that. You're creating issues here." I like to say a lot of times, "You're asking your kid to regulate your emotions right now." It's really hard for parents to do that because here comes their shame. Here comes their shame cycle. "I'm a bad parent. I'm not doing this right." And so then we get these cycles that play off each other and family therapy and we're really there to break those cycles and have open conversations about, what is the process that's actually happening here between you guys?
Rebuilding Trust and Improving Relationships After Pornography Addiction
Tiffany: Yeah. You want to create lasting change, not temporary change. What steps can parents take to rebuild trust and improve their relationship with their child after struggling with pornography addiction in the family?
Meredith: I always tell families this: you're gonna fail all the time and just keep trying. So the thing I like to talk about the most when I talk about rebuilding trust with families is actually the Gottman's five criteria of trustworthiness.
Tiffany: I love Gottman's work by the way, for those who don't know, they're a dynamic couple who have done research for 30 plus years.
Meredith: Tons of research on relationships. They're research based theories. The Gattman theory is actually a MFT theory.
Tiffany: Yeah. So great. I mean, if you want to go pick up a book on relationships and marriage, I highly highly recommend it. But back to the five criteria of trustworthiness. What do you teach families?
Meredith: So I actually have this conversation with the parents and the kid at the same time. So the five things are honesty, transparency, accountability, ethical actions, and proof of alliance.
Tiffany: Break those down for us.
Meredith: I will try to break them down, but in this session, we're actually talking about what honesty means within this individual family system because it will be different for every family.
Transparency is going to be different because as a parent, maybe I only want to know my kid relapsed on porn, but really, I'm not at a place where I want to know exactly what kind of porn they're watching and maybe they need to disclose that to their therapist.
So the big two that I like to talk about here, because we don't always understand what these are, are ethical actions and proof of alliance.
Tiffany: What does that mean?
Meredith: So ethical action. So when we have a strained relationship with somebody, or we have trauma in a relationship with somebody, we get beliefs about that relationship. "They're never gonna change. They're the worst. I'm alone in all of this." We get these beliefs, trauma beliefs that can be created by different events. And so ethical actions are things that we remind ourselves when our own trauma narrative or something gets activated for us. My kid watches pornography and it triggers me and my thing is like, "He's going to always view pornography. He's never going to get this."
I pull on ethical actions, which are behaviors that show the opposite of that belief. "I feel that way but look, he has been going to therapy. He has been doing his assignments. He did tell me the other day about feeling sad and he hasn't done that before." So ethical actions are evidence that combat our own narratives and beliefs that can be activated by being in a family with somebody.
So this is really important because the kids need this too. They need to see, "Oh, my parents are also doing things. They're not always going to view me in this way," because they have their own beliefs about their parents. "They hate me. They're never going to accept me. They don't love me because I'm not perfect," whatever it is.
So kids also have to start looking for ethical actions from their parents where they can say, "Oh, but my mom didn't lecture me today in our session or on this phone call" or "I did this," and it's just that reminder that that belief isn't necessarily accurate. "That's just a feeling that I'm feeling right now. Here's the evidence that contradicts it. We're in this together. We're working together as a team." Which is actually what proof of alliance is. "This is us. We're committed to doing this together. We're going to fail miserably and we're going to slide backwards. That's normal, but we are going to continue to try together. Here's my proof of alliance. My parents keep coming to the session. My kid keeps doing their therapy assignments. My kid is telling me, 'Oh, I was really triggered to watch porn today or masturbate or whatever.'"
Proof of alliance is huge when we're looking at rebuilding. And we have to have honesty, transparency, and accountability. Again, those ones are so individualized just based on what accountability means for that family cause it will be different for everyone.
Applying Gottman's Five Criteria of Trustworthiness in Family Therapy
Tiffany: Can you walk us through an example of how you might talk to a family who has a teen struggling with pornography through all these five steps?
Meredith: Yeah. So, I always bring this up in my family sessions and we start by just saying, like, "What does honesty mean to you guys?" Sometimes the discussion is around not lying to each other." Okay. Then we talk about what are the barriers and why do we lie to each other? What are the things that are getting in the way of honesty?
Again, this is why it's so different for every family, is because those barriers are going to be different. So we identify what the barriers are to honesty.
Then we talk about what transparency is and what does that mean. Again, it can mean so many different things. Maybe a parent wants to know exactly what is happening all the time while they're building trust with their kid. "I want to always know what's on your phone. I want to be able to do phone checks or spot checks or all the things." And the kid can say, "well, this is important to me, so I'm going to let you do that."
Transparency can also be about how I'm feeling. A lot of times parents struggle with being transparent about how they're really feeling. A lot of times it comes out as frustration or anger or sadness when really it's usually fear based. So a parent actually saying, "That's really scary for me," versus, "You need to stop doing that."
The kid can be also transparent about their feelings, parents being transparent about their feelings and also can be transparent in, "What are you watching? What are you engaging with? What are you doing with your friends? What is your therapy?" Parents, "What is your therapy? What are you doing? What support groups are you going to?" So transparency can be a big thing in all these.
Accountability. Again, this looks different for everybody because it might be, "I'm going to have a Net Nanny on my computer so that I can get a notification if you're looking at pornography."
Tiffany: Which is an app that helps navigate that.
Meredith: That's another example of a support system around that. And the kid can say, "Great. This will help hold me accountable." Or, "No, I don't want to do that." Again, what are the barriers here? And then we, again, it's just so different because some parents want to know things, some parents don't want to know. Some parents only want to know some of it and are trusting the other part to professionals.
So then, we're talking about ethical actions. "Hey kid, tell me what an ethical action would be for you to see from your parents." Same with the parents to the kids. "This is what an ethical action means to me," and then we identify, "How do we know that we're in this together?"
Tiffany: And I love that the last one is proof of alliance. You have notes here about parents willing to hear their child and to hear the problem and solve it. And I think oftentimes when they come to therapy, it's the parent versus the kid and the problem, rather than aligning with their child and really listening and it being the kid aligned with their parents against the problem.
Challenges and Rewards of Family Therapy
Tiffany: So how do you help parents get to that place?
Meredith: Again, it's talking a lot with the parents and helping them understand what's going on for them. They have to understand when I'm not being transparent. They have to understand when I'm being activated so that they can understand and empathize with their child.
It takes a lot of work and it takes a very willing parent to do it and this is probably one of the biggest hang ups that I see within family therapy. And if you have an unskilled family therapist, they actually will pit the two against each other. So working with someone who's skilled and who understands family therapy, the process around it is really, really important when we're engaging in family therapy, specifically for hot topics like this.
Tiffany: Yeah. And a therapist that can help parents sit in the uncomfortable emotion and the child sit into the uncomfortable emotion, which means the therapist has to be okay with it as well and I've done their own work, which is a whole nother topic, but we won't dive into that.
So, I think it's important for our listeners to understand that family therapy can be uncomfortable. It's going to be hard. It's going to be challenging, yet it will be rewarding if you get through the hard part.
Meredith: Yes. This is the most beautiful work that comes out of family therapy. And I might just be saying that because I'm an MFT and I love it so much.
Tiffany: I love it too. And I'm not. So I've seen the beauty that comes from it and the healing. When you can get a family to work as a team with their kid and identify the behavior and the problem, that's just beautiful to get them to allow for real change.
Emotions Experienced by Parents in Response to Teen's Pornography Usage
Tiffany: What emotions might parents be experiencing when their teen has a pornography usage problem?
Meredith: One of the biggest ones that I see with parents, and a lot of people really struggle to identify, is actually betrayal. For some reason it's really hard for parents to see it in that way. But there is betrayal there. Their kid isn't who they want them to be or who they thought they are. Here's this kid who has a problem. And so that's something that we talk about quite a bit is the betrayal trauma that can happen.
Tiffany: And that can be even triggered if they have other betrayal trauma in their lives, that they've experienced someone else disappointing them. I mean, it could be a number of things.
Meredith: Yes, right. And it hits that. And then we go down that road of parents' cycle that they go into. I think another topic is shame.
Tiffany: Yeah, that's huge. So much shame for our parents.
Meredith: Yeah, shame around, "I'm a bad parent. I failed here." Yeah, that kind of stuff.
Embarrassment of their kid. I've heard that one quite a bit. Like, "I'm just embarrassed that my kid did that," which can be a projection of stuff out, but it's a valid emotion.
There’s also anger. I've seen a lot of angry parents.
Tiffany: That's kind of the initial knee jerk reaction. And I often see that parents want to shield their kid from their anger, right?
Meredith: Yes.
Tiffany: I've encouraged parents not to always shield from what's really going on and how they're really feeling?
Meredith: Yes, I think there's this fine balance between being transparent with how I'm feeling and over sharing with our kids. And so part of that is the work to do as a parent is, how do I find that balance? How do I share what I'm feeling but not also then put it? On my kid to manage it for me.
Tiffany: That's a good point. One I want to point out is denial, that I've seen working with families is, "Oh, not my kid." And, "Oh, it's not that bad. Boys will be boys," and really trying to brush it under the rug. You often see that maybe there sometimes is a problem for themselves around this issue. Or there's a family system problem around pornography. That's a huge one and helping parents come out of that.
Meredith: Yeah, that one is, I feel like we see that one more with males where they're minimizing, justifying the behavior, and definitely in denial about it. I think something too is rejection from others is a big one that I hear and isolation as parents.
Tiffany: Okay, what do you mean by that?
Meredith: So let's say my kid was here one day and is no longer here the next day. And my community around me, my friends around me are asking me about it. Where did he go?
Tiffany: Yeah.
Meredith: And I don't want to say. I'm not going to tell them the name. They're going to Google and they're going to find out that they're at sex specific treatment center so here I am keeping my secrets. I'm turning inward.
Tiffany: So more shame, more secrecy.
Meredith: Or if you do, I have also seen this happen, where parents do share and they lose relationships. They lose friendships. They are rejected by the community and they get forced into isolation because people are uncomfortable with what happened.
Tiffany: Or they don't know what to say. So they pull away. And I think fear and anxiety around is this gonna escalate or is something worse gonna happen?
Meredith: Do I have a victim in the home?
Tiffany: Yeah, or if there is a victim in the home, how do I hold space for the one who perpetrated versus the one who's a victim and keep everyone safe? I mean, oh my gosh, that just opens a Pandora's box right there.
Meredith: That is a huge, huge thing that we see quite a bit at Oxbow, is how do we hold space for both of these. And as parents that can be quite activating, the feeling of failure, quite a bit is that, "I physically don't know how to hold space so I fail as a parent."
Tiffany: So how do you help parents work through that? Which I know is like a whole therapy session, but give us the Reader's Digest version.
Meredith: Normalize it. Of course, it's hard. Sometimes you really might feel more torn towards the victim. And sometimes you might feel more towards the perpetrator. That's normal. Sometimes I'm going to connect more with one or the other. The fear is real and valid, and how do we work on reducing that down. Usually when there's victims in the home, parents have trauma, and we talk a lot about trauma response, felt sense, what does that look like, coping skills for trauma response, referring them to their own therapist to treat that. It's helping them understand what's happening for them so they understand how to show up in a healthier way in front of their kid.
Tiffany: Yeah. Helping parents do their own work and look at their own issues around this. That's going to be huge.
This particular podcast is talking about problematic pornography usage. Yet if you are a parent who's listening who does have where a child has acted out with another child in the home or someone within the family or neighborhood, we have another podcast that we filmed in our first season, actually, that you can go and listen to and get more information of how to deal with that particular issue if it ever does escalate to that point, which we talked about in our earlier episode. It doesn't mean it's going to escalate to that point, but yeah, it can be a fear that parents have or worry about.
Seeking Support as a Parent
Tiffany: How can parents get support and realize they're not alone in this?
Meredith: This one is tough because there is not a lot of specialized parent support around this. Again, this is kind of where we look for the closest fit we can get. Sometimes it’s a 12 step group, an Al Anon group. There is a community out there. It's just going to be hard to find. And I have looked, parents I've worked with have looked, there's stuff out there. It's going to be hard to always find exactly the specific situation you're looking for. Reaching out to CSATs in your area or therapists who specialize in this kind of stuff can help you try to find a community out there.
This is probably one of the hardest things that parents have is to face this isolation just because there are not a lot of resources out there.
Tiffany: And it's a scary topic to bring up and know who they can trust. I think that's important for parents to realize that they should evaluate who is in your inner circle and can trust.
And it's not that you're not being honest and transparent by not telling everybody what's going on. You're protecting yourself and your family to a degree and only allowing those in your inner circle who are going to provide support, empathy, validation that you need during this really traumatic and critical time as you're going through this. We've even had families create their own support groups and find families and start support groups virtually when they haven't found their own, which has been pretty amazing that parents are doing that as well.
I guess the biggest thing is to help parents realize you're not alone. You may feel alone. It's hard to talk about. It's a very shameful and embarrassing topic.
Meredith: Stigmatizing. A lot of stigma around it.
Tiffany: Yeah. So much stigma. Yet, guess what? You're not alone. And this goes back to, we just never know what other people are going through and battling and it's easy to judge but ultimately we can't. And again, I can't say this enough, you're not alone.
Effects of Pornography on Teen Relationships
Tiffany: How does problematic pornography usage affect future relationships for a teen?
Meredith: One of the biggest things is that blurs the line between what is healthy and what isn't healthy. What is a healthy development in a relationship?
Because we talked about before like, "Oh my gosh, are we going to hold hands?" If I've watched so much pornography, my opinion is we go straight to sex. They lose that whole education and experience.
Tiffany: A healthy sexual encounter.
Meredith: Not even that, but healthy relationship development.
Tiffany: Yeah.
Meredith: That's a big thing that gets so skewed.
Tiffany: Yeah. Oh, and how to treat romantic partners. I think a lot of the teens we've worked with believe sex equals love, and so they put those together. But a lot of my work I've done with them is helping them take a step back and realizing that there's so much more to a relationship than sex.
And that's only part of the relationship that you work and build on and there's so many other steps and dynamics at play. So re-educating them because porn has taught them fantasy and not reality and not consent necessarily.
Meredith: And instant gratification.
Conclusion
Tiffany: To end this episode, we talked a lot about the family system, the shame that comes with it, the isolation, helping the families work through all of this, and ultimately, finding forgiveness within their own family system, with themselves, with their son, or their daughter, whoever it may be, and realizing that you're not alone. If you feel alone, I guarantee you're not. There are people listening to this podcast who need help, and if you guys realize that this is a bigger problem than just what your family's facing, it will give you hope that help is out there and healing is accessible.
Meredith: Yeah. This is being talked about.
Tiffany: Yeah. It needs to be talked about more.
Meredith: A hundred percent.
Tiffany: Stay tuned for our next episode. We're going to be talking about when do you need to seek out professional help for this issue and when does it become essential and the family systems approach, how that approach itself can be so healing for not only your child, but as your family system as a whole. Stay tuned.
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