Am I a monster? — What’s OK?

Max reached out to the helpline and asked:

“What if I hurt someone sexually? Am I a monster?”

While not everyone can relate to this question, we want everyone reading this to know that good people can do bad and even harmful things. It really is about what happens next: how that person takes responsibility, gets help, stays safe, lives a healthy life so that no one is hurt again.

Monsters don’t ask for help

So let’s get one thing straight: No! This person is not a monster.

Monsters don’t ask for help, and they don’t think about how their actions might hurt someone else. And when someone is brave enough to look at something they have already done and ask themself whether they hurt someone – well, this is incredibly brave.

It is way easier to try to move on and ignore it. But that isn’t the way to make sure it doesn’t happen again. And actually, ignoring something can make it worse later on as I’m sure many of you know.

What now?

As a first step, our Helpline recommended that Max find a counselor who specializes in working with people who have problems with safe sexual behaviors. We aren’t always sure if the person who writes in to us is under 18 or over, and that was the case with Max, so we shared information from our FAQ: Finding Help that gave tips for both youth and young adults. The biggest part of being responsible when you realize that you’ve hurt someone with your sexual behaviors, is to make sure you’re safe and are going to remain safe – and a specialized counselor can help with this type of safety planning. So we shared these resources with him, and also gave him some tips on how to ask his parents for help in finding a counselor

A counselor would also be helpful to think about next steps regarding taking responsibility – and in this case, we shared with Max that this starts with making sure that the person he harmed is now safe. This might be complicated, depending on Max’s relationship with this person but again, he doesn’t have to figure this out alone – working with a counselor can help figure out what he can do. Yes, he may have some difficult conversations in front of him and being accountable can look different for everyone, but in essence – it means that someone like Max is honest about what he has done, is willing to learn more about the impact of his behaviors and how he harmed someone – and that he does reach out for help so that he never hurts anyone again.

We also asked Max to look at our FAQs Am I OK and What is OK – to help him learn more about himself, as well as what safe and healthy behaviors are. Specifically, we recommended reading, “ How do I know when I have crossed a sexual boundary?” and “What do I do if friends have told me that I ignore and cross sexual boundaries but I don’t know what to change?”, giving him some ideas and language to begin to take responsible steps.

So no, Max is not a monster. But he does have a responsibility to make sure he stays safe moving forward, that he asks for help with behaviors that are harmful and that he does take responsibility for what he has already done. Again…he doesn’t have to do this alone. It took a lot of courage for him to write to us, and we understand the pain of guilt and confusion he might be feeling – he wants to be a safe person. Most people do.