← Betrayal Trauma Recovery
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- [00:00]
A
Hey, it's Anne. If you've listened to this podcast, you know I interview women who are dealing with their husband's lies, anger, or infidelity. I've interviewed over 200 women and counting. If you relate to anything you hear in this episode, we can help you today. I created our daily live group sessions because when I was going through it, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't find the help I needed. We know exactly how to help women in this situation. The entire BTR team has been through it, so we know how to anticipate the issues you're likely to face. And when you discover your husband's lies or infidelity. No matter where you are in the world, we can help you immediately. Check out our group session schedule@BTR.org group I have a good friend on today's episode. Her name is Kristen Jensen and she's the founder of Defend Young Minds, which is an organization that helps protect children from pornography by teaching them strategies and skills to use as they go about their lives. Welcome, Kristen.
- [01:02]
B
Thanks, Ann. It's great to be here with you.
- [01:04]
A
My kids love your books. We have them all around our house. My youngest loves nonfiction and so she reads them frequently. So thank you so much. Can you just start off talking about your books?
- [01:16]
B
Good Pictures, Bad Pictures and Good Pictures, Bad Pictures Junior A Simple Plan to Defend Young Minds. They're both number one bestsellers on Amazon and have been so for years. And you know, speaking of number one bestsellers, I know that you're book has been a number one bestseller. Trauma Mama, Husband Drama. I just love it. I mean, the illustrations are awesome. I've read a lot of books that try to rhyme and some work better than others and yours works great. I love how you approach that. It helps it not to be so heavy. And yet you're talking about very serious topics and explaining how women get trapped in this place where her husband looks great on the outside, but there's a lot of trauma going on. And then I love how in the back you've got lots of charts that really help explain a lot of the issues.
- [02:15]
A
It's frequently a bestseller in the category of teen and Young adult nonfiction on sexual abuse, which is interesting to me because I did not expect my book to be for kids. A lot of people have said my children actually love this book. That surprised me. I think the thing that probably surprises both of us is how ready and capable children are to learn about these difficult topics.
- [02:44]
B
Kids love these books because they respond to the truth and whenever a book clearly Shines light. I think kids just gobble it up. It's a relief to them when you're willing to open up and talk about pornography or talk about the effects of pornography in a relationship, in a marriage, in a family. Kids are more resilient than we give them credit for, and it's great that they have these books to help them.
- [03:14]
A
Can you talk about why some parents might think that not talking about it may be better for their kids?
- [03:21]
B
Yeah, I totally get that. It almost may be intuitive because we want to protect our children and keep them innocent. Some parents think, what if I tell my kid about it and then they get curious and look for it? Well, we owe it to our children to teach them how to thrive in this age, in this day and age. The goal is not innocence. The goal is teaching a child to make wise decisions. We teach them about all the other kinds of dangers and have drills. But somehow we think that pornography is different. It's not. It's a danger, just like every other danger. The proactive, intentional approach, where you are working to create digital defense skills. When kids know what pornography is, why it's harmful, and what to do when they see it, then and only then do they have a real choice to reject it. And they have the beginning of a defense, which, of course, in the end, it's up to them. And I have so many stories of kids. One boy, like seven years old, they were just going to ride bikes in the cul de sac, but they went inside, and his teenage brother said, hey, come over. We want to show you something, and showed these little boys pornography. His mother had talked to him about it. He knew what to do. He went home, he told her about it. She was able to debrief him and help him to process and neutralize those memories. And she told me our plan actually worked beautifully. She could have never predicted that that situation was going to happen, but she was so glad that her son was prepared and he knew what to do, and he knew to come and tell her and that she was a safe person to talk to about this.
- [05:26]
A
Yeah, because they have so many questions. They'll hear things at school. One of my sons, when he was in fifth grade, we did the maturation clinic, and I went with him, but I'd already talked to him about everything. We'd already gone over everything at home. And he was telling me that at lunch, some of the kids were talking about the maturation clinic, and they were giving the wrong information. Like. And speaking of innocence, I just had two researchers on the podcast. They're PhD level researchers and they interviewed a bunch of women who have been through betrayal, trauma. And one of the things they found was that women felt like their quote, unquote, innocence had harmed them. They wish they would have had abuse education. They wish they would have had sexual abuse education. They wish they would have had more education about healthy sex because in general was. They were religious and it was sort of like, don't have sex until you're married. And then once you're married, your husband will just show you what to do. You don't need to be educated about it. Well, a lot of them had experienced sexual abuse from their husbands and they didn't even know it was sexual abuse. All of them had experienced sex, sexual coercion. They didn't know that was sexual coercion. So the knowledge of this is what abuse is. These are the elements of healthy sex. What I love about your materials is that they teach these healthy concepts without saying the word sex to prepare children for when that conversation will happen in the future.
- [06:58]
B
In the book for kids ages 7 and older talks just a little bit about objectification, how pornography objectifies people's bodies. And instead of seeing them as a whole person who deserves to be treated with love and respect, they're just seen as a body or some kind of compilation of body parts. And when you objectify a person, it's easier to hurt them. And that's another harm of pornography, because pornography shows people being mean and acting like that's fun. And so is hurting people a good way to treat somebody? No. So that just starts to teach that basics of healthy sex is respectful and kind and involves the whole person and involves trust, whereas porn teaches the exact opposite. It involves violence, disrespect, degradation, objectification. And you can't tell me that watching pornography for years and years and then going into a marriage, that that's not going to affect your sexual template, your expectations and your behavior. And there's quite a few studies that show that that is true, that people who look at porn have a harder time having a healthy relationship. So turns out there's quite a few studies that show the mental health harms of pornography and how pornography is associated with a wide range of mental health harms, not only in children and adolescents, but also in adults. I would say there's more studies with adults. Obviously pornography is associated with greater loneliness. Pornography predicts depression and anxiety. There was a study that showed both general and aggressive pornography use alone were associated with less relationship satisfaction and relationship stability, even when accounting for a range of potentially confounding variables. One that was in Germany, and this was with over 1500 German speaking pornography users ages 18 to 76, which showed that users with problematic porn use scored significantly higher in a wide range of problems. Obsessive compulsive behavior, depression, anxiety, hostility, phobic anxiety, paranoid ideation. And also they scored significantly worse in every measure of psychological functioning considered, including again, ocd, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety, hostility, phobic anxiety, paranoid ideation, and psychoticism. And they also found that these results were elevated to a clinically relevant degree when compared with the general population. The intensity of these problems were categorized as severe psychological distress. I could go on and on, but basically using pornography creates very poor mental health outcomes. Kids should know that pornography does harm their mental health. There's so many studies that show this is true. The other problem with kids using pornography, there's so many problems, but one of them is the dopamine. It sets your dopamine level so high that normal things that kids used to really enjoy, like exploring the backyard and looking for bugs, you know, are just boring. And so it's messing with the dopamine in the brain. What would those kids be learning and developing? So there's lost opportunity for normal development. We see that also in pornography. It does appear to delay normal social development, cognitive development. These are all things that parents need to be concerned about when it comes to handing a device to a child.
- [11:21]
A
As you've been working with parents over the years to help them educate their kids about these harms, have you seen any gender differences between information that. That boys need and girls need?
- [11:35]
B
Yes, I have. Girls often get into pornography in a different way than boys do, but they often end up in the same place. You know, girls are very interested in relationships, so they like stories. And they will be pulled in through erotic literature, through fanfiction, even through anime and cartoons. And so they'll be pulled in that way, but they often end up with the video porn. So I've been writing a book just for girls to teach them the harms of pornography. Not only themselves as they watch it, but they're harmed by it if they get into a relationship with somebody that is also watching it. There's quite a bit of research now that shows that if both partners in a relationship watch pornography together, they have like threefold risk for infidelity, which is harmful to a relationship.
- [12:40]
A
Well, and we view porn as infidelity at betrayal, trauma, recovery. So they're already. Yes, being unfaithful to each other. If they.
- [12:49]
B
Absolutely.
- [12:49]
A
They're just both being unfaithful to each other at the same time.
- [12:53]
B
Absolutely. We want to help girls understand that there are other ways that you can get into porn. It's not just the bad pictures you see, it's also the bad pictures that can be created in your mind through books and stories. And even cartoon porn is dangerous and addicting.
- [13:13]
A
Well, Kristin, your work is incredible. My kids love it. I'm so grateful. It organizes things in a way that is easy to approach the topic. So I'm like, win win. Go to defendyoungminds.com to learn more about her resources. Thank you so much Kristen for spending time talking with me today.
- [13:32]
B
Thank you Anne. It's been a pleasure.
- [13:35]
A
If you've already purchased a copy of my book Trauma Mama Husband Drama on Amazon, please circle back and give it a five star rating. A lot of women are searching for books to figure out what to do about their husband and rating. Trauma Mama will also help them find this podcast, which is free to everyone. And of course your donations help keep this podcast going. Go to btr.org, scroll to the bottom and click on support the BTR podcast until next week. Stay safe out there.