Don’t Take Your Teenage Son to Therapy.."is a disservice to the whole family, unless the adults in the family are willing to work on their part of the issue"
Don’t Take Your Teenage Son to Therapy
Considering how many articles I’ve written defending therapy for unwanted same-sex attraction, you may be surprised by this headline. Nonetheless, it is true: I strongly recommend that you NOT take your teenaged son for therapy to cure him of his same-sex attraction. You will not get the results you are looking for, and you may make the situation worse.
Let me explain.
I recently attended a conference of the International Foundation for Therapeutic and Counseling Choice, a professional association of Christian counselors who advocate for the rights of clients to choose therapists who will help them achieve their personal life goals. This includes clients who want to lessen their feelings of same-sex attraction and the patterns of thoughts and behavior that accompany those feelings. This association formed in part to oppose the worldwide effort to ban so-called conversion therapy, reasoning that the term “conversion therapy” is so broadly defined that it includes client-chosen, client-directed talk therapy, along with the tortuous practices that the term “conversion therapy” itself is calculated to suggest.
I was interested to hear one of the therapists tell the following story. I paraphrase from memory:
One day I heard a struggle taking place outside my office door. I saw a man pulling a teenaged boy toward my office. The boy was literally clinging to something to keep himself from coming into my office.
I told the man that dragging his son into therapy was not likely to be beneficial. “Why don’t you come to my office?” I asked. “We can talk about your family and your issues.”
The man came once or twice, and never returned.
Real Data
This reminded me of a conversation I had with my colleague Fr. Paul Sullins, about his research (summarized here) defending the general helpfulness of talk therapy for addressing unwanted same-sex attraction.
Sullins’s overall data shows that a person’s risk of suicide declines after receiving some form of therapy to address unwanted same-sex attraction. But in some of the research, an important exception to this general finding sometimes emerges: A person who was a minor at the time he received therapy from a religious leader was more likely to attempt suicide later.
When I saw this, I said, “Whoa, padre. What’s this all about?”
Sullins took off his statistician hat and put on his priest hat. “I can tell you exactly what this is about,” he said, and went on to explain.
There are at least two factors at work. The first is the mere fact that the teenager is “taken” to therapy by a parent. An unwilling client is unlikely to benefit from any type of therapy. Many therapists, like the one I mentioned at the beginning, are reluctant to even attempt to treat a reluctant client.
The second factor is that family dynamics often play a role in the development of a persistent same-sex attraction. A same-sex-attracted young man may have some kind of “father wound” or a wounded sense of his own masculinity. He may have conflict with his father or find his father to be an unattractive role model. He may be smothered by his mother or be her “confidante,” a role his father really should be playing.
To make matters worse, the minor child still has to live within the existing family dynamics. His attempts to change some areas of his life may disrupt the family’s dysfunctional patterns. Under these circumstances, therapy can easily become a source of even greater distress for the young person.
How Treatment Works
In short, it is not fair for parents to take a reluctant child to a therapist and say, “Fix my kid.” It is just not going to work.
By contrast, a person who goes to therapy as an adult is almost certainly going for reasons of his or her own. The adult client is not under the stress associated with living within the same family system that was problematic in the first place.
By the way, Sullins did not publish these results; he thought the sample size was too small to derive reliable conclusions. I’m presenting this information, preliminary though it may be, so that parents can weigh these common-sense considerations and make up their own minds about it. (This is how adult citizens in a free society treat each other.)
Enacting sweeping bans on anything that “attempts to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity” is grossly unfair to the many adults who are fully capable of choosing a therapist who will help them achieve their own goals. It is unfair to struggling young people to preemptively rule out exploring potentially important topics, such as abuse, pornography exposure, or complicated family dynamics. The “bans” have a chilling effect on topics that may lead into the “forbidden area” of “trying to change” someone. It is also unfair to the families in which the parents and children are willing to work together to explore the challenges the child may be experiencing.
But putting all these (unfortunately unavoidable) political considerations aside and just addressing the parents, I reiterate: Taking a reluctant child to therapy for same-sex attraction makes the child the focal point of the family’s problems. This is a disservice to the whole family, unless the adults in the family are willing to work on their part of the issues. You can’t make the child change. You also can’t make him or her want to change.
I strongly suggest you find the support you need. Numerous ministries serve families with these issues. The Encourage apostolate helps the family members of same-sex-attracted persons to grow spiritually. Desert Stream Living Waters has resources for concerned family members.
Commit yourself to strengthening your prayer life. Face your own issues, whatever they may be. That gives you the best chance of finding lasting peace and spiritual growth for yourself and your family.
Author’s note: This discussion refers exclusively to therapy for same-sex attraction. Gender identity issues present a raft of different issues that need to be discussed separately.
The Ruth Institute is a global nonprofit organization, leading an international interfaith coalition to defend the family and build a civilization of love. Founder and President Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse is the author of The Sexual State: How Elite Ideologies are Destroying Lives and Love and Economics: It Takes a Family to Raise a Village. Subscribe to the group’s newsletter and YouTube channel to get all its latest news. You can also subscribe to the Ruth Institute’s channel on Locals, the free-speech alternative to YouTube.
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