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I’ve posted on the excellent book, Do Hard Things before. Today, a teen inspired me to write more on this issue.
I remember it distinctly. I’m sitting in the principal’s office, this time in the principal’s chair fixing his computer. I’m 16… Trigonometry class is going on down at the high school where I’m supposed to be. But, the grade school principal called because his computer wasn’t working. I was called down to the high school office, which happened fairly often for this reason, to go down to the elementary school to fix a computer problem. My teachers didn’t care…I was getting all A’s and at the top of my class.
The elementary school principal starts laughing as I’m sitting in his chair. I say to him, “What?” He says, “Oh, I just remember when we were sitting in opposite chairs. I always thought you wouldn’t amount to sh*t. Now look at us…You’re sitting in my chair, and I’m sitting where you used to sit.” He laughs heartily again. I laughed and made some dumb flippant comment about how things change. You see, he was right. I remember sitting where he was sitting a lot as a child. He had told me, “I wanted to nail your as*, but I never could catch you.” He felt this way for all of the bad things I had done, but he had trouble catching me. I really did deserve to be punished a great deal more than I was. Somehow, in my teen years, I managed to gain some maturity and turned my life around. People forgave me, and respected me. I appreciated that. I think I have my father to thank in part, who worked harder than anyone I have ever known. Was he perfect? No. Was I? No.
Is it hard to raise a child as a teen….you betcha. Do I believe teens are capable of doing hard things? Without a single doubt. Go ahead and grow up when you’re a teenager. You won’t regret it. Be willing to work hard. Who cares if adults don’t think you are capable of achieving hard things? I didn’t. I turned my rebellion into independence and hard work. If you’re a teen, I encourage you to do the same.
Look at the ability to reason and be mature that this teen shows with respect to abortion.
They say it has no harmful effects. And Roe v. Wade was based on a lie. That Roe (Norma McCorvey) had concocted because she felt she need an illegal abortion. She concocted a story that she had been raped, and the attorney’s told her she didn’t even need to be present in the court proceedings.
As she said, “My experience with pro-abortion leaders is that they are snobs. They claim that they care about women and their rights but, in my experience, they care for nothing, not even themselves in a way,” to WorldNetDaily. She ended up not even having a single abortion, but was driven to the point of attempted suicide because of her experiences.
I have known women who completely repressed many details of the whole abortion experience (the name of the man who fathered the baby, the emotional reaction, the experiences in the clinic and so forth). As a result of the repression and unresolved feelings, there may be a number of consequences (depression, strong feelings of guilt, psychosomatic symptoms, anxiety). Even with women who consciously believe it must have had little effect on them because they “never think about it.” But there is always an instant reaction when abortion comes up in conversation, secretiveness, and blocking from awareness. One woman referred to ”it” as she called it in her mind. Eventually, she expressed what she really thought, “I killed a baby,” and this was extremely difficult and painful for her. It was how she felt deep down, but could never express. What they don’t tell you is that women who have an abortion always think about what they would have named the baby. A woman might think of a name that she would have given the baby and then end up marrying a man with that same name. Or, she might have a child later and name that child after the aborted child. These types of things happen with an unconscious wish to reverse what had taken place. One guy I knew felt tremendously guilty for years for his role in helping his girlfriend get an abortion.
DO NOT believe the rhetoric about abortion. It has longstanding negative effects on the men and women involved. If you don’t believe you can raise the child, please put them up for adoption. You will be much better off in terms of your mental health in the long run.
I’m not a member of the APA (the American Psychological Association), because the APA is extremely active in the political arena promoting liberal causes and agendas. They attempt, through political activism, press releases, and even their code of ethics, to push their morality onto society and practicing psychologists.
On Homosexuality
See the following official Q&A portions taken from the APA’s website:
Is Sexual Orientation a Choice?
No, human beings can not choose to be either gay or straight. Sexual orientation emerges for most people in early adolescence without any prior sexual experience. Although we can choose whether to act on our feelings, psychologists do not consider sexual orientation to be a conscious choice that can be voluntarily changed.
Can Therapy Change Sexual Orientation?
No. Even though most homosexuals live successful, happy lives, some homosexual or bisexual people may seek to change their sexual orientation through therapy, sometimes pressured by the influence of family members or religious groups to try and do so. The reality is that homosexuality is not an illness. It does not require treatment and is not changeable.
However, not all gay, lesbian, and bisexual people who seek assistance from a mental health professional want to change their sexual orientation. Gay, lesbian, and bisexual people may seek psychological help with the coming out process or for strategies to deal with prejudice, but most go into therapy for the same reasons and life issues that bring straight people to mental health professionals.
What About So-Called “Conversion Therapies”?
Some therapists who undertake so-called conversion therapy report that they have been able to change their clients’ sexual orientation from homosexual to heterosexual. Close scrutiny of these reports however show several factors that cast doubt on their claims. For example, many of the claims come from organizations with an ideological perspective which condemns homosexuality. Furthermore, their claims are poorly documented. For example, treatment outcome is not followed and reported overtime as would be the standard to test the validity of any mental health intervention.
The American Psychological Association is concerned about such therapies and their potential harm to patients. In 1997, the Association’s Council of Representatives passed a resolution reaffirming psychology’s opposition to homophobia in treatment and spelling out a client’s right to unbiased treatment and self-determination. Any person who enters into therapy to deal with issues of sexual orientation has a right to expect that such therapy would take place in a professionally neutral environment absent of any social bias.
There are some incredible statements in here (people cannot choose their sexual orientation, homosexuals cannot change, and therapy should take place in the absence of any social bias). I’ve worked with a number of homosexuals who did in fact, choose their sexual orientation. I won’t make a blanket statement like the APA does, but there are homosexuals who do in fact choose this lifestyle. Sometimes after living many years as a heterosexual. Now take homosexuals cannot change. This is another remarkable statement from the organization that purports to be at the pinacle of knowledge on changing behavior. They reject studies showing that homosexuals can change by criticizing the research methodology. At the same time, almost anyone who would try to conduct rigorous studies in a university setting would be ostracized and likely labeled as unethical. I don’t mind them criticizing research, that’s fine. But to flatly answer NO to the question of whether people can change their sexual orientation is nothing less than pure politically biased ideology. That brings me to the third remarkable statement, “Any person who enters into therapy to deal with issues of sexual orientation has a right to expect that such therapy would take place in a professionally neutral environment absent of any social bias.” First of all, there does not exist a neutral environment, absent of any social bias. Second, if you took the approach advocated by the APA, you would be taking the approach of a liberal political bias. To translate, they are saying, you had better not believe that homosexuals can change, or have the right to seek change. To do so would be “social bias.”
On Abortion
The APA thinks it’s a good thing. Why, look at this study purporting to show that having an abortion has no effect on a person’s well-being, but being an unwed mother (i.e., not choosing to have an abortion) has the biggest negative effects on well-being. Having worked with women who have had abortions, I can tell you that at least sometimes, they carry a heavy burden of guilt and regret that may be expressed in complex psychological forms not necessarily tapped by asking a question about their emotional well-being (as an example psychosomatic symptoms).
The APA is against parental consent in the case of an adolescent seeking an abortion. More on the APA’s support for abortion here with the admission that the mental health effects of abortion are irrelevant because abortion is a “civil right.”
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