Spectrum in Review Part 2

Shame.
Shame is part of what I call (this isn't original) the "internal treadmill": the thoughts that keep churning through the mind because of such constant conditioning. We want to get off but we just can't. We gay men have been given so many negative messages for so long, the messages just keep rolling along like a treadmill. Some people call it the "tapes" that keep playing in the mind. "This is immoral", "This is not normal", "This is inferior", "This is subject to ridicule", "This will bring unhappiness", "This will disappoint your Mother".
As children we learned to be "hyper-vigilant". The messages came at us ubiquitously - the messages about how we were supposed to act and what we were supposed to like. We became guarded about just about every move we made, else we would be singled out as being different. This guardedness still haunts me now, and it is largely unconscious. I wonder how the guy in the next car at a stop light is evaluating me. Does he know I'm gay just by looking at me and seeing the way I grip the wheel?
Anyway, the thing is, in my case, what I remember from my childhood are the treatment I received by being girl-like. Not sure if that's a Gay Thing or not. There are plenty of "effeminate" straight boys and there are plenty of "masculine" gay boys. No one is even really "gay" or "straight" until puberty anyway, are we?? Anyway, the thing is, you are treated badly if you are a boy who acts like a girl, and since "femininity" is associated with being gay, it's mixed in somehow with disdain for gay people. Anyway, the thing is, in my case, by brother was often very condescending and abusive to me because I was a sissy. He still is condescending and abusive, not for being a sissy I suppose, but because he is just abusive. It's all so similar to the crap I get from people in general because I am quiet. "Are you always so quiet?" People ask. "Are you always so condescending", I want to respond. It's a little different from the Gay Thing, it's just another thing people are prejudiced about. Somehow quietness is associated with naivete, and needyness. As if I need to be protected from the harsh world because I am "little quiet David". (Hmm, well, maybe I do need to be protected from the harsh world.) Anyway, the thing is, my brother has a number of alcoholic behaviors, for instance, ridiculing non-drinkers, specifically me, because of being on our "high horse" and being too "good" for him. He thinks I am goody-two-shoes, while he is a man-of-the-world, with experience and wisdom that I'll never know. Anyway, the thing is, all these forces causing my low self-esteem have combined together to create a colorful palette of abuse from all directions, like a canvas of differently colored vomit. Perhaps it's good to keep in mind the fact that often the reason people act superior is to cover their own insecurity. So now that I do have a nice group of gay friends, sometimes I still feel inferior because I fell like don't fit in to their group. Outcast among the outcasts. I get the same condescending crap from fellow gay guys about being quiet that I do from anybody else. There is always chattering about sex, about whether one is a "top" or a "bottom" and so on. This "top" and "bottom" business is really kind of annoying because as gay people we have supposedly been fighting against the idea of being labeled, but here we go labeling ourselves.
There is this feeling that there must be a "prince" out there to be a savior, it's called the "Cinderella" complex, I guess, the romantic ideal, where someone with an unhappy life fantasizes about a life with a great lover. I have a picture in my head, I've mentioned this before, of living in a cool house in Victorian Village, with M_, and everything in its place, and all the bad feelings having vanished. Somebody comes along who seems good at first, but who does not turn out to be the Prince; since the romantic picture did not come true, it breaks up. I think I am over this romantic vision. I hope so, anyway. I realize that any two people will have misunderstandings blah-de-blah-de-blah - books have been written about it.
And the messages that set off those "tapes" just keep coming out of everywhere; the media, our families, and those around us. What can we do to mitigate the triggering of the negative reactions?
Something that has helped me is cognitive therapy. This therapy teaches one to actively pay attention to the mind's reaction to situations and apply reasonable responses. Our minds often automatically start the negative "tapes" even without our conscious awareness. Cognitive therapy, first, asks the subject to pay attention to the feelings one has and the triggers that caused the feelings. Then once the triggers become more recognizable, one must notice the automatic reaction, and weigh the reaction against its reasonableness. For instance, when I was in grad school I was often involved in conversations among my fellow students about technical subjects, and more often than not, I had no idea what they were talking about. My automatic response was to feel stupid and unworthy of being there. Had I known about cognitive therapy then, I would have caught myself in this reaction and thought about whether it was truly reasonable to consider myself inferior. Perhaps my colleagues were discussing something so narrowly technical, no one else could really reasonable be expected to understand it.
The messages gay men receive from everywhere can trigger us emotionally, like a script. We must see our own recognition of the triggers and our reactions to them in order to rise above these automatic scripts. We must tap in to the sensible and the compassionate rather than to the part of the brain that follows the old scripts. The ability to say to ones self "I do not deserve to feel bad" takes a certain amount of power as well as knowledge. Facing a confrontation with confidence rather than shame takes power. Not physical power to vanquish an external enemy, but internal power to maintain one's sense of reason, compassion, and esteem. Sometimes we may have the knowledge, but still wallow in our own conflicted thoughts as an avoidance, and convince ourselves we don't really deserve to have the power. I also helps to remember that gay and sensitive men are not villlified in all societies. In fact, there are some Native American communities who respect gay men as spiritual bridges between the masculine and the feminine realms.


Avoidance. Acceptance.
Avoidance is doing anything other than facing the problem. If the problem is "why do I feel so crappy", we often sit and dwell on the problem rather than solving it. Ironically, then, thinking about the problem too much is actually avoidance. This can be a vicious cycle because thinking about the problem too much just brings on more depression. Someone said "Depression is anger without motivation."
It may help in these situations to realize that the crappy feelings can come from inner conflicts. Shame and self-pity come in large part from a divided self where one part of the self is judging another part. If I say "I am a bad person", it's as if one "me" were standing there scolding the other "me". What right does that judging part have to judge the other part? Perhaps it has some right sometimes, but this chronic feeling of shame and guilt is very destructive. A group member suggested the idea of getting "in touch with the inner shithead". What he meant by this was accepting the fact that it's ok to feel bad occasionally. In other words, one of the things the "blaming" part of ourselves is upset about may be the feeling lousy itself. This strengthens the vicious cycle. "I am a bad person because I feel bad and unmotivated". Sometimes we simply need to forgive ourselves about feeling bad and just accept the idea that we may have the blues, and that's ok. Feeling bad about feeling bad gets in the way of figuring out the real root of the problem. It's avoidance.
One of my revelations was to realize that acceptance is not the same as stagnation. In other words accepting that a problem exists does not mean we intend to live with the problem. As an example, as a software engineer I often encountered very frustrating bugs in my programs. I would become flush with anger and frustration when it took hours to figure out a totally unexpected problem. The aggravation comes ot only from the bug itself, but from having planned to do task A, task B, and so on, then running into a problem during "A". "Aargh ! I will never get to B or C today!". The next day was always better because I had accepted the bug. I have accepted the fact that I may have to spend the day finishing "A"; while "B" and "C" will have to wait. I take the time to solve the bug without being so upset about it. It may sound paradoxical at first, but the best way to solve a problem is to first accept it.


Relationships.
It's almost become a cliche that we choose partners who are just like our parents. Why? Well, when we grow up we are assimilated to the environment that our parents and siblings have created. This environment is all we know at the time, and we associate it with the protection of home. Even if it's abusive, it's still "home". Sometimes the most attention given to a child is given in conflict. So the child associates conflict with "love". So the partner who reminds one of "home" is attractive, even if that home life was lousy. These dynamics are usually totally unconscious, so we end up having no idea how we got into this terrible situation where our partners cause the same old grief that our parents gave us. Often times partners play certain roles, for instance the "caregiver" (A) and the "needy" (B). "A"s have a need to make things ok. They receive gratification from being in control. Maybe as children they helped keep siblings under control to please the parents. Maybe they always got to choose what to do because of permissive parents. Meanwhile "B"s receive gratification from letting someone else make the decisions. Maybe they were rewarded for passivity in childhood somehow. Often these relationships run into problems because "A" will become frustrated and "unneeded" if "B" behaves independently without need for help. Meanwhile "B" can become frustrated if "A" wants to do too many things that "B" doesn't want to do. They both end up feeling the same lousy way they felt as children when things were going wrong.
Conflict inevitably arises in every relationship. The feelings of initial infatuation and bliss fade when the newness fades away. Some people are "addicted" to this feeling of "new love", and change partners every 8 months or so. When the newness fades away, the flaws in the other person become more evident. We say "is this the right person?" "Why am I feeling the same lousy way I felt when I was a kid ?"
I think it's a simplification to say we end up with people who are "just like our parents". It is a little more accurate to say that our minds are recognizing patterns that were learned as children. The personal conflicts of today resonate with the conflicts of childhood, just as the good feelings of new love resonate with the good feelings of home life. A mature relationship evolves from facing the conflicts and learning how to live through them. Living through conflict is not a passive activity. It takes conscious willingness to deal with the uncomfortable feelings. But in facing them you are standing up to the negative patterns of yesterday and not letting junk from years ago control you.
Whenever I drive through Victorian Village I get a little bit sad because a scenario enters my head: the scenario of what my life was supposed to be. I was supposed to have a soul-mate like M_ and we were supposed to each have incredibly interesting jobs at the University or Battelle, and we were supposed to live in one of these beautiful restored houses on Neil Avenue.
But further thought reveals that there is a great contradiction. On one hand, I am all sad and wispy because, instead of my scenario, I have this stupid little life now where I have no idea what I'm doing. On the other hand, my low self-esteem still follows me around and I realize that I do not deserve that beautiful life. There is no way I realistically could have gotten there because I never did have enough self esteem to go for it.
Brooding about the past is a very useless endeavor. Somehow I have to take some comfort in the fact that I always made decisions as best as I knew how, even though those decisions were clouded by low self-worth. Maybe with a little push M_ would have realized that I would be a better partner for him that that woman he ended up marrying. Maybe it's a complete fantasy to think he is anything but hetero. It seems like he really loved me, but maybe that's one of those fabricated memories. I need to let him go, rather than keep waiting for him to show up at my door.
Another cliche we hear often is "I need to fix my own problems before I can ever have a relationship". But it can be argued that the best way to discover some of those problems and really deal with them is by having a relationship. It's easy to ignore ones own dysfunctionalities by avoiding them in isolation. It's the relationships in life that help us to grow.
The writer Joe Kort suggests that relationships go through three stages: First the partners are enamored with each other and happy to have found a new lover. Second, the luster fades and the partners see the flaws in each other and in themselves. This is the difficult part, where there are moments of extreme insecurity, power struggles, and even resentment. But if a partnership can survive this stage it moves on to the third stage where there is greater and more profound understanding and love of one another. The second stage can be an enormous growth experience where one's neuroses and insecurities can be examined in the context of a relationship. This examination makes us stronger and more compassionate.

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