calling all gays! stop the woman-hating...

I've noticed it more and more lately. Comments about girls being gross, "no vaginas allowed" proclamations at a party, references to "axe wounds," and conversations about "scary lesbians".

The misogyny of gay male culture has caught my attention in a way that has both shamed me and provoked me to be more outspoken against anti-woman, anti-lesbian, and anti-feminine comments I hear from those around me, non-hetero and hetero alike. It's not fun knowing that I have, at times, actively participated in such conversations, and made those comments. The feeling is similar to the regret I feel about the homophobic statements I made in high school when I was a fearful, closeted, self-hating gay kid. Because of that, I like to think this newfound awareness of anti-woman comments is a positive sign of my own maturing and expanding understanding of the world around me and how I participate in it.

With the release of Katy Perry's song "E.T.," I found myself enjoying the beat and the music until I listened to the lyrics. Suddenly, I realized that I could not support a song where a woman sings about wanting to be "a victim," "infected," and filled with poison. However, many of my gay friends who adore the pop princess have been dismissive of my opposition. Sure, it's a small example, but as a self-identified lover of pop culture, I struggle with many of the messages that pop culture advocates that I ultimately don't.

A large part of my cognitive dissonance regarding anti-lesbian rhetoric has emerged from my close friendships with several queer women who I love dearly, and who are not "scary." They are sensitive, strong, intelligent, beautiful women who may fit some lesbian stereotypes, but who are obviously so much more (just as I may embody many stereotypes of gay men, but exceed those stereotypes to become--guess who?!--me!).

By definition, gay men don't "like" women. We're not attracted to them, we don't want to marry them, and we don't want to have sex with them. We "like" men of course! However, I believe there is no place for making condescending or derogatory comments about women. This extends to all negativity toward the "feminine," which comes up in comments about "queeny" or "femmy" men. There is a definite hierarchy that is somehow understood by gay men that the "masculine" ones are somehow better than the "fems." It's everywhere on hookup sites and gay personals: "masc only," "no fems."

I post this in the hopes of holding myself to a higher standard in terms of my words and actions, in order to be more in line with my own values. I believe that when we become more aware of the impact our words have, and reclaim our responsibility over them, we do good to ourselves and to all those around us.

"Words are, in my not so humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic, capable of both inflicting injury and remedying it." -Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part II

professional/personal ponderings

The other day at the counseling center, while visiting with my clinical supervisor from last semester, I was approached by a senior staff member who asked me if she could briefly consult with me about something. She proceeded to explain that she was seeing a gay-identified client who was struggling with a relationship, and expressed ambivalence about keeping the client or referring him to a gay-identified therapist, such as myself. She asked me, "How do you feel about being called 'the gay therapist'?" Taken aback, I was about to answer when suddenly my current supervisor walked into the room, and I was suddenly surrounded by past and current superiors.

I felt the wheels of my mind spinning, trying to negotiate the power differentials, the sexual orientation differentials, and the flattery, as well as the tokenization, of being asked such a question. Finally, I responded. My answer is not so important as the effect of having to produce an answer, and the broader issues connected to this experience.

This situation was the first significant time I was approached about the connection between my professional identity and my sexual identity. How do I feel about being called "the gay therapist?" It's a question I have thrown around within myself since I took on the role of a therapist. Even earlier, as I started my program, I asked myself, "How do I feel about being 'the gay psychologist'?" Navigating the realities of being a developing psychologist and psychotherapist has been challenging, yet quite meaningful to me. My advisor explained to me at the outset that it was my choice on how much to include my personal identity in my professional activities. She explained that she knows LGBTQ-identified psychologists (researchers and practitioners) who make all of their work LGBTQ-related. At the same time, she knows others whose professional interests are completely unrelated to their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Since that discussion, I have pondered many times what balance I seek to achieve in my life. Thus far, I have arrived at some tentative conclusions, though they are certainly subject to change as I gain more experience.

First of all, I see my professional work as my activism. My research interests are geared toward the clarification and deconstruction of oppressive systems and ideologies, and emancipation and affirmation of marginalized groups. Whether as a researcher, teacher, or clinician, I strive to be aware of ways I can accomplish these goals.

Yet as strongly as I feel about that activist spirit, I also desire both professional and personal balance, recognizing that I have many other goals and interests that lie outside of LGBT-related issues. Thus part of my process has been to develop as a well-rounded researcher, teacher, and clinician. Yes, my being gay allows me a perhaps privileged and unique perspective on issues surrounding sexual minorities. However, I don't want to see LGBTQ clients exclusively, and don't want to research only LGBTQ-related topics. I feel that to send such clients to therapists with the same gender identity experience or sexual orientation ghettoizes those populations, and does a disservice to both clients and clinicians alike. A better approach, I believe, acknowledges uniqueness while also affirming the commonalities that exist between all of us. People of all sexual orientations, ethnicities, ages, body types, gender identities, etc. have relationship issues, which are largely similar in nature and understandable by any well-intentioned and empathic therapist. While I would love to see LGBTQ-identified clients, I would also like to put forth that any competent therapist should be able to help those individuals, and that I as a gay man and a "gay psychologist" am perhaps no better suited to help them.

The short answer is: No, I don't mind being referred to as a "gay-identified therapist" if that would benefit a client and if I could provide some unique service or perspective because of my own identity. However, I believe that a greater, and higher, principle is to appreciate the commonalities between all people, and to do our best to be affirming and understanding of people who are different from us, since that is the way life works.

finding my spiritual home: part 3

I didn't intend to write a "part 3." But I have had somewhat of a reawakening these past couple months, which I feel the need to share and process through writing.

One evening in May, I went to an impromptu gathering at the Geller Center for Spiritual Development (which I began attending last fall semester). The guest speaker was a wonderful woman with such a light spirit, and wonderful spiritual knowledge and insights to share. I really felt a connection to her, and to the words she used, because they were the words I had begun using to describe my spiritual experiences and my spiritual awareness. That night, I was reminded of the incredible spiritual experiences I have had throughout my life. I had been feeling somewhat distant from that part of myself for a few months, and that night I felt a rekindled desire to learn to use my spiritual gifts for my good and the good of others.

Throughout my life, I believe certain people have been placed in my life as guides and sources of knowledge who have helped me grow and understand myself and my experiences more fully. My mom is one of them, along with a few other individuals with whom I have felt a powerful, soulful connection. Thankfully, a couple of them currently reside in Fort Collins, and they have been an important part of my current awakening.

This spiritual awakening has been healing, in that it has helped me integrate my spiritual past with my present experience. I believe that Mormonism provided me with a foundation for understanding the spiritual, for calling on the Divine and seeking personal guidance and direction. I had many sacred experiences within the Mormon context, which I continue to cherish and contemplate. I had been taught that if I ever departed from the "straight and narrow path" I would lose that connection to God (the Gift of the Holy Ghost), but my experience has been quite the opposite. Since accepting myself fully for who I am, I have felt an ever increasing connection to spiritual energy, and have continued to be guided, inspired, warned, and protected in amazing ways. As I continue to learn, I gain a greater appreciation for my spiritual heritage, and am thankful for it. This has been so helpful for me, since I no longer feel like I have rejected the religion of my birth, but have taken the best of what it offered me and have moved forward into the path I feel I need to travel.

I see now how I have always lived intuitively, following my feelings or the "vibes" I felt in order to navigate the world. I am currently reading Sonia Choquette's book Trust Your Vibes, which has given me a lot of insights into how to better understand spiritual energy and live a "six-sensory" life. Much of what has happened and is happening to me in the past few months is hard to explain, and sometimes might sound crazy, but I am loving the space I am in right now, and look forward to where I am going. I truly feel that this is a new and wonderful chapter in my spiritual/personal development, and I ultimately feel that my spiritual home is within me, around me, behind me, and in front of me, and that there are thrilling developments to come.

Namaste.

psychotherapy: being on both ends

And thus I have finished my first year of graduate school. Wahoo! Only four more to go. Actually, I am looking forward to the coming years of training, and I am grateful for this past year in which I have learned and grown so much personally as well as professionally. One unique aspect of my experience this year, particularly this past semester, was being a therapist and a client simultaneously.

During our second semester, my classmates and I began seeing real clients as therapists. With quite a bit of trepidation, we each called our first clients and scheduled appointments with them. All of us were fortunate enough to see two clients each over the semester, most of whom continued in therapy for several consecutive weeks. I saw one client for twelve weeks, and another for nine. For me, it was a beautiful experience. It was so affirming to receive positive feedback about my work from my supervisor and my professor, and especially from my clients. The experience greatly increased my confidence in my choice to become a counseling psychologist, and it feels great to know that I'm already good at psychotherapy.

About the same time as I started seeing my own clients, I sought out the services of a therapist in town to deal with some of the issues going on in my personal life. That has also been a wonderful learning experience. I was already a believer in psychotherapy, as I had seen a counselor at the BYU Career and Counseling Center in 2006. That was a significantly helpful experience, and was a major factor in my choice of profession. Yet it was interesting that although I believe in therapy, and although I am a therapist now, it was still hard to finally call, make an appointment, and then open up to my therapist in our sessions. When it's personal, it's much harder, and if anything I have gained a renewed respect for the amount of risk and energy clients put into therapy, even by taking the first step and calling to make an appointment. I consider myself a pretty self-aware and insightful person, yet it has taken me a few months to finally feel like I'm getting to the heart of my concerns and issues. Thus I can respect clients by allowing them to be where they need to be, and to share what they need to share. Being both a client and a therapist has provided me with a richer perspective on both worlds, and is as useful in my training as any class or practicum could be. And now, as I embark into the world of group psychotherapy (on the giving end), I look forward to gaining further experience and insight into the therapeutic process as well as my own personal growth.

quelques pensées

Ça fait longtemps que je n'ai pas écrit sur mon blog, et ça fait même plus longtemps que je n'ai pas écrit en français, ma deuxième langue "maternelle."  Donc j'écris ceci pour moi-même seulement, et je vous assure qu’il y aura beaucoup de fautes, mais je ne retiendrai mes compétences qu’en pratiquant, même avec des fautes.  Attention, c’est parti!

La vie s’est compliquée de plus en plus cette année, depuis que je suis revenu de New York.  Mon copain a cassé avec moi le jour après mon retour, et donc c’était des larmes et la dépression pour un couple de semaines, mais enfin je me suis rétabli, pour la plupart, et bien que je sois toujours un peu fâché contre lui, et que je me sente toujours un peu blessé, je vais bien.  C’est intéressant parce que j’ai rêvé de lui plusieurs fois ces dernières semaines, et chaque rêve était chargé d’une émotion distincte, ce qui m’a montré ma propre progression intrapsychique quant à cette rupture.  Dans les deux derniers, c’était moi qui l’a refusé, et donc pour moi ça montre que je ne veux plus rien savoir de lui, vraiment.

Mais l’école va très bien.  J’ai commencé à voir des clients en tant que psychothérapeute, et je commence à faire du progrès pour ma thèse.  Ma conseillère académique est merveilleuse, et elle m’a beaucoup aidé.  Je m’entends toujours très bien avec mes camarades de classe, et nous finirons bientôt notre première année !  C’est dingue ça !

Actuellement, je me sens très bien dans ma peau.  Je me sens confiant, beau, désirable, accompli, intelligent, et béni.  Je suis chanceux d’avoir tant d’opportunités de développement professionnel et personnel, et j’ai hâte de voir ce que je vais faire et qui je vais rencontrer dans les mois qui viennent.

De plus en plus, je reconnais que c’est en écoutant mes sentiments et mes intuition que je ferai les bons choix, que je serai où je dois être, et que je deviendrai la personne que je suis.  C’est réconfortant, parce que récemment j’ai vraiment senti que je fais les bonnes choses, que ce programme d’étude est parfait pour moi, et que je suis sur la bonne piste professionnel et personnel. 

C’est tout pour maintenant, mais je devrais faire ceci plus souvent, parce que je ressens déjà la frustration par rapport à mes compétences diminuées en français.  Mais bon….c’est la vie !

finding my spiritual home: part 2

In part 1, I discussed my former spiritual home, and in this part I hope to explain my current spiritual beliefs, values, and needs, and propose some possible “places” I might find a new spiritual home that fits them.

I currently identify as “spiritual but not religious.”  My personal dissatisfaction with religion stems from my experience in it, as well as a more objective observation of how it functions in the lives of other people.  I am not, however, anti-religion.  I find that religions provide a meaningful structure for the spirituality of many people, as well as a sense of belonging and community.  Because religion is heavily cultural, it is hard at times to separate a religion from the culture it relates to, thus making religion an integral part of the daily lives and cultural identity of its adherents.

Critics of religion cite the many religious conflicts (past and present) as evidence of religion’s harmful nature, but I find that argument misguided.  I would go a level deeper and say that difference of any kind has the potential to cause the same animosity that religion causes.  My own criticisms relate more directly to the idea that religion just does not work for me, at least right now.  My feeling is that if the church or religion you belong to is meaningful, helps you become who you want to be, and is overall helpful for you and not hurtful to yourself or others, then by all means, stay in it.  I also see that people sometimes hold onto their church or religion in unhealthy ways, particularly when the person and the religion are incompatible.  I have seen far too often individuals who cannot seem to let go of their religion, but who are also miserable or at best bewildered by being different and not feeling fully accepted by the general religious community.  Still, above everything I value self-determination and do my best not to judge people who either stay in or leave a religion, and I ask the same for others when they examine my personal experience.

In some ways, psychology has become my religion.  I am ambivalent about this idea, because while it is true that the ideas I have learned in my studies have helped me deconstruct many unhealthy attitudes and paradigms, I am also uncomfortable with being labeled as another “godless psychologist” who was led away from the doctrines of God by the philosophies of men.   Still, psychology is often the lens through which I view the world, and it helps me maintain a balanced, inclusive perspective of all aspects of life, including my spirituality.  Psychological principles provide the primary means through which I understand my experience of the world, which is also one of the main functions of religion, so on that ground you could say that psychology is my religion.  Because of this, I value reason, empirical evidence, and existential concerns as important parts of my spirituality.

Even from a young age, I have been a spiritually sensitive person.  I have had many significant spiritual, even sacred experiences, which I continue to cherish, though the way I frame them and explain them has changed over the years.  I believe in dreams, the metaphysical/supernatural, and an afterlife.  I have felt and continue to feel guidance from a higher power, and I still pray and meditate fairly regularly.  The most important part of my spiritual self is what I perceive to be a “center” or “core” with which I strive to remain in harmony.  I know when I am at peace and when I am not, and I try to make choices that are consistent with that place that I feel inside me that indicates when I am living in harmony with who I am.  Indeed, harmony is one of the key elements of my current belief system.  I strive to live in harmony not only with myself, but also with nature, other people, and with God.

Another important part of my spirituality is conscious, deliberate living.  I often seek to live with the five senses, to be fully present in the world I inhabit and sink my toes deep into the substance of life.  I feel like too many people (including myself for many years) do not go through life fully aware of what it means to be alive and to fully enjoy living.  They tend to go through the motions, not really thinking about what they do or believe.  I aspire to be as conscious as possible of what I believe, consume, feel, see, hear, touch, smell, taste, and say, as well as what others believe, consume, feel, see, hear, touch, smell, taste, and say.  The idea of deliberate living came to me from my reading of Thoreau’s Walden, which I consider one of my personal books of scripture.  Reading that book changed so many things about the way I see myself and the world, and his advocacy of deliberate and simple living touched my soul more than any book I have read.  The paradigm he paints in his writings serves as an ideal to which I aspire and try to implement.

For a couple years now, I have felt like a spiritual wanderer, packing around my beliefs and experience wherever I go, but never feeling like I found a place where I could put down spiritual roots and feel the same security and assurance I felt when I was younger.  I believe that when I do finally “come home” I will know it, but I do not know where that home is yet.  As I see it, there are several possibilities of potential spiritual homes:

My spiritual home might be within another religious community.  I have not ruled out this possibility, even though I do not consider myself religious.  Even when I was an active Latter-Day Saint, I enjoyed and drew significant spiritual satisfaction from visiting other religious communities, and I have sampled from many of the major Christian denominations, as well as a few other non-Christian religions (Buddhism and Hare Krishna).  As I said, I have had meaningful experiences in many of them, and I now sporadically visit some of the churches in Fort Collins.  While I might not believe everything that is sung or discussed in the services (as I do not consider myself a Christian), I do appreciate the structured time to think about my spirituality and to connect with a community of believers.  Indeed, the sense of community is the most attractive aspect of joining another religious congregation.  I feel that if I do so, it will have to be a congregation that is pretty “hands off” in reference to a person’s beliefs.  For this reason, I really enjoyed the Unitarian Universalist church I sometimes attended in Salt Lake City—you can be Christian, atheist, agnostic, or anything else and still participate in a church community that values social justice and activism.  Incidentally, I have started attending the Foothills Unitarian Church here in Fort Collins.

My spiritual home might be found in nature.  There is something inherently spiritual to me about nature, and I enjoy going on a walk in the woods or in a park to clear my thoughts and to meditate.  I will try to connect to nature through all of the five senses, trying to be fully present and part of the world around me.  This connectedness to the earth is increasingly important for me, as I view myself as simply a part of a whole that is the universe.  It is in nature that I can begin to feel something similar to what Thoreau must have felt, and like him I look to nature to learn important lessons about what it means to exist.  However, I’m not sure nature would be sufficient in meeting all of my spiritual needs, since I have become a “people person” and I place a lot of value on sharing and connecting with others.

For that reason, my spiritual home might be found in relationships with other beings.  I believe that humans are inherently relational beings, and there are some human qualities that can only be experienced by interacting with other people.  Love, service, generosity, sacrifice—these require us to interact with other beings in order to experience them fully.  I say “beings” because I mean to be inclusive of people, animals, and other spiritual entities (God, angels, spirits, etc.).  There is also something about sharing and connecting with others that is meaningful to me.  Lately my spiritual needs have been met simply by having a good discussion with another person about things that matter to us.  Connecting with another person is spiritual to me, and that connection can be emotional, intellectual, sexual, or physical.  It can be in the context of a romantic relationship, a friendship, a family relationship, or simply a person one meets in passing. 

My spiritual home might be found in myself.  Wherever I do find a place to settle and make spiritual roots again, I feel that this part will always ring true.  Ultimately, all one has in this life is oneself.  People, churches, and “spiritual states” come and go, and change is inevitable.  The one constant is “me.”  Upon leaving my previous spiritual home, I focused on what I believed, felt, needed, and sought, and that has been a central piece in my spiritual progression.  Such spiritual self-sufficience has proven useful to me because I have learned important lessons about myself.  Whether I find another spiritual home and wherever it is, I feel confident that I will continue to value many of the same things, and as long as I remain in harmony with myself and the world around me, I think any and all of the abovementioned ideas could help me develop spiritually and reach out of myself in order to make the world a better place.

finding my spiritual home: part 1

The concept of a “spiritual home” became personally meaningful to me last week while sitting and meditating in a church meeting a couple weeks ago.  While pondering my current spiritual standing, some questions came to mind:

Where is my spiritual home? 

What do I do there?

Is it inside me or outside of me?

This is especially significant because lately I have felt a longing to have a place I can call my spiritual home, since I left the religion of my birth and have since been defining and restructuring my beliefs for the last few years.  Perhaps it would be helpful to examine my past spiritual home to see what did and did not work for me, and then to describe my ideal spiritual home, in order to gain a better idea of what to look for. 

The spiritual home I was born into was the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, also known as the Mormon Church.  My family is descended from the original members of the church, and Joseph Smith, the founder, is my great-great-great-uncle.  I grew up in Utah, the heart of Mormonism, and had what I think is the typical Mormon upbringing.  I was blessed at birth, baptized and confirmed (given the Gift of the Holy Ghost) at age 8, ordained a deacon at 12, a teacher at 14, a priest at 16, and an elder at 18.  I went through the temple and received the ordinances there, and went on a 2-year mission to Montreal, Canada, at 19. 

Through all that time I was a 100%, true blue, orthodox Latter-Day Saint.  I believed what I was taught by my parents, church leaders, prophets, apostles, and bishops, and from a very young age I sought to conform completely to all of the standards and commandments of the Church, which I believed to come from God through his ancient and modern prophets.  I thoroughly internalized the doctrines and beliefs of the church, and sought to be “the perfect Mormon boy.”  I pulled it off, at least from an outsider’s view.  I was often praised for being such a good, obedient, upstanding young man in the church.  That felt good for sure, but there was another side to it, a darker side that tainted my blissful Saintly existence. 

What I call my “first gay memory” occurred when I was about three or four years old.  From that time I have many memories of feeling different, of being attracted or interested in the boys and men around me, and the development of my sexual orientation was a parallel process that I saw as directly at odds with my spiritual development in the Church.  The LDS Church is not gay-affirming, as its recent political moves have so clearly shown.  However, there has been much improvement.  I remember reading the book Mormon Doctrine by Bruce R. McKonkie, in which he describes homosexuality as a sin next to murder.  There were other church materials I read that were equally homophobic and misinformed, which only caused me to heap on the denial and repression of my sexual feelings even more.  While I appeared to be the “perfect Mormon boy” on the outside, on the inside I felt like a disgusting, evil sinner who could only hope that my good works would somehow balance things out such that I would be worthy for one of the lower heavens (there are multiple levels of heaven in Mormon theology).

I suppose the culmination of my Mormon experience was attending Brigham Young University when I returned from my mission.  BYU is the gem of the Church, and the policies of the institution serve to make it the epitome of what Latter-Day Saints represent, good and bad.  It was during my first semester there that my wall of denial and repression was broken down, and I began the long hard road of self-acceptance and understanding.  My coming out process was gradual, as I first attended the reparative-oriented Evergreen support groups, and it eventually led to me finally accepting my sexuality as part of who I am, and pursuing relationships with men.  

In terms of my original spiritual home, you could say that I chose to leave it, that I willingly disobeyed the house rules and thus put myself at odds with its mission and purpose.  While that may be true in some ways, I believe I did my best for a long time to fit in, to conform and obey, and ultimately it did not work.  For me at least.  I think that the LDS Church is a valid, helpful, and even beautiful spiritual home for many people, and if they are happy there I would never wish for them to leave.  At the same time, I believe that it is better to leave if you find it oppressive, and to search among the other existing spiritual homes, or even strike out on your own and build your own (whether it be a shack or a mansion).  That is the point I am at, and in "part 2" I will attempt to describe my ideal spiritual home and posit some ways I might be able to find it.