Growth and Intimacy for Gay Men

A Workbook

Christopher J Alexander

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780789001535
• eBook ISBN: 9781317791089
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Growth and Intimacy for Gay Men: A Workbook is an educational workbook for gay men that covers a variety of topics, including family of origin, addiction, self-image, dating and relationships, AIDS and multiple loss, and spirituality. Each chapter provides an overview of the mental health concerns of gay men, as well as exercises the reader can do to facilitate his personal understanding of the issues covered. While the book is written in nontechnical language, making it useful to the general public, its wide selection of workbook exercises makes it useful for psychotherapists and counselors working with gay men. Growth and Intimacy for Gay Men is written to the reader--with brief examples from the author's work as a clinical psychologist helping gay men. A central goal of the book is to normalize the feelings and experiences the reader has, as many gay men feel like they're the only ones with their feelings or experiences. The book's problem-solving approach addresses:

• family of origin--provides exercises to identify and examine gay men's role in the family, examine their childhood perceptions of being different, and help them map out family patterns and dynamics
• self-image--includes self-image assessment questionnaires and written exercises that challenge the reader to look at how they're affected by societal perceptions
• addiction--explores why gay men are vulnerable to addictive behavior and offers strategies for change and self-assessment exercises
• dating and relationships--covers the unique challenges faced by gay men, with exercises for single as well as coupled men
• AIDS and mental health--provides exercises to help the reader examine the impact of AIDS on his own life and to assess the impact of multiple loss and prolonged grief Readers can do the workbook exercises on their own, or therapists can assign chapters and exercises as homework, with clients bringing the completed assignment to therapy for more in-depth exploration and discussion. By providing informative chapters and useful exercises, Growth and Intimacy for Gay Men becomes an avenue through which gay men can understand their identity, experiences, and goals.

Chapter 1

Growing Up Gay: Gay Men and Families of Origin

I think that you first uncover [the past] by suffering and causing a great deal of pain. Unconsciously, you repeat, in situation after situation, the devastation of childhood. Again and again, you find yourself running against the same spear, and the spear keeps going right through the same wound, widening it and making it more and more painful. Eventually, if you are lucky, you come to understand that there is something very damaged about the way you envision yourself and with the way you love, and you begin the long process of healing.

Andrew Harvey

INTRODUCTION

A former client of mine once asked if I could meet with him and his mother during her upcoming visit. He had just recently disclosed to her that he had AIDS. She knew he was gay, but this had never been discussed in any depth between the two of them. She had flown in to see her son a few days prior to our meeting from the Midwest where her husband, choosing not to deal with his son’s illness or sexuality, had stayed behind. Though the three of us discussed many topics and feelings in our one hour together, what made an impresson on me the most was her shock and surprise at how many friends—good friends—her son had in his life. This visit afforded her the opportunity to see a life her son had that she knew little about. In addition to the grief of losing her son to AIDS, she was simultaneously confronted with the reality that her son had a surrogate family that was more loving, more supportive, and much closer and accepting of him than his real family was—or ever could be.

As gay men, many of us are familiar with viewing our friends as family—whether or not we have good relationships with our families of origin. The unconditional love and acceptance we receive from our friends is very important. Friends provide validation that we are OK as gay men, and our interactions with them do not have to entail countless hours of explaining, defining, and rationalizing who we are or how we got this way. For many of us, these friendships provide for us what others may receive from their own biological families.

Clearly, the role of family in our lives is tremendously important. In all my years of education and clinical training, more time was spent addressing matters pertaining to family of origin than to any other subject—and for good reason. Regardless of why clients initially come to me for psychological services, issues pertaining to parents, siblings, and/or other relatives inevitably become an important focus of the psychotherapy. Sometimes clients need to address early childhood experiences. At other times, current relationships with family members are of central concern, particularly concerning issues of coming out or other related self-disclosures. Some people achieve a feeling of resolution regarding these matters while others are unable to obtain relief from the pain they feel concerning family issues.

Why are families so important to us? We certainly know that families do not have a particular hold on us just because we are gay men. A look at the lives of the more famous people in our society, from politicians to entertainers, shows how family dramas get played out universally. Popular examples include former President Reagan’s children and their public relationship struggles with their family. Other examples include entertainers Michael Jackson and Roseanne Barr, both who have tales of childhood torment and abuse.

In this chapter, I will discuss families and childhood experience from a psychological and developmental perspective. I think it is helpful to understand a little about family, child, and personal development in order to give broader meaning to the concepts and topics I will be discussing in this book. The end of the chapter includes some exercises you can do to help clarify and understand your own family structure, dynamics, and characteristics. For now, I will start by taking a closer look at early childhood experiences, particularly those first hours, months, and years that we enter this world.

EARLY MOTHERING

We are born into this world totally helpless. Without the intervention of others, typically provided by our mothers, we would die. Our needs at this time require that someone feed us, clothe us, protect us from harm, provide nurturing touch, etc. Studies suggest that our vulnerability at this time of life is so pronounced that even temporary separations from our mother leave us susceptible to prolonged symptoms of depression. This period is a time in an infant’s life when he is intimately engaged with his mother. Thus the term, symbiosis is often used to describe the close bond experienced by both. The infant recognizes that his mother is indispensable for his well-being, and knows that she will help him negotiate the world until he is able to do so himself. Psychologists often define this time as the beginning of personality development because the infant begins the task of establishing what is “me” from what is “not me.”

As the infant grows, he is still highly dependent upon his mother but is eventually able to take his own initiative. This begins with being able to sit up, crawl across the floor, use sounds to communicate feelings and needs, reach for desired objects, and eventually walk and eat on his own. As infants make these strides, they do so with the notion of establishing independence from the mother. Yet, it is characteristic of the child to look back to make sure the mother is still there. You may have seen, for example, a young child leave the room only to rush back in with a look of accomplishment on his face. Eventually, the infant moves toward being away from his mother for longer periods of time.

The path toward autonomy is slow. It depends upon the mother encouraging such initiative while simultaneously providing assurance to the child that, in his efforts toward finding “me,” she will not abandon him. Good-enough mothering, another psychological term, refers to the mother’s capacity to meet the infant’s developmental and changing needs, provide for feelings of safety and security, encourage appropriate levels of independence while setting necessary limits, and communicating to the child unconditional love and acceptance. When we experience this type of mothering in our infant years, we are generally prepared to master the various tasks and responsibilities that confront us in life.

This all sounds simple enough, but time and again there are mothers who cannot foster or allow independence on the part of a child. For them, the child’s efforts at becoming a separate individual are very threatening, and they utilize verbal and nonverbal cues that communicate to the child that it is not OK to individuate. Such mothers may react to individuation on the part of the child with a look of disappointment, withdrawal, or with efforts toward preventing independence. Infants, being highly sensitized to the mother’s emotions and fearing abandonment, will often yield to their mother’s desires. These children, feeling that they have done something wrong, typically begin to manifest feelings of shame, a concept which will be explored in depth later in this book.

And so it is that the mother and infant engage in an intense relationship that entails much more than basic feeding and nurturing. Our early relationship with our mother lays the groundwork for our sense of self, our capacity for future intimate relationships, and our early experience of growing up in what we later come to know as our family. This does not mean that we are not affected by our fathers, siblings, or other important people in our early years. Rather, the mother-child relationship is unique in the way in which it provides us with our first experiences of trust and identity.

GENDER ROLE

A unique dynamic for us as males is that this early mothering relationship occurs with someone of the opposite gender. Though it takes a while for us to become aware of sex differences, mothers are certainly aware of this from day one. Studies suggest that mothers treat male and female infants equally in the first six months of life. However, after approximately six months, mothers tend to touch their girl children more, talk to them more, and give them more nonverbal contact (Some psychologists suggest that this feels to the male infant as forced separation and sets males up to have a greater fear of abandonment throughout their lives). Mothers often have different expectations of boys than of girls, and studies indicate that mothers often treat boys differently. Curiously, this is a universal phenomena, common to all known human societies, much of it in response to the recognition by most cultures of stereotypical masculine and feminine behaviors.

Parents, being vulnerable to society’s expectations of appropriate male and female behavior, spend a great deal of time eradicating unacceptable and encouraging acceptable behaviors in their children. Gender role is one of the first categories infants are exposed to and learn about. Thus, boys are taught at an early age not to cry, not to whine, not to play with dolls, and generally not to act in certain ways. In other words, boys are taught how not to be “feminine.”

Though not every gay male was effeminate in childhood, many were. The extent to which we were effeminate in appe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. Growing Up Gay: Gay Men and Families of Origin
• Chapter 2. Self-Esteem and Shame in the Lives of Gay Men
• Chapter 3. Addictive Behavior and Codependency in Gay Men
• Chapter 4. Developing and Maintaining Gay Relationships
• Chapter 5. Friendship in the Lives of Gay Men
• Chapter 6. Gay Male Survivors of Childhood Abuse
• Chapter 7. AIDS in Our Lives: Assessing the Impact
• Chapter 8. The Aging Gay Man: Lessons and Challenges in Development
• References
• Index