Do you believe Barack Obama will show support towards the GLBT community?

Of course, every gay man wants a genuinely happy and ‘successful’ life. After all, it’s a pretty compelling idea. To be financially secure - see yourself living joyfully and confidently in the world. Feeling fulfilled and connected to others - loving and loved. Maybe just to hear an encouraging and compassionate voice inside your head? What about just waking up happy and going to bed content? Is this really too much for us gay men to ask?

You know how you sometimes stumble across really amazing people in life? Well I was lucky enough to meet ‘Anglo Saxon Dave’ at Leeds University in the UK . Don’t worry we weren’t white supremacists or something – the Anglo Saxon bit got added on because we actually had to learn it like a foreign language - (English Degree) – he loathed it and let’s just say he didn’t ‘shine’ at it! We were both 18 - He was my first ‘real live’ gay friend. While I was still struggling with the whole catholic guilt thing – David, in contrast took to his new gay life with considerable fervour! Even at 18 years of age he recognised his sexuality as an incredible advantage – a major blessing if you like. He was light years ahead of most of us at that time. But what he felt then is what he ‘knows’ now decades later (we’re both pushing 50!). He’s one of the happiest, most successful gay men I know - despite the major challenges he’s faced in life. He truly celebrates what he sees as the major opportunities that his sexuality offers him.
And he’s right because we gay men provide a bedrock of talent to benefit the societies in which we live. We are great artists, teachers, academics, doctors, lawyers, marketers, architects, designers, computer programmers, judges, scientists, therapists, singers, song writers, musicians, composers, conservationists, philosophers, spiritual leaders, gardeners, chefs, chiropractors, authors, (you get the drift). We’re focused and motivated, we make inspiring leaders, we’re successful, compassionate, we can spot an injustice a mile off and fight it with tenacity.
If David sat you down now he’d talk about the strength and resilience that came out of the struggle for self acceptance. How feeling like an isolated freak led to compassion for anyone faced with injustice. How loneliness led to bringing others out of themselves with humour and kindness. He’d tell you of the many deep friendships this generated. He’d comment on the creative advantages of having to ‘think outside the square’ in a world dominated by straight (white) men. He’d talk of the refreshing creativity that came from not having your whole life prescribed for you … finding the girl, settling down, job for life, marriage, mortgage, kids, school fees etc. He realised he had the opportunity to live his life ‘consciously’
- making up his own gay life rules.
While I was still welded to the ‘passive victim of circumstance’ routine, David was already a free man and master of his own glorious destiny. More to the point he was simply more ‘accurate’. And his perspective brought him a life still filled with adventures.
Of course when it’s a gay man (or any member of the LGBT community) asking the big life questions, then there’s a whole additional set of issues to consider. Being Happy and being Gay are not often seen as an automatic association
But in our society at large, I think it’s fair to say that there’s been a huge surge of insight into ‘Happiness and it’s causes’. This has been lead by pioneers such as Martin Seligman - ‘Positive Psychology’ –and neuro psychologist Candace Pert – ‘Molecules of emotion’. Films such as ‘What the bleep do we know’? books such as ‘A New Earth’ by Eckart Tolle are all revealing the mechanics of perception and helping to unlock the door to happiness. This new awareness has had profoundly positive changes in the world of therapy and coaching since I started in 1992.
Despite all of this, it seems that very few of us seem to actually ‘get happy’ – or as one of my clients once put it
‘The lights were on but no-one was at home for the first 35 years of my life’ ….
There is a kind of truth to this rather dry observation. It’s easy to go through life getting by on a ‘thin veneer of success’ – living an ‘OK’ existence. A lot of us gay men still live lives of quiet desperation with ever increasing resentment and feelings of invisibility.
It’s interesting what brings clients to therapy or coaching … it’s usually something very specific – like the end of a relationship, anxiety attacks or fear of public speaking. If not then it’s often much broader such as “I’m thirty something and just not feeling good about myself’ – ‘Life’s not bad – but it’s not that great either”. Another option is ‘I’ve got to the top of the ladder in every respect and it’s a huge anti climax – people think I’ve got it all and I feel totally empty”. It’s a kind of ‘gay mid life crisis’ – and it’s VERY exciting because it’s SUCH fertile soil for positive change!
Despite all this – it IS possible and – once certain steps are in place - even inevitable that you can create a really wonderful and liberating life for yourself.
LGBT people face a specific challenge – our community IS different and - more to the point - growing up as (GLBT) children there IS no sense of community or culture available to us. We spend our most formative years often in complete isolation – alone with our ‘dark and unacceptable secret’. Remember that? Of course when we’re very young we don’t know WHY we feel so alien – but unconsciously we DO know that we don’t fit in and that this difference is NOT a good thing – it feels unacceptable and must be hidden!
Most other minorities do not share this experience. If you’re the butt of racist jokes at school then at least you can go home to a family and a community to whom you belong and who have probably shared some of your experiences. This is not to underplay the effects of such injustice – just to say that it’s different.
Let’s face it, ‘Gay kids’ are most often brought up by straight parents who have no idea how to handle it even if they wanted to! And mostly of course they just deny it or hope it’ll go away.
There’s a few significant things that are good to understand about gay developmental psychology. In my experience it seems it helps to get a clearer understanding and consciousness around how our minds and perceptions have been shaped as gay men.
1. Child psychology informs us that our very early influences, feelings and perceptions have a huge impact on shaping our (often lifelong) sense of self, our relationships and our behavioural patterns for life.
This is a daunting prospect when you consider the sense of fear and shame that many of us were experiencing throughout childhood and adolescence. All this toxic conditioning around ‘sexuality’ is of course in addition to any other challenging issues that may have been going on for us. We ‘know’ we’re different long before we have a conscious awareness of sexuality (Most gay men report that they knew consciously around age 12-14).
2. This fear of difference is terrifying - so much so that it’s often ‘repressed altogether until later in life.
All children need to fit in – to feel unconditionally accepted. They will do anything in order to hide what seems unacceptable to parents / peers etc.
3. The ‘gay kid’ automatically finds a way to compensate for these hidden fears. A veneer is created to deflect attention away from the unacceptable self. This process is not conscious – we just instinctively find ourselves putting time and energy into whatever gets attention – usually with a positive spin i.e. academic achievement, being the ‘perfect little boy’ – always neat (‘attractive’), doting son - Mother’s little helper!, highly creative, the class clown, the jock (this one puts them all right off the trail) or the ‘really cool kid’ . Sometimes negative – such as anxiety or obsessive compulsive behaviours, addictions, eating disorders, self harming, socially isolating oneself from peers and family etc. better to be fat than gay!!
4. Psychologically speaking, the real downer is that either way these patterns are very highly dependent on the imagined judgement of others. We’re either desperately seeking external validation or desperately trying to avoid it altogether by opting out. Either way we’re deflecting like mad.
5. There’s a terrible price to pay for hiding behind this veneer.
The main aspects are:
a) All this focus on what ‘other people’ want leads to us losing touch with who WE really are and what our needs are.
b) We over invest in a shell – a construction which can get a lot of attention and admiration – but which leaves us feeling hollow and frustrated.
c) We can end up actually believing that unless we are ‘perfect’ or ‘exceptional’ in whatever way then we are worthless.
d) An excessive focus on external validation is the very the last thing that’s going to bring any meaningful fulfilment or genuine sense of self.
In short we learn to avoid knowing or accepting ourselves. The war of child hood fear and isolation may be over – but we continue fighting or hiding our way right to the grave.
This cycle is a self-reinforcing trap. The longer and harder we invest in the veneer – the more likely we are to get seemingly positive feedback – it’s often not until a bit later that it all starts to come crashing down.
Why do gay men have such a high rate of depression compared to the rest of the population. The rate of suicide in younger gay men is many times higher than that of our straight contemporaries. Severe bullying in schools is eight times higher for ‘gay kids’ than for any other group – and far more likely to go unreported. What ‘Gay kid’ living with their ‘shameful secret’ will ask for help and thereby expose themselves to further rejection?
But this is not about self-pity – that really is NOT where the solution lies. Injustice and suffering, as we all know, exists all around us. Many of our pains and grievances can seem almost trivial compared to the devastation experienced by so many people the world over.
The solution is certainly not in maintaining victim-hood. There is quite simply ‘Wise Action’ to take – a job to be done – to sort ourselves out - free ourselves from the ongoing injustice playing out in our own minds. This can ultimately only be achieved through ‘consciousness’. The realisation that we no longer need to live out our lives through the shame based lense of childhood and adolescence. Living in the present means letting go of old ideas from the past – at least the ones that no longer serve us well. We need to embrace change and create our own shift from victim to victor – from self-hate to happy and from persecuted to a sense of peace. This is a job worth doing – it’s the ultimate job worth doing!

Matthew Kaliowski is a Global Gay Life Coach, Clinical Hypnotherapist and Psychologist. He runs a thriving Phone Coaching Service with gay clients literally anywhere in the world. The Face to face Practice for Gay men and Couples is based in Sydney Australia.Contact Matthew at http://www.myperfectgaylife.com.au/

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