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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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If you were told by a medical gentleman you had been referred to words like "I can see you have some of the symptoms of depression, and that you are also stressed. There is something in your life we need to talk about in private and in confidence in order to help you to process the stress and handle the depression and become healthy", and if you "knew" that you had been hifding being gay from the world for your entire lifetime, a long lifetime, would you open your thoughts?
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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marc
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Needs to get a life! |
Registered: March 2003
Messages: 4729
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To one of that ilk.... no I don't think so....
Life is great for me... Most of the time... But then I meet people online... Very few are real friends... Many say they are but know nothing of what it means... Some say they are, but are so shallow...
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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Does that answer reflect your past experiences with barbaric psychiatrists and extraordinary alleged treatments?
The reason I ask is that my own recent experiences with one of that ilk were decent, wholesome, and useful, but that I also share your deep rooted suspicion of the psychiatric profession from the 1960s era, fortunately not from being exposed to the barbarism then current.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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marc
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Needs to get a life! |
Registered: March 2003
Messages: 4729
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Partly yes...
But I also look at recent posting reguarding a doctor and his inability to maintain the required and expected degree of confidentiality.
Just because a person says you seem this or act that there is no real time basis for action "just because he/she says so"
As you know I have had good as well as not so good experiences with therapists. Sometimes I chose wisely.... Sometimes not very much so....
The good ones are good.... The not so good ones are bad.... and the bad ones are abhorant....
Never take the first diagnosis as gospel...
Never let everything spill out on the first visit... i.e. trust is a thing built upon through shared experiences NOT BY HANGING A SET OF CREDENTIALS ON A WALL...
My best advice is to become comfortable (read friends) with a person that is a therapist (which can happen through regular therapy) and trust in that sphere of comfort only once it is real to you... not just the therapist.
Oh..... on a side note....
alleged? Hmmmmmmmm........ Interesting....
Life is great for me... Most of the time... But then I meet people online... Very few are real friends... Many say they are but know nothing of what it means... Some say they are, but are so shallow...
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I probably wouldn't open my thoughts to that "medical gentleman", unless I had a lot of reason to trust him. If I thought he was correct, and that long-standing issues were now coming to the top of the "urgent personal to-be-dealt-with" list, I *would* think seriously about the need to talk to someone with some formal training and expertise in counselling or therapy, who I had determined to be gay-friendly. I'd probably tell the medical gentleman that I agreed with his diagnosis, and that I was seeking / recieving help elsewhere.
I'm currently going through something similar dealing with having been the recipient of inappropriate sexual attention (well, I refuse to be the "victim of child abuse") in my early teens: I'm now pushing 50 and have been stressing about this and its continuing impact on me for the past year or so. I'm lucky enough to have an aunt who is a therapist, so I asked her to suggest someone suitable and gay-friendly and non-judgemental. I've been seeing someone for about three months, and I think it's helping me. My GP knows that I'm in therapy (and I plan on telling the occupational health unit at work when I see them next week, although *not* why), but no details.
As regards privacy, both my GP and my therapist are private, not National Health Service - NHS in the poorer areas of London is virtually non-existent - and I picked the GP pretty much on the basis that total confidentiality was understood. As a result, she e-mails me copies of any letter she sends on my behalf/at my request to my employers. Cool, eh?
NW
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. ... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night devoid of stars." Martin Luther King
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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Marc wrote:
> Oh..... on a side note....
>
> alleged? Hmmmmmmmm........ Interesting....
Yes. the treatments were alleged to have value. They have been proven over and over again to have no therapeutic value at all. Instead they were brainwashing by extreme cruelty.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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So much is able to be done as "self help" by simply finding the right environment in which to speak about the challenges we have faced. It sounds like you have made good choices here.
Sometimes a friend, sometimes a stranger, sometimes a public forum, sometimes a therapist, but talking is importasnt because it allows you to pinpoint with eventual precision the area that hurt you. Strangely it is often not the area you think it is at first.
I agree with the comncpet of not categorising inappropriate sexual attention conducted against your will, or even with your blessing at the time, as abuse. They were thinsg that took place that you now feel were not desired. It is semantics I know, but it puts it in an easier comparttment to process
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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timmy wrote "... or even with your blessing at the time ..."
Bless you for understanding this, Timmy: not many people do!
NW
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. ... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night devoid of stars." Martin Luther King
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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This is not hard to understand. It may well be that someone took advantage of your then willingness and interest to move further and faster that was ever apporpriate for you, and it may also be that you required it, requested, it and enjoyed it. It may be that you initiated it. And none of this actually matters.
I propose to ignore here entirely any age of consent issues, any teacher/pupil issues and just concentrate on you. You see, none of that actually matters. I've said that before 
What matters is how something has made you feel about it. Now that could be so many things. It could be as challenging as being discovered in passion and somehow being made to feel dirty. It oculd even be a rathe runpleasant court appearance that you are certain was your fault but that accused him, or them, against your will. It could be societal pressures - media, peers. But whatever it is has mae you feel somehow awakward about the experience.
Perhaps you were taken advantage of? Who can say? Oh the law can say. But we are going to leave the law alone. The thing that you need to be bale to do is to know, since you gave the attention your blessing, that this was not dirty because you blessed it. It may have been manipulative, it may have been wrong, but it was a thing you blessed. And, if we separate society and the culture of revenge and the law from acts which were (I hope) tender and mutual, then you can see the acts themselves for what they were.
Be clear. I do not know any facts. I am making guesses based on conversations with troubled people. If you want we can talk, in private, by email. If it might help someone else too maybe we should talk in public.
I hate guilt. The only thing that makes those who received what they now see as unwelcome sexual attentions but did not know at the time, the only thing, is society's attitudes to the "incident". And the media.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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marc
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Needs to get a life! |
Registered: March 2003
Messages: 4729
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Then why do these things continue to happen today?
I have heard of intervention camps that employ methods such as this all in the name of jesus....
How can this happen?
Life is great for me... Most of the time... But then I meet people online... Very few are real friends... Many say they are but know nothing of what it means... Some say they are, but are so shallow...
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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They happen because people refuse to accept that homosexuality is not a choice and is not a disease despite the APA's finally coming to that conclusion. Thyey happen because parents can incarcerate their children in such camps have have them abused with barbarism "in the name of Jesus", whcih is odd, since "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone", and they do it because they can.
Nonethless the treatments, if that is what we call them, are those of the torture chamber, not those of the civilised world.
I say again "If homosexuality were a choice, what sane man would choose it, what sane woman? For it is not a life enhancing thing to be homosexual. It is a harder thing to be, a restricting thing to be and a thing which in some circles leads to villification. No human being woudl choose that for themselves."
Now I am going off on one! Shall we migrate this element to a different thread?
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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Eothain
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Likes it here |
Location: Rohan!
Registered: April 2004
Messages: 108
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I might talk, I suppose, but I personally feel my sexuality is irrelevant to anything and everything, even if it may have some affects. If I had an oppurtunity to talk, I would talk about other, more (in my view) important things. But even given that oppurtunity, I probably wouldn't talk to some random medical gentlemen... I mean, he or she would just be some random bloke. How could I trust him? And how could I talk to some stranger about something so personal. That's why I would appreciate a friend, someone I know well, whom I could talk about such things too (whether that be my sexuality or other things) but there isn't anyone like that which I know. I believe there used to be, but... times have changed.
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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I wonder why everyone is making assumptions about the type of medic? I never said anything about the type
Today's younger people have a great deal of relative good fortune. Imagine that you had known you were gay for the last 45 years and never allowed it to come out. You may be married with grandchildren. You may be the local Mayor. You may be the head of a corporation. And the stress of hiding who you are, even from yourself, is about to make you blow up!
What now?
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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marc
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Needs to get a life! |
Registered: March 2003
Messages: 4729
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Oh my.... Just to clarify....
I feel the same about them all....
Every last one....
Life is great for me... Most of the time... But then I meet people online... Very few are real friends... Many say they are but know nothing of what it means... Some say they are, but are so shallow...
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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NW and I are speaking. He has had some awkward experiences and he may create a thread for them
The only reason I am posting this here is in case anyone is worried that he posted and then retreated into his shell. he has not.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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Eothain
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Likes it here |
Location: Rohan!
Registered: April 2004
Messages: 108
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timmy wrote:
> I wonder why everyone is making assumptions about the type of medic? I never said anything about the type
>
> Today's younger people have a great deal of relative good fortune. Imagine that you had known you were gay for the last 45 years and never allowed it to come out. You may be married with grandchildren. You may be the local Mayor. You may be the head of a corporation. And the stress of hiding who you are, even from yourself, is about to make you blow up!
>
> What now?
If it was a medic of any kind, I would be very unwilling to say anything. In my opinion, a good friend is more than a random medical practiioner any day of the week. Just finding that friend is the hard part...
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