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Monday, November 14, 2011

So What Do I Do Now?

Okay, so you know your problem. You saw a professional who gave you a diagnosis, or you read something somewhere, or you had a person you deem trustworthy suggest something. Some of the people I see collect the many possibilities indiscriminately, almost taking pride in the various tags that have been hung on them.
And there is a kind of comfort in putting a name to what's wrong, however accurate or inaccurate that name might be. It would seem better to know even the worst prognosis than to wander in the darkness. Once we know, hope seem possible again.
But that still leaves us with the unanswered question: whaddya gonna do about it? Fatalistically accept it? Try to ignore the obvious for as long as possible? Run away, far away? Jump from this possible solution to that, like a frantic flea at a dog convention? Yes, try enough potential solutions, and one of them is bound to help, like the old idea that an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of word processors would eventually produce the works of Shakespeare.
Of course, there are more forms of remedy today than there ever were, today, and some of them actually do some good! We try to quicken the search by asking, but that takes us back to all those monkeys! Or we can determine just what form of help we are willing to accept, and look only there. It must be a man/woman, religious/secular, trained/well-meaning. We are entitled, even encouraged to seek the helper we decide is right for us. Yes, this means a lot of dead ends and false starts, as well as a colossal waste of our valuable time, but it is better to find someone you like rather than settling for who you can get. (Some have the same issue with relationships!)
But we actually get something out of this search: we take responsibility. We are not blindly taking the next one in line. Nor are we stuck with whomever we were assigned to. As annoying and frustrating as it might seem to my fellow clinicians to have a client population so tremendously choosy, at least they are no longer so passive nor helpless. They are there because they made the decision to be on their own.
Now our job is to help them determine what they do now.

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

And God Frowned

NEWS ITEM: In Ecuador, there is a state-supported mental health clinic that purports to specialize in curing homosexuality. Filled with mostly women patients, the use of torture, sexual abuse and old-fashioned brain-washing to make these people "straight" is given approval by the government.
Okay, no secret: I have a very personal bias in favor of the different. This means male/female, skin colors, ethnic/national, tall/short, and, um, sexual orientation. Yet some would question that, averring that the only proper, acceptable child of God is the white Caucasian  straight male, preferably with blond hair and blue eyes. At least, that's the model we see in the media (TV shows, movies, ads both printed and shown.)
Following that same reasoning, there should only be certain breeds of dog, certain kinds of houses, certain careers and limited forms of spiritual expression. What's more, divergences from such norms are not merely differences, but are wrong, condemned by the divine, and should be eliminated forthwith and ASAP!
Well, if ya insist on being such a pigheaded bigot, that's yer right (if we expect others to tolerate us, we gotta tolerate even those we can stand the least!) But know this: there is no explicit condemnation of the different in the scriptures (of whatever faith you choose). Sure, in the Christian writings there are prohibitions against male temple prostitutes, and strong support of traditional marriage as against the common behavior of the time to marry for convenience but then have as many lovers (of any sex and any age) as possible.
So when people come to me for therapy regarding their sexual orientation, I'm going to help them deal with it as they would deal with any issue causing them undue anxiety and distress. I am not going to "cure" their homosexuality. That would be like the awful things children went through many years ago when teachers decided right-handedness was the only acceptable way to write, so they strove to "cure" left-handers of that behavior.
Yes, people come to me to be "cured" of their sexual orientation. Well, if the husband of a certain presidential candidate can run a clinic for doing exactly that, I'm not surprised that people struggling with their sexual orientation might not give in to certain social pressures and look for a "cure." But this is similar to "curing" eye color by tinted contact lenses, or like "curing" hair loss by a toupee, or like counting on high heels to "cure" being short.
My God does not differentiate or discriminate based on outward appearances. (In fact, that was one of the earliest insights for the Christian church.) God does not frown on some and smile on others, any more than the rain falls on only a select few, nor the sun to shine just in certain places at certain times. Put away those carefully chosen Bible verses and recognize them for the defenses against your own homophobia that they are. (We'll talk another time about picking and choosing what in the Bible we decide to follow and what the psychological aspects are of that.)
If we really affirm God as love, should we discriminate as what sort of love that should be?