The non-smoking room

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by bipolar, mental illness, depression, medication, HIV/AIDS, gay • Tags: , ,

Robert Webb and Paula Wilcox star in The Smoking Room.

One of my favourite episodes of the exquisite British sitcom The Smoking Room is “Quitters”, where the disparate habitants of the eponymous workplace smoking room have to sit through a patronizing anti-smoking lecture led by a man dressed as a giant cigarette.

The product of gay writer Brian Dooley, and starring a host of British comic talent, it showed at its heart that smoking brings people together: even if they all hate each other.

At GMFA in London, there’s a different kind of smoking room: one in which guys who want to quit can gather for a weekly support session.

The sessions run for two hours on either Tuesday or Thursday evenings, and the whole course runs for seven weeks.

“The most recent data we have showed that 25% of the general male population in Britain smoke,” says Barry Dwyer, one of the facilitators.  “For gay men, that goes up to 36%, and for HIV positive men 47%.  The only group that even comes close to that last number is Bangladeshi men in one small area of London, Tower Hamlet.”

Dwyer is particularly concerned about the disproportionate effect that smoking has on HIV positive men.

“If you have a compromised immune system, whether you’re on meds or not, there has already been damage to your system.  Add smoking to that mix, it adds to the risk of lung cancer, anal cancer, and dementia.”

The first few weeks of the course consist of information-gathering.  Men are asked about other ongoing health issues, such as HIV status and presence of mental illness.  This is important to know for two reasons: both practical (some anti-smoking treatments will interfere with HIV or antidepressant meds) and supportive.

Dwyer remembers one man with bipolar disorder who took the course.  “During an episode of mania, sometimes everything goes out the window, and your only focus is getting through that time.

“This particular man found that it would creep up on him slowly, and manifest itself in different ways each time so he found it difficult to see when it was coming on, and then it would peak.  In the group, we were able to talk about what cigarettes were doing for him during those times so he could find something to replace it with.”

An environment of trust is created within the group so men can feel comfortable sharing personal information.

“It’s one of the things I’m proudest about with the group.  People turn up on a course where they’ve probably never met anyone before, and they talk about their most intimate details and secrets.  We have group agreements that what’s said here remains here, so you’re not going to be walking through a supermarket one day and having someone point the finger at you.”

Information is also given out during the first two weeks of the course, including helpful details that aren’t always known about anti-smoking remedies – for example, nicotine gum.

“When you chew ordinary gum, you just chew it.  But with nicotine gum, you’re supposed to chew it a couple of times to break it down, then park it between your teeth and gums, so the nicotine gets absorbed through the mucus membrane on the inside of your cheek.  When people chew the gum in the ordinary way, you end up with a lot of nicotine going into your stomach, which makes people nauseous.”

People are encouraged to start using the quit remedies, be it gum, patches or the two pills available – Zyban (originally developed as an antidepressant) and Champix (which covers the receptors in the brain that cause pleasure from smoking) – before they quit.

“It takes away the pressure that you’ve moved straight from smoking to the replacement product.  There’s also time for us to talk about whether that particular product is working for you.”

Week 3 is quit week, but Dwyer says it’s important to be realistic about this.  Some anti-smoking courses will banish members if they fall off the wagon, but GMFA’s course doesn’t take this approach.

“We would prefer guys to come back and have the conversation about why they’ve tripped up rather than think, ‘I’m so bad that I can’t even give up smoking.’  We can talk that through and set a new quit date, or find out if the person genuinely isn’t ready to stop yet.”

Many who come to the group have attempted to quit smoking before.

“Coming to a group can help you identify those times when you may have gone back to smoking in the past.  You don’t know you’re going to have an issue with something until it presents itself.  For example, I got a call from one guy nine weeks after finishing our course and he said, ‘You’ll never guess what happened, I started smoking again – I went to my brother’s wedding.’”

Motivation is the most important factor in quitting, Dwyer says.

“We talk about this, and that surprises a lot of guys.  If you’re doing this because your boyfriend or your doctor wants you to stop, but you don’t, then it’s not going to work.  So part of this course asks the question, is this the right time for you to quit smoking?  But we will be here to support you when you’re ready.

“There’s nothing worse than trying to give up smoking, failing, then continuing the behaviour because you feel so guilty about not giving up the behaviour!”

The remaining four weeks of the course are geared around dealing with cravings, and how to recognize the difference between smoking as an addictive pattern and smoking simply out of habit: helping people say no when cigarettes are offered, helping them deal with quitting if their partner is still smoking, or if the majority of their social circle still smokes, and what people can sometimes do to undermine your quitting choices.

GMFA operates on limited funding, so the course is advertised mainly through social media, volunteers (who run the courses), and word of mouth.

“The best recommendation is word of mouth.  People get really passionate about the help we’ve given them.  We get people who did the course ten years ago that want to help out – they’ll send us donations out of the money they’ve saved.

“It’s peer to peer, non-judgmental, and we don’t treat people as if they’re sick or addicts.  They’re people with an ability to stop something that they want to stop doing and we support them in doing that.”

For more information about GMFA’s quit smoking course, click here.

Why queer theory sucks

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by discrimination, gay, homophobia, politics, religion • Tags: , , ,

Illustration: Thordrinn Leifsson

There’s an internet meme doing the rounds at the moment that sarcastically picks apart the holes in religious arguments against same-sex marriage.

Much like the dogma of creationists, it doesn’t evolve over time, and responding to such arguments has become boring.

Far more interesting is the crop of self-sabotagers who are gay or lesbian themselves and oppose marriage equality.

I’m not talking here about those who are indifferent to the idea and don’t feel the need to push for it, I’m talking about those who are actively campaigning against it, like New Zealander Professor Annamarie Jagose, described by SameSame.com.au as a “leading queer theory academic”.

This, in itself, explains a lot – queer theory is so deconstructionist I’m surprised its proponents are still able to breathe, given that it would require them to acknowledge that oxygen exists.

On Tuesday, Professor Jagose took part in a public Sydney debate entitled “Why same-sex marriage should not be legalised”.  Her position, in a nutshell, is reportedly this: 

Whereas LGBT people may well be able to teach straights a thing or two about sexual diversity, the marriage equality debate is turning us into sexual conformists, she argued. “Marriage equality comes at a cost – it continues to disavow some relationships.” What about singles, one-night-standers, those in open or polyamourous relationships? “Why should marriage raise the worth of some relationships and not others?”

Odd that she left relationships involving bestiality and paedophilia out of her argument about marriage raising the worth of some relationships above others.  Is Professor Jagose able to recognise that you can actually draw a line somewhere?  Queer theorists don’t like lines.  They’re also inconsistent, which is why their arguments so easily disappear in a puff of smoke when challenged.

What does that leave us with, then?  Singles – hmm, no legal discrimination there.  You already enjoy the same rights as every other single citizen.  One night stands – you can already do this without being arrested, so what’s the problem there?  Open relationships – I’m already in one, and so are many other gay couples who would like to marry.  Polygamous or polyamourous relationships?

My good friend, Gay Blade blogger Michael Stevens agrees with her on this point:

“I know of guys living in long-standing, stable threesomes – why shouldn’t they be able to have their relationship recognised as legally valid as well? Why can’t they be married? From all I have read or seen of the push for gay marriage, the only form that activists think is acceptable is a couple.”

Or could it just be because the majority of human relationships are coupled?

I have to say, I’m not particularly bothered by polygamy.  But why is it necessary to derail same-sex marriage until we get our heads around how to recognise polygamous relationships in law?

And do you think, perhaps, that if we are going to seriously debate this as an issue (as opposed to airy-fairy pseudo-intellectual discussions about it) then maybe some people in polygamous relationships could venture forth and talk on their own behalf, instead of letting contrarians use them as a red herring?

The “gay” arguments against same-sex marriage are just as intellectually bankrupt as the religious ones, and as Professor Jagose has discovered this week, can put you in a very odd space morally.

On Tuesday, in her bid to convince a worldwide audience (BBC and ABC cameras were in attendance at the debate) that same-sex marriage should not be legalised, Professor Jagose was on the same team as Catholic ethicist (contradiction in terms, one would have thought) Professor Nick Tonti-Filippini, Associate Dean and head of Bio-Ethics at the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family.

In September last year, Professor Nick wrote an opinion piece for the Sydney Morning Herald titled “Marriage is about rights of the children”.  Here’s a wee slice of his wisdom:

“A child’s relationship to both mother and father is inherent to marriage. Children conceived by other means may find themselves with people in parental roles who are in a same-sex relationship, but such relationships are not the origin of the child. It is likely for children to be loved and nurtured in such a household, but however good that nurturing, it will not provide the biological link and security of identity and relationship that marriage naturally demands and confirms.”

I am adopted, as a result of my heterosexual parents being unable to conceive.  Is Professor Nick campaigning to have the marriage of my parents and thousands of other infertile heterosexual couples annulled?  No, of course not.  Because the real reason he is opposed to same-sex marriage is because his religion tells him it’s wrong.

You need more than that to participate in a debate these days, though, so religionists have managed to create all sorts of fallacious arguments that can be dragged out to fit the duration, be it a 90 minute debate or an 800-word opinion piece for a content-hungry newspaper.

What on earth, you might ask, is a lesbian woman doing on the same side of a debate as this man?

Well, Professors Jagose and Tonti-Filippini are not bedfellows as strange as they might appear at first glance.  Queer theory is itself a form of religion, an unchanging and dogmatic ideology that forces us to accept that there’s no such thing as categories, institutions or identities.  Religion argues the opposite, but forces us to accept extremely rigid definitions of them.

In effect, if either Jagose or Tonti-Filippini were given free rein to put their ideas into practice, they would achieve the same result by different means.  And nobody but a select few would end up happy.

While we’re trying to get society to let us inside the house, queer theorists are busy trying to convince us we should abandon the idea because houses are oppressive and don’t exist.  They like to think they’re pointing out the emperor’s new clothes without being aware of their own nakedness.  Meanwhile, another gay man gets shut out of his dying partner’s emergency room.

So we’ve covered polygamy.  What else do queer theorists lose sleep at night over when thinking about legalised same-sex marriage?  This from Michael Stevens:

“It seems to me to speak of a desire to assimilate, to try and be the same as the straights, to follow them, rather than to consider that in fact we are different and maybe other forms of relationship should be on the table…I can’t understand the desire to copy heterosexuals.”

I’m not picking on Michael here, because this view is shared by many gay men who, like Michael, would describe themselves as “old activists”.

Assuming that my love for my partner has anything to do with heterosexuals is incredibly patronising, and effectively reduces the desires of thousands of same-sex couples to marry down to the petulant wants of a teenager:

“Mum, Bobby next door has an iPod, can I have one too?”

“Mark, why do you have to copy everything Bobby does?”

“I’m not copying Bobby, I just want to listen to my music like everybody else.”

“Well, there’s plenty of other ways you can listen to music, Mark.  Use the record player.”

“I can’t take that out when I go running.”

“Well, you can hum the music in your head.  After all, music is a social construction.  It only exists in our minds.  Have you ever stopped to think – what is this thing we call music?”

“Mum, why did Dad divorce you?”

Back to Jagose:

Gays and lesbians often speak about the importance of diversity, but aiming to get married is not about diversity at all, concludes Jagose. “It is about being identical to heterosexual married people but differing in only one respect – the gender of one of the spouses. I call that conformity.”

Oh yes, conformity.  Well, I presume that Jagose wore clothes to the debate.  I presume she owns or drives a car, or uses public transport.  She probably watches television, reads books, and goes to the cinema.

You could call that conformity – or you could just call it life.  Making the choices that you want to make, if they happen to be available to you.  Which in the case of same-sex couples wanting to marry, they aren’t.

Maybe Mark isn’t so petulant after all.  Maybe, like me, he doesn’t want to copy Bobby – he just wants to listen to the music.

Can you choose to be happy?

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by bipolar, depression, mental illness, psychology • Tags: , , ,

Data has his emotion chip installed in Star Trek: Generations.

There’s a moment in the movie Star Trek: First Contact where the android Data, who has recently acquired an emotion chip, begins to experience fear as he’s part of an assault team tracking down the alien Borg.

He turns to Captain Picard and describes the feeling as intriguing.  Picard suggests that those emotions might be distracting at such a crucial time.  Data concurs, and with a flick of the head, switches his emotion chip off.  The audience laughs.

Why do we laugh?  What are we thinking?  Oh, if only it were that easy?  Would we want an on/off switch for our emotions, or even better, a series of buttons that could induce any desired mood state at any given time?

Dr Nicholas Jenner is a cognitive behavioural therapist, and believes that:

“We all now have the opportunity to be truly happy… I work on the basis that our thoughts play a huge role in the way we see life and consequently how happy we are. While we should be very careful about dismissing negative thoughts completely, a programme of looking at things rationally can really help us to accept and find happiness in what we have.”

I would agree, to an extent.  My counsellor Lyndon is teaching me cognitive behavioural techniques right now that have helped me a great deal in this area.

It would be over-simplifying in the extreme to say that he is helping me to choose to be happy, any more than exercising to alleviate the symptoms of arthritis is helping me to choose to be cured of it.

Within his column, Dr Jenner quotes Swiss psychologist Yves-Alexandre Thalmann, who believes that our interpretations of events can have a greater impact on us than the events themselves:

For example, if it’s raining, you could say to yourself, ‘That’s today ruined,’ and be in a bad mood all day. Or you could say, ‘Great, it’s a chance to spend a cosy day at home,’ and this lighter mood will be much easier for those around you to live with”

I think if I were faced with a rainy day, I would tie Thalmann to a lawn chair and stick him out in the driveway where I could watch from the window with a nice hot cup of tea and watch him get soaked.

God forbid that those around me should find me difficult to live with.

Thalmann continues:

‘It’s a question of using free will to put our own spin on hard facts,’ he says. ‘Facts can’t be altered, as much as we might wish they could, but their significance is not contained within them – that is the story we tell about them. So you might as well link facts with plausible favourable explanations. I call it telling yourself nice stories.’

Like the version of Watership Down where none of the rabbits die?  I have now decided that Thalmann is a patronising twat.

Author and neuroscientist Sam Harris believes that free will is an illusion, but that this shouldn’t necessarily fill us with feelings of fatalistic doom:

Becoming sensitive to the background causes of one’s thoughts and feelings can—paradoxically—allow for greater creative control over one’s life.  It is one thing to bicker with your wife because you are in a bad mood; it is another to realize that your mood and behavior have been caused by low blood sugar.

This understanding reveals you to be a biochemical puppet, of course, but it also allows you to grab hold of one of your strings: A bite of food may be all that your personality requires. Getting behind our conscious thoughts and feelings can allow us to steer a more intelligent course through our lives (while knowing, of course, that we are ultimately being steered).

And this, I believe, is a more realistic way to view your mental illness.  You cannot choose to be happy, but you can learn techniques than can help you steer yourself around the icebergs of depression – or if you hit them, lessen the damage that they cause.

Young, gay and HIV+ : where do you go for support?

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by depression, discrimination, friends and family, gay, HIV/AIDS, mental illness, self-stigma, sex • Tags: , ,

When Rhys Jones first learned of his HIV diagnosis at 22, he didn’t wait too long before telling someone.

“I went out that afternoon.  I came straight here,” he says, gesturing to the surroundings in what used to be K Rd’s Kamo bar in Auckland, where we’re sitting on a Thursday afternoon.  “This is my local.  I told a friend who was the manager at the time, and basically anybody sitting at the bar.”

Four years on, and he doesn’t regret his decision to be so open about his HIV status.  He doesn’t even feel his life has changed all that much.  “Basically, it’s happened now.  Nothing will change that, so the best way to do it is live your life as you should.”

It’s hard to find the right word or phrase to describe Rhys’s upbeat attitude; “brave” would seem patronizing, “in denial” would be both offensive and inaccurate – in 2005, he became a media poster boy for a new generation of positive gay men, allowing himself to be photographed and interviewed for a national Sunday newspaper about HIV.  It was a wake-up call for a community which had been lulled into thinking HIV had gone away.

Support groups for HIV+ youth

One thing is for certain, Rhys’s comfort with his HIV status is not something shared by all gay men in his age group, a cohort which is growing steadily year-on-year.  Rhys himself knows this from the furtive approaches he receives from many young men, many of whom have questions about how to adjust to a new life with HIV.  They’re questions which he is more than happy to answer.

These are men who may not be comfortable going to the Burnett Centre for counseling, or to Body Positive – who caters to a largely older crowd – for peer support.  Part of Rhys’s motivation to be visible about being HIV positive was to make positive men his age more comfortable with their status.

“I did go to Body Positive at one stage and found that I was the only one there around my own age,” he says.  “Most of my support has come straight from my close friends and a lot of my family as well.”

What about those who don’t have that support?  There’s a paucity of literature available on the support needs of HIV positive youth, but available research shows that there are concerns specific to this population group.

A paper published in the Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality in 1999 interviewed 32 HIV positive youth aged between 17 and 25.  The authors urged readers “not to assume that the issues and concerns presented in this study are the same as they would be for any person living with HIV.  It is important to remember that youth are often still financially and emotionally dependent on parents and family, generally have less life experience coping with serious difficulties, were infected in the era of AIDS prevention, and feel shame as a consequence.

“They also have generally not experienced AIDS deaths like adult community members, may still be integrating their sexual identities (and coping with HIV) and feel less confident approaching service providers in health and social services.”

Most concerning in the study were comments regarding barriers in accessing services, be they HIV or youth-related.  Some youth surveyed said they felt uncomfortable accessing clinical services for fear of being judged.  Having grown up in an era of visible HIV prevention, some participants attached a lot of shame and guilt to the actions which “caused” their infection.

With peer support services, there was a perception that some were too adult-oriented in their image and programmes, making youth feel uncomfortable about utilizing them.

In New Zealand, while Body Positive provides an excellent range of peer support services, including an annual retreat which continues to swell in numbers, it is possible to see where youth may be falling through the gaps by examining the activities of youth-specific organizations overseas, such as Bay Positives in San Francisco and DC Young Poz Socials in Washington.

Bay Positives was founded in 1990 and claims to be the first peer-run organization in the world for young people living with HIV and AIDS.  It came together out of a recognition that no agencies existed to meet the special needs of young people.  By 1994, it had received a substantial grant from central government to operate, something which no peer support organization in New Zealand currently receives.

While Bay Positives provides a range of services including counselling and outreach, DC Young Poz Socials is more informal, mainly based around social activities.  The list of activities engaged in includes parties, picnics, sporting events, hiking, theatre outings, white water rafting and canoeing, and away trips.

Bay Positive currently has an Xbox on the wish list of items they’d like donated for their drop-in centre.  It’s a vastly different world from the treatments conferences, pot luck dinners, massage therapy, lipodystrophy treatment and podiatry services on offer at Body Positive.

Could New Zealand have its own peer support service for HIV positive youth?  Rhys isn’t sure.  San Francisco’s HIV positive population is huge – one in four gay men are living with the virus.  In Auckland, where the figures are much lower, there seems to be concern from some about their visibility.

“A lot of people around that age, I’ve found they don’t want anybody to know about it,” Rhys says.  “They think if they’re in a small group together, then people in that group are going to talk as well, word’ll get around and they get scared.”

An isolated generation

Such fear would do nothing to aid feelings of social isolation.  All participants in the Canadian study felt socially isolated and suffered from severe loneliness.  Some believed themselves to be the only ones their age with HIV.

“The biggest issue for me was asking myself, ‘is anyone my age HIV positive’?” said one 21-year-old male.  “I still ask myself that question all the time.  I mean you just don’t see a lot of young people with AIDS hanging around anywhere.”

Fear of rejection from family was a major source of anxiety for participants also, some of whom had only recently come out to their parents about their sexual orientation, or perhaps even accepted it for themselves.

“I came out as gay to myself just one year before testing positive,” said one 25-year-old male.  “I knew I was gay from age 13, and then to keep it to myself for all those years, and then at 19 feel free, and then at 20 be positive and feel like fuck, what happened here?  So I didn’t tell them [my family] for years.”

Some kept their HIV status to themselves because their first coming out experience – as gay – hadn’t gone down too well with family.

“My dad is not cool with my being gay and he wouldn’t have an easy time with this,” said another 25-year-old male.  “He’d probably say to me, ‘this is what happens to gays’.  My mom’s okay about my being gay, but HIV would just be too much.  I told my brother last year and he took it pretty bad and said, ‘Don’t tell mom and dad, it’ll kill them.’”

Rhys experienced similar difficulties with his mother, but managed to find support from his father.

“With my mum it [being gay] was always a big deal.  Telling her I was positive was even harder.  But my dad’s always been right there.  I came out to him first before anyone else, and he said that I hadn’t changed so he’s not going to change his attitude.  And when I was diagnosed, he was the one who took me to my doctor’s appointment.  We got home after that, and he went straight on Google and had a look what it was all about.”

Being too scared to reach out to peers and family pales in comparison to the minefield young HIV positive men have to negotiate when it comes to relationships.  One of the more common questions Rhys gets asked by people who approach him is, how can I get a boyfriend?  Rhys admits to his own difficulties in this area.

“I make sure they know my status, because in the end they’re going to find out one way or another,” he says.  “So it’s best they know straightaway.”

How does he broach the subject?  “It’s never easy,” he says.  “Each time is just as hard as the other.  There’s one or two times I’ve had to tell them by text, because I’ve been chickenshit.  But if I am getting into a relationship with somebody then they have the right to know.”

Some young men have different coping strategies, as shown in the Canadian study.  Some hide their HIV status altogether, or give up sexual relationships.  Some coped by only dating other HIV positive people, but found they faced a further obstacle:

“The guys I date are a lot older than me because I can’t meet guys my own age who are open about being positive,” said one 25-year-old.  “I’d really like a boyfriend my own age.”

Some recounted painful stories of outright rejection – “I’ve had guys leave the bed when I told them.  One guy wouldn’t even kiss me when he found out” – highlighting the stigma still attached to the virus, and misinformation about how it is spread.

Rhys has had his own painful moments when disclosing to potential partners, but he has taken it all in his stride.  “A couple have run for the hills, but that’s fine cos there’s always more,” he laughs.

It’s exactly the sort of comment you’d expect to hear over drinks among friends, where – if you’ll forgive the platitude – a problem shared can become a problem halved.  The Canadian study authors conclude:

“In order to decrease the social isolation experienced by HIV positive youth, it is crucial to encourage and facilitate, where possible, opportunities for them to meet their HIV positive peers.  This is most obviously facilitated by the provision of support groups for HIV positive youth.  Through peer contact, youth learn from each other’s experiences, stories, difficulties and successes.  Social isolation and loneliness lessen as they develop friendships, and they ultimately realize that their feelings of anxiety and despair are normal, and that they are not alone.”

Those words were written over ten years ago.  With research published this week showing that the numbers of New Zealand men living with HIV has doubled in the past decade, those words are just as relevant today.

Adapted from a piece originally published in Collective Thinking magazine in 2009.

Get over it – in 7 stages

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by books, friends and family, mental illness, psychology, recovery, self-stigma, wellbeing • Tags: , , ,

Image courtesy: FootyBoys

We’ve all had the phrase “get over it” lobbed at us at some point in time.  It’s never helpful, but equally as frustrating can be the well-meaning clichés that get trotted out as well when we feel wronged: it just takes time, healing is a process etc.

Whilst those last two phrases are clichés that happen to be true, delivered on their own they’re not likely to be of much help.

In their book Trust & Betrayal In The Workplace, authors Dennis and Michelle Reina have set out 7 stages for getting past a betrayal of trust, and outlined why each stage is essential.

Much like the famous (infamous?) 5 stages of grief outlined by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, the categories are not fixed by time or space, but are designed to aid in your self-analysis and help you understand what you’re going through when your mind is doing backflips.

Although the Reina book is written about the workplace, I think this particular exercise is applicable to any episode you may encounter in life where you’re feeling hurt, betrayed or a breakdown of trust.

Here we go:

Step 1: Observe and acknowledge what has happened

This may seem painfully obvious, but how many times have you found yourself wandering around in a funk for weeks without actually realising what has pissed you off?  A triggering event may lead you to blow up about something trivial like your partner not picking his clothes up off the floor, when in actual fact you’ve been stewing for weeks about something else.

“You must consciously observe and acknowledge your thoughts and feelings before you can do something about them.  There are two aspects of the betrayal that you must acknowledge: what has happened and the impact on you.”

An example here may be, for an HIV positive man: my partner will not have sex with me because he is afraid of being infected with HIV.  This not only makes me feel sexually frustrated, but hurt that he would think I’d let that happen; it depresses me because I feel rejected and dirty.

Step 2: Allow feelings to surface

Beer and soft drink should come in bottles, not feelings.  You’ve got to find a way of safely letting these feelings come out so you can deal with them.  Sometimes we’re embarrassed to cry, because people might think we’re weak.  Sometimes we’re afraid of getting angry, in case we lose control and perhaps frighten those we love, or do damage to ourselves in the process.

Getting in touch with these feelings might be best done on your own, or perhaps you might feel safer doing it with a trusted friend or therapist (see step 3).  Writing may help, or – a particular favourite of mine – listening to music that suits my mood and brings feelings to the surface.

One thing to try and avoid during this is the action replay:

“The betrayal may occur only once, but we may relive it in our minds a thousand times.  If you are like many people who are hard on themselves, you may become obsessed with guilt and worry…they drain your energy, cloud your thinking and clutter your emotions.”

A difficult job, perhaps, but try and separate the emotions that have been triggered by the event from the anxiety that has been generated by the ‘action replay’.  This is a by-product of the event and not a cause.

Step 3: Get support

Living with a mental illness can, ironically, make you less likely to get support when you’re going through a crappy time rather than more.  Sometimes, we feel so desperate to prove to the world that we can cope in spite of our illness that we throw down the shutters when we most need help.

Whether the person you seek support from is a counsellor, friend or family member:

“…have him or her assist in reconnecting with painful feelings from your past that are related to your present circumstance…have the person help you see the choices and options available to you.”

While the ‘archeological dig’ method of therapy doesn’t work for everyone (digging into your past trauma can be more of a trigger than a help for some people), you may often find that your emotional reaction to a current betrayal has been amplified by something similar (or which your mind has made a link with) in the past.

Say you find yourself angry at a friend who you feel has used or manipulated your goodwill.  Part of your anger may be coming from the big stick you’re beating yourself up with for being sucked in – perhaps you’ve been treated in a similar way by friends or family members in the past, and vowed you’d never let it happen again?

By recognising patterns of behaviour, both in our emotional reactions and in the way we behave in the world, it allows us to make change.

Step 4: Reframe the experience

No, I am not going to suggest you make a silk purse out of a pot noodle carton.  There’s nothing more irritating than, for example, someone who’s been gaybashed in the street being told to make it a “learning” experience that they can “heal and grow” from.

Perhaps you’ve been recently diagnosed with a mental illness, HIV, or cancer and are jumping onto the positive thinking train to hell: “This is the best thing that ever happened to me!”

Obviously it isn’t.  This is denial.  Some of the text in the Reina book is a little suggestive of this, so I’m going to ignore most of it except for this bit:

“We begin by putting the experience into a larger context.”

There’s a great quote from philosopher Alain de Botton that says:

“Much of how we feel about the rest of our lives is determined by what lies ahead of us in the next few hours.”

The now of betrayal and hurt can be so overwhelming that we forget what it feels like to not be in that space.  If you imagined your life as a piano keyboard, what percentage would this event take up?  Would you even be able to draw a sliver of a line across a key?

Our brains are particularly prone to time distortion, and it’s important to recognise that at times like this.

Step 5: Take responsibility

I talked about guilt before, and this step is not about falling into the self-stigma trap of asking “is it my fault?”  Or, in the case of where you’ve recognised a recurring event or behaviour pattern in your life, “what’s wrong with me that I keep finding myself in these situations?”

The following is very true, though:

“In any relationship between two people, both contribute to the unfolding dynamics…After feeling betrayed, many people are obsessed with blaming the culprit, pointing fingers or getting revenge.”

For me, revenge fantasies have been short-term crutches to help me release anger – or sometimes even to laugh, if you have a friend with a black sense of humour like I do.  My good friend and mentor Douglas Jenkin often used to ask me when I was angry with someone: “Do you want me to destroy them?” and come up with all sorts of elaborate and ridiculous scenarios for doing so.

Recognising what you’ve brought to the table in any situation does involve looking at the situation from the other person’s perspective, even if they were completely in the wrong.  If a reconciliation is desired or required, it will bring you closer to working that through.

If you won’t be seeing the person again, taking responsibility could be as simple as recognising how you could minimise the chances of such a scenario occurring in the future.

Step 6: Forgive yourself and others

Even as I read that sentence, I want to delete it.  I’m not an easy forgiver.  I can hold grudges for years.

Forgiving happens in your own time, and for me, it’s not a magical moment when you stand on a mountain top and make a declaration to the sunrise.  It’s more of a retrospective realisation: you wake up one day and find that you’re not angry at the person anymore, or the situation has been relegated to its rightful place on your life timeline.  It’s just another thing that happened.

You may want an apology from the person before you feel you can do this.  This may or may not happen.  In waiting for an apology:

“…we become the victim once again, this time holding ourselves hostage in waiting for an act of contrition or admission of guilt.”

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t expect an apology or ask for one.  But this may not be a situation that’s easily resolved.  Lying awake at night wondering if you’re going to get that phone call or email tomorrow is a waste of your time.  You have no control over it.

Step 7: Let go and move on

As mentioned at the beginning, this is often what we’re unhelpfully told by people when we experience hurt, and we’re only at the beginning of the process.

If we could push a button and let go, like a James Bond ejector seat, we would have done it already.

That prick would be on the side of the road, being pecked to death Hitchcock-style by seagulls in a convenient pond.  (I can see I haven’t worked my way through Stage 6 yet)

Again, this is a time-flexible process:

“How do we know we’re ready to move on?  When we are ready to reflect on the experience of betrayal and have a sense of inner peace.  Yes, there still may be a dull pang of pain, yet the tears no longer flow.”

I’m sorry about the term “inner peace”.  The only time I intend to feel at one with the universe is when the big crunch happens and my atoms are violently mixed up with everyone else’s again.

For the harder thinkers among us, perhaps substitute that sentence with “don’t give a shit”.  It’s the difference in intensity between the feeling you get when you drop your empty cup on the floor, and when your crappy plastic shopping bag gives way and bursts your melons on the driveway.

It may be a platitude, but it does get better.  Knowing how to expediate that process and recognise our place within it can help us make sure that we get to the other side.

Carry On Up The Appalachian

6
by bear, bipolar, discrimination, exercise, gay, gay bear, HIV/AIDS, medication, mindfulness, recovery, wellbeing • Tags: , ,

Ross Hayduk at Cripple Creek.

May 21, 2012
20.4 mile day in 10.5 hours. Stopped at Cripple Creek for lunch, which made for a relaxing meal by a lovely miniature waterfall. We are so close to Waynesboro we can hardly stand it.

That’s a typical diary entry for 44-year-old Ross Hayduk, who is currently halfway through a six-month hike up the Appalachian Trail on the east coast of the United States.  The journey is over 2,000 miles.  A quarter of those who start never reach the end.  Hundreds quit within the first week.

This literal journey is just a small part of Ross’s ongoing life one, which includes two heavy boulders – HIV and bipolar disorder.

“This is not a vacation,” he says. “This is a serious challenge. I want to show that there is hope dealing with HIV and mental-health issues. I’m not doing this just formyself, but for the countless others dealing with the same issues I’m dealing with every day.”

Four charities will benefit from pledges to Ross’s hike: the National AIDS Memorial Grove, PAWS: Pets Are Wonderful Support, the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and the Appalachian Trail Conservancy.  You can find more information on his website here.

A resident of San Francisco, Ross says he is in good shape right now.  He worked closely with his trainer Todd Templin to get in the best physical health for the trail, and mentally he’s been working out too.

“ I depend upon a network of friends, as well as talk therapy, to keep me from isolating and slipping down into depression,” he says.  “Additionally, my doctor, Shawn Hassler, and I have found a great balance of anti-depressants to keep me on an even keel.”

How is he keeping up with his HIV and bipolar meds in the middle of nowhere?  He’s sorted it out in advance with Walgreen’s pharmacy, who have pre-packaged his doses in daily packs and have them ready and waiting at various post offices close to the trail.

He’s not short of company either: his four-year-old Australian cattle dog Oscar is on the road with him for part of the journey.  Ross adopted him from San Francisco Animal Care and Control three and a half years ago, and he credits his furry friend as an important part of his treatment team.

“Along with a medication regimen, professional care and proper diet and exercise, Oscar’s companionship has been an important part of treating my bipolar disorder,” he says.  “Without Oscar, my life would not be as full or complete.”

Oscar.

It sounds like Ross has thought of everything and has it all sorted.  It wasn’t always that way.  He felt alone as the “weird little gay kid” growing up in Bluefield, West Virginia.  He says he never appreciated what his parents provided for him until he was an adult, and now credits them with making him into the strong person he is, both mentally and physically.

San Francisco called after he came out, particularly after seeing the classic 1970s screwball comedy “What’s Up, Doc?” and the seminal “Tales Of The City” mini-series.

The great city saw some hard times for Ross, with his lowest point getting caught in an addiction to crystal meth.

“When I was injecting crystal meth,  I reached out to others, shared my embarrassing truth, and asked for help.  Once you push past the personal shame, there is support on the other side,” he says.

Living with both HIV and bipolar disorder hasn’t always been peachy either.

“Lack of understanding by the general public is never surprising, but lack of acceptance within my own community is disheartening,” he says.  “If you take the entire population of the globe, drop out all the women and children, then take out the straight men, you have a pool of bisexual and gay men.  Now, ask those men if they really want to be involved with a bipolar, HIV-positive man, and the numbers drop considerably.

“Then mention that you struggled with substance abuse, and they run screaming for the door,” he adds.  “Not literally…oh, who am I kidding?  These are gay men, they do run screaming for the door!”

Like many of us, his sense of humour – particularly absurdist – has kept him afloat over the years and continues to keep his engine running.  As well as laughter, he values creativity and fairness, and is very fond of classic movie marathons at the legendary Castro Theatre.  (He also, like my husband, has a soft spot for Wonder Woman)

Ross plans to finish his journey on September 6, which will mark his 45th birthday.  Financially, he’ll be starting his life over again as a job loss last year made it necessary for him to dip into his retirement savings.

But he is hopeful his experiences on the trail will lead him to new adventures.

Sunday March 25, 2012

Waiting for mail to arrive on Monday at NOC [Nantahala Outdoor Center]. So, I am taking a zero day and using it to go rafting in a solo “ducky” inflatable raft on the Nantahala River. If I cannot hike today, I can still have an adventure to add to my list of Appalachian Trail memories!

Ross is aiming to raise just over US$20,000 on his hike.  Head to his website to follow his trail diary (including some incredible photos), read more about his athletic achievements, and of course, to donate.

WTF’s the problem

23
by gay, homophobia, self-stigma, suicide, transphobia • Tags: , , , , , ,

Mid-1980s law reform protest. Photo credit: Ian Mackley, GayNZ.com

For some time now, the “c” word has been levelled at some in our communities, and the word is “complacent”.

GayNZ.com editor Jay Bennie even went so far as to pronounce the death of activism in a recent editorial about the AIDS Candlelight Memorials.  He has a point.

In remembering those who died in the first phase of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s, we should remember what they were up against.  This was a country where homosexual sex was illegal, no provisions were in place to stop you being fired from your job, kicked out of your home, refused treatment from a doctor or service from a business because of your sexuality or HIV status.  Relationship recognition wasn’t even on the radar.

As friends and partners died, and people lived under daily threat of arrest or discrimination with no legal redress whatsoever, a grass roots movement organised under the banner of another “c” word: “confront”.

Bennie writes:

“…against the kind of odds which are almost unimaginable today they were incredibly successful. They got laws changed, society awakened, organisations created and results achieved. They built networks and resources and projects and saw them through to exhilarating and well-earned success.

“In the new millennium most of the lessons they taught us by their heroic examples are forgotten by, or unknown to, most glbti people.

“… let’s ask ourselves what are we, as individuals and groups of all kinds, actually doing now, in 2012, to make life better for those who still need our wider support to achieve their own liberation from repression, doubt and state- and society-sanctioned bigotry.

“Are we already so fragmented, isolationist, or self-absorbed, or blinkered, or complacent that the answer for most glbti New Zealanders is: ‘Fuck all’?”

It’s that empowering, enough-is-enough anger that has lit the fire under a new awareness and fundraising campaign from Rainbow Youth and Outline, WTF.

Rainbow Youth’s Sam Shore, one of the main forces behind the campaign, says that they’ve openly modelled the idea on successful overseas campaigns, particularly FCKH8 from the United States.

“We looked around the world and saw what campaigns were really successful and what people have been responding to,” he says.  “And it was FCKH8, Give A Damn, and It Gets Better.  We wanted to do something like that, because it hasn’t been done in New Zealand.  We wanted a phrase that would help the campaign stand out from the background and also be empowering for people.”

The campaign has been launched with what is to be the first of several videos.  It features a range of well-known New Zealanders, gay and straight, drawing attention to issues of inequality and asking “what the fuck” is up with this?

It’s been viewed over 40,000 times on Youtube in a matter of days, and hundreds of comments have been left – as you would expect, not all of them positive.  There’s barely literate homophobic rants which illustrate just why such a campaign is needed in the first place.

But the negative comments that are perhaps most surprising come from gay people themselves.  Blogger and former Good Morning co-host Steve Gray has launched several missives at the campaign, which are at best bewildered and, at worst, misinformed.

“This campaign is not about ending discrimination, it is about raising money for Rainbow Youth and Outline services. They should at least be honest about this from the start than do some ‘KONY2012′ ‘clickactivism’ con that donating to these groups will end discrimination in NZ.”

OK… so we’ve compared New Zealand’s biggest organisation that supports gay young people and their families through education outreach in schools, a drop-in centre, and peer support groups all over Auckland (Rainbow Youth); and a nationwide gay telephone counselling service and mental health advocacy organisation (Outline) to…

…an American organisation (Invisible Children) that works to raise awareness of child exploitation in Uganda, backed by money from anti-gay Christian organisations who have links with politicians trying to exterminate gays in that country.

WTF?

There’s more…

“There is talk about discrimination, but the examples are we cannot marry, (marriage is not a right), Doctors don’t understand your want to transition, (get a better doctor), and gay teens are far more likely to top themselves that straight teens.”

Marriage is not a right?  Sounds a little bit like this Virginia lawmaker who refused to appoint a lesbian judge, adding the missive “sodomy is not a civil right”.

“Getting a better doctor” works well if you’re in a big city and have money, but not so much if you’re young and in Gore.  That’s presuming you’ve got the guts to challenge your doctor in the first place because you’re already marginalised by the system – the kind of marginalisation that helps lead to gay people “topping themselves”.

Jesus, with friends like Steve, who needs enemies?

” Well, I can’t stand the ‘FKH8′ campaign and I totally loath this cheap, yet just as nasty version. i do NOT want people swearing as if this is a way to get any kind of message across. It is not cool. It is crass. It is so tacky and classless.”

This from a man who has used the phrase “kick her in the c**t” on his blog.

But, to be fair, he’s not the only person perturbed by the use of a profanity in the campaign.  Some people think it’s counter-productive and alienating.

I’m sure there were people in the 1980s who thought that storming a church hall rented by the Salvation Army and other anti-gay groups to stir sentiment up against homosexual law reform was counter-productive and alienating.  It was this infamous moment in New Zealand history that saw the late Invercargill MP Norm Jones screaming “go back to the sewers” at gays from the stage.

The mere fact of making gay issues visible seems to make some gay people upset, and perhaps they are right to be afraid.  Activist Bill Logan remembers that through the whole period of homosexual law reform there was an increase in anti-gay violence, and the community was fractured on what tactics would work best:

“Logan also remembers a situation when there was a move to have a particular public demonstration in Wellington “and some of the people here thought ‘No, we’ve got to stop this demonstration thing… demonstrations look radical, people don’t like demonstrations… not a good idea.’…That demonstration eventually went ahead.”

25 years on, and there’s still no consensus on how we should best approach awareness campaigns.  Sam Shore thinks they’re on the right track with WTF, but acknowledges that the campaign was never going to please everybody.

“We aren’t attacking people with WTF, we’re saying New Zealand is better than this. At one point we were leading the world when it came to human rights,” he says.

“This first video is a starting point.  We’ll see what people respond to and try to adapt to that for the rest of the campaign.  We’re a non-funded organisation with not many staff, and this is the first thing we’ve done like this, so we’re learning a lot.

“We also want people to see what we’re doing and that will be built into the website.  We want to show people where the donations are going – I think that’s really important, that they see the money is not going into a black hole.”

Perhaps the most bizarre backlash has been from gay people, including Steve Gray, who object to the presence of straight people in the campaign:

“I have never needed straight people to fight my battles. FFS, this patronising idea just seems so ‘gays can’t help themselves, better get white straight people to do it for them.”

[NB: Gray seems to be colour-blind as well as numerically challenged.  There's not just white straight people in the video, and elsewhere he claims that Rainbow Youth received $400,000 from Dancing With The Stars "years ago...and they don’t seem to have had any visibility since then".  It was actually $260,000 in 2009 - it doesn't take a great deal of maths to see that amount of money isn't going to go very far in doing nationwide outreach work.  Also, hint: just because an organisation isn't on television doesn't mean it isn't doing effective work in the community.  Rainbow Youth was my first port of call when I came out in the mid-1990s, pre-Internet, and I don't know what I would have done without their support groups.]

Shore is perplexed by these objections.  “A big push for us was to build awareness in the straight community that these issues do affect you, because it’s your family and friends.”

Having worked with agents myself in casting gay-themed short films, I was surprised that some had not voiced their objection to their clients appearing in a gay campaign.  Shore says that most were fine, but some were not.

“I won’t say for who, but some performers stood up and said I’m going to do this whether you tell me I can or not, because I believe in it.”

And it seems that quite a lot of others do as well.  While it’s too early yet to start counting the donations, Shore says the response to the campaign has been far greater than they expected.

This could be the start of something good.

Brain litter

10
by alcohol, bipolar, depression, film • Tags: , ,

A promotional still from the 1980 Village People disaster “Can’t Stop The Music” – sometimes the world’s worst film is better than real life.

My world at the moment is an uncertain place.

It may seem a ridiculous thing to say, because the world at large is an uncertain place at any given time.  I could collapse from some unknown internal ailment before I finish typing this sentence, but for most of the time we live with the cognitive illusion that we’re in control of everything.  We couldn’t function otherwise.

That little circuit isn’t working for me at the moment.  I woke on Monday morning with a helium stomach, a feeling I haven’t had for a very long time.  I used to feel it through most of my school years, to the point where I just thought it was normal to feel vaguely sickened in the morning.

The feeling of dread and disappointment wasn’t enough to keep me in bed.  There’s enough mechanisms firing to chant “the only way out is through”, as Alanis Morissette once sung in one of her less list-making moments.

I arrived in Newmarket for an early-morning tech check for our film night this week.  The street was mostly empty of cars, but several rubbish bins had been tipped over.  The wind had blown their contents all over the street.

As I exited the car park, I took it in as I walked toward the cinema building.

That’s my mind, I thought.  Strewn with litter, and abandoned.  The sun is out, but it’s not lifting my spirits.  It’s like a dirty heat lamp in a Chinese buffet at a food court, and I’m absorbing its wattage in measured doses, enough to keep me dried out and vaguely edible.

There was an ancient form of torture known as the “death by a thousand cuts”.  It’s a phrase that’s passed into our lexicon as a metaphor, but it was once very literal and real.  A single small cut will not do any lasting damage, but get enough of them in quick succession and your body won’t be able to cope with the leakage.

Every little thing that crops up for me at the moment feels like one of those cuts.  Talking to someone on the phone.  Answering an email.  Pestering a company that’s spontaneously restarted a direct debit without permission to return our money.

It’s all just minutiae, and as we all do, I wade through them and tick them off one by one.  But I can feel the cuts starting to build up.

The tech check at the cinema runs smoothly.  We’re playing the disastrous 1980 Village People musical, “Can’t Stop The Music”, and as I watch the opening titles with their cheesy split screens and an inexplicably cheerful Steve Guttenberg rollerskating through New York like a low-rent Gene Kelly, I feel something inside me lift by about half a point.

My world may be uncertain, but it’s also ludicrous.

I head for the exit, and the cinema is not yet open.  The caged doors are down, and I have to wait a minute for Cathrine, the cinema manager, to come and let me out.

She turns the key in the lock and says, “You don’t want to stay trapped in the cinema forever?”

“Sometimes it’s better than real life,” I answer before heading back out into glow of the heat lamp.