Gay Trauma.
By Pablo Das (HHC , SEP)
I think there are 3 kinds of trauma worth distinguishing. Shock trauma, Developmental trauma and the trauma associated with being a member of a marginalized community. Shock trauma is a single event kind of trauma (accidents, assaults, falls). Developmental trauma has to do with the way our brains and nervous systems develop in relationship to our primary caregivers and environment early in life. Being part of a marginalized community has its own distinct potential for trauma.
I grew up in a time where there was no media representation for gay people at all. There were no gay characters on TV, no gay songs, no “it gets better” campaign and no internet. I didn’t meet an out gay person until I met my boss at my first job when was 19 when I moved out of the Mojave desert to San Diego. Even then, it took me two years to come out to him. This sense of being on the outside receiving messages from all directions that society doesn’t celebrate your existence creates shame, a sense of isolation and other-ness.
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I first realized I was gay when I was about 12. This felt like such a dangerous and unwelcome insight in my small military town, that I literally put it out of my mind for 8 or 9 years. I did not have that thought again until I was 21. Having to split off from a fundamental part of who you are for that many years has an impact. So many gay people go through that.
When I finally came out, it was in the middle of the AIDS crisis in a time that was much more hostile toward gay people. My father disowned me when I came out and over the next few years I would drop out of college and have ongoing conflict with some family members.
In my early 20’s, I spent a summer working at Glacier park in Montana. One morning I woke up in my dorm room and there was a note taped to my door that said “faggots like you die easy in these parts”. That was the same year Matthew Shepard, a gay college kid, was famously killed in the neighboring state of Wyoming.
All of this had a huge impact on my nervous system, relationship to the world, to authority, to other gay people, to religion and more. I drank heavily to numb anxiety and depression. I was a very angry person in my 20’s and 30’s. I felt like an outsider in my family and society. I’ll never forget watching the president of the United States (Bush 2) use his state of the union speech to pledge that same sex relationships would never be federally recognized. The Defense of Marriage Act followed.
Trauma is what happens when our nervous systems are sensitized to threat. The threat can come from a single event or an ongoing set of conditions. That threat doesn't have to be physical, as it has been for many gay people, the threat can be to the subjective experience of self. It can also come from an ongoing series of never ending slights against you.
Gay people first experience an internal realization, often conflicted, which you may have to hold in isolation for an extended period. In an important developmental period from ages 12 to 21, I was necessarily cut off from a fundamental part of myself. I would not have survived otherwise in my household.
In my experience, gay men who grow up in religious households can be particularly wounded. They have to grapple with being told that the very fact of their existence is an affront to God.
The generation that came before me had to navigate tremendous loss during the AIDS crisis. The generation before them lived with the threat of institutionalization, loss of job and home and public shaming in the paper, should they be found out.
How do we heal? Here are some things that have helped me...
Learn your history:
One of the most healing things that happened for me, was learning gay history. Our history was not taught to me in high school. I’ve taken college history classes in the last few years and we still don’t exist in history class. My college in Los Angeles, the birthplace of the modern gay rights movement has no LGBT history classes. (It does however have black, Mexican, Asian and women’s history classes.)
Reading Lillian Faderman’s book called the Gay Revolution was revelatory. It’s like I had been walking around with a bare scaffolding of gay identity and this book built a building around it. We are a bold, creative, smart and strong people. No one told me. It’s important to know your history.
Tell your story!
Many of my most healing moments were spent in back box theaters watching gay performance artists like Tim Miller who told his story in ways that I didn’t know were possible in my early 20’s. He often did so, naked. Reading Angels in America and the Normal Heart (and everything else by Larry Kramer) was profoundly affirming and healing. Hearing the Indigo Girls and seeing Rent on Broadway we’re profoundly healing. When we tell our story we help ourselves and we help others.
In my mid 20’s and early 30’s I started a gay two piece band called Testosterone Kills and sang the shit out of my anger. I continued as a solo artist singing my story all over the country and as an opening actor a friend in Europe. Making beautiful things with your pain and anger is transformational for everyone involved. It’s part of our Gay secret sauce.
Therapy :
The other thing that was helpful was years of therapy with a gay therapist. The fact that he was gay was critical. There’s a thing that happens when gay people gather together. There’s a certain freedom and recognition that doesn’t happen otherwise. We get each other. It’s important to connect.
Sobriety.
Gay people are particularly susceptible to addiction issues. Most of our spaces are bars. Crystal meth addiction is everywhere.wE have a lot to numb. But it’s not until you stop numbing that you are able to be present with your history, go deep and begin to walk through the trauma and woundings that all gay people carry.
Trauma work.
I say this in almost every article I write on trauma, but in my experience the trajectory of trauma healing is moving out of helplessness, victimhood and disempowerment and into a state of self-possession, agency and empowerment. For me there is a big difference between a healthy, good faith acknowledgment of what you have been through and a collapse into victimhood, cynicism, anger and addiction. Trauma work helps facilitate that movement and can be an important part of our healing.
Healing is mysterious.
It requires us to muck around and try different things. Some things we try don’t work. It takes time. Progress is measured. There is no one path that’s right for everyone. Nevertheless, it’s important to do our work. As I’ve said before. We are not our fault, but we are our responsibility. The work is hard, but necessary, and in time, you will be rewarded.
Heal on, trauma queens.
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Pablo Das is trained as a Buddhist teacher and as a Holistic Wellness coach (HHC). He is a practitioner of Somatic Experiencing (SEP) and is an advocate for a trauma centered, Buddhist approach to recovery from Addiction Patterns.