SPFPP Episode 146: Acknowledging the Lower Case Self
The black indifference on my social media feed is disgusting and I'm calling out status quo perpetuation from those who hide behind mutuality. The things I tilt my head at that have a hint of racism in them, I'm sharing them publicly if able and calling these people into this space because I'm tired of it. What is self-apathy, boundariness, and what does herpes have to do with these things besides highlighting them for us?
5 people are enrolled in 12 therapy sessions with our Partner therapist. I discuss my fear of success and how protecting my feelings from the world is sabotaging my attempts at connection.
"Do you have feelings for me?", I was asked by my friend I do sex with, and I told her I don't. Having blown my mind with the question and the thought, I explored this a lot and it centers around my emotional unavailability. We go way back here to the last time I expressed feelings for someone and how it hurt me.
What does what we want in a relationship and passion look like? If you wanna be swept off your feet, what's the gift that person had better come bearing with your name on it? Lastly, how does herpes highlight YOUR lower case self?
Episode 146 Transcript
Social Media Break and Calling Out Racism
00:00:00 Courtney Brame: For those who've noticed, I've taken a little bit of a break from social media. It's not a little bit of a break. I'm not going to be on there for the next seven days. So from the time of the release of this episode, I'm not going to be active on Instagram at all. In fact, I just deleted it off my phone. I'm taking the advice of a friend and one of my advisers who said I should suggest I take a break. given just how this past week has gone for me. a lot has happened. I'm feeling triggered. It's more activated, challenged. Those are two words that really resonate with me.
Courtney Brame: And before I get into all of that, I wanted to set a very hard boundary that I am calling out any perpetuation of racism and any upholding of the status quo behaviors that I see when I normally open up my Facebook feed or social media feed. Something will come up that's some questionable posting that'll maybe make you turn an eye or make one of those side faces, and be like, and today was just different. I saw someone just share something. They didn't put context, but there was nothing bad that they said. And I think that this is what's so dangerous about when we see things and we just kind of turn the other cheek or we'll be like, " that's just and so. That's how they are."
Courtney Brame: being controversial in a way that isn't inspiring action, but just more instigating situations. just adding fuel to the fire. We're in a very hostile, thick, tensioned political atmosphere. And so for someone to articulate or even just uplift and promote something that is clearly ignorant or racist, especially against Black people. Like it said, "If you don't want to get shot, don't resist arrest." And that's what the post said. And he just posted it And you read through the comments and I made sure to do this because I'm not the kind of person who just will blatantly attack a person. In fact, oftentimes I've just historically not said anything at all. but now I'm tired. I'm beyond angry. I'm beyond enraged. I'm numb to it now.
Courtney Brame: And then I'm at a point where I just really don't give a f***. So he made this sharable. I shared it, said what I needed to say, which is that this is the kind of s** that is worse for the problem in my opinion, and this is just my opinion. I would rather know someone's racist than for them to justify something along the lines of the law. I support the law. law is** fairly created in the ways that it is and disproportionately impacts communities of people of color period. And so when you try to maintain mutuality and be non-confrontational by justifying your mutuality, that's worse.
Courtney Brame: And I'll go into why that's worse as I go in through this. But I just want to give y'all a heads up. I don't care who you are. If I've worked with you in the past, if we've been on a podcast with one another, if I see you post some s***, I'm going to share it and then I'm going to say whatever it is. And whatever you have to say in me in DMs, you need to see on the comments because I'm just going to screenshot the s*** and put it in the comments. For however long, I feared losing employment opportunities, losing money, losing clients. I'm past that none of that s*** matters. I don't need that anymore. I don't want to take the money of someone who is not a good person. You don't even really have to be a good person.
Courtney Brame: Just to be empathetic and understanding and sensitive to the issues that are happening in the world right now that are affecting people who** look like me, and it's just wrong. And I just can't continue to keep this in or act like everything's okay because it's those people that don't get called out, the people who are riding the fence or remaining neutral or who
Courtney Brame: I'm not saying anything bad or good. Y'all are the problem." Because these are the kinds of people who don't get involved at all. And again, this is going to just tie into what we talk about at the end of this. But wanted to just make that known right in the beginning. because that's important to me right now to get out there. That all said, welcome to Something Positive for Positive People. I'm your host, Courtney Brain. Something positive for positive people features the experiences of people who are living with or affected by herpes primarily and assisting them in navigating the system, navigating the stigma from diagnosis to disclosure. This is also a 501c3 nonprofit organization that can be donated to. and what we're doing is right now we have five people enrolled in therapy services.
Therapy Services and the Concept of Boundarylessness
00:05:00 Courtney Brame: We've got 12 sessions per person to meet with the sex positive counselor who they're going to talk to specifically about their herpes diagnosis. And over the course of the next 12 weeks, we're going to get information back from these people about, what they got out of it and create some kind of a survey to see how we can make this more useful and accessible and present it in a way that is going to hopefully get us a lot more funding so we can do this outside of just Missouri because that's where our partner therapist is licensed at.
Courtney Brame: So, if you want to donate or get involved at all or if you need services and as of right now, we can only provide services to people who are in Missouri. You can visit www.spfpp.org. Yeah, I don't know where I was. I don't know what else I was going to add to that. It's on the homepage and options to donate or via Venmo and PayPal when you go to the homepage. All right, getting into this podcast episode. This isn't exclusively about herpes, but it will be tied in once I get to the end along with how I talked about remaining neutral or being non-confrontational. All of this is going to tie in at the end, so just bear with me. I took notes in this episode and I mentioned not really wanting or liking to take notes because I go all over the place or I don't use them anyway.
Courtney Brame: But I'm going to be as concise as I can here because I only got 59 minutes. given what this new podcast recording app allows for and everything that I've written down I think is in a good order. So over the last week I mentioned that it's been not positive but just a challenging period because I'm at a growth point in my life right now. I am living out the manifestation of things that I said that I was going to do and I'm doing them now. It's here. It's not in manifestation. It's not in my thoughts. It's not in conversations with people, it's real. I said three and a half years ago, I want to help people who are struggling with the herpes stigma to get therapy.
Courtney Brame: And I can tangibly count the number of Finos that I've sent in order to pay for people to get therapy. And it's real. And what's challenging is not** that up. And so, I want to begin here with the book Boundaries by, I don't have it here in front of me, but, the title of the book is Boundaries. It's got a red and white cover to it.
Courtney Brame: and the word boundarylessness came up and what it does is it enables others to harm themselves and their loved ones. And I interpret this shortly as self-appathy. People who don't have boundaries are self-appathetic. They're apathetic to themselves. They don't necessarily stand for anything. They're non-confrontational. These are people who you can't really connect with. It's almost what's the word I'm looking for here? Cuz it's almost like being transparent in a way that people just simply cannot connect with you.
Courtney Brame: And when I say transparent in a way that aligns with my values, like I'm talking about being transparent in my thoughts, my behaviors, my beliefs. That's transparency in that sense. But here in this sense, when we talk about being self-empathetic, you're impossible to connect with. And I think that it's really interesting to me how that word can be used in both of these instances. No one can connect with a self-empathetic person. These are the people who might be too nice. Yes, men or women or people who are just go with the flow, whatever the situation is. And you can't connect with a person like that because they're not themselves. our identities, because I definitely resonate with this, are centered around whatever we're associated with at that point in time in our lives.
00:10:00 Courtney Brame: And that hit me hard as I read this book. And so looking at boundarylessness and after having read the book, looking at what boundaries are, they demonstrate respect. They teach others exactly how to love us and how they can be loved by us by honoring our boundaries.
Courtney Brame: And I happen to have some friends who have very strong firm boundaries that they have in place. And these boundaries may be to boundaryless people or to people who have no understanding of boundaries. This may seem like a person's mean or they're aggressive or they're rude or stuck up or something, but to me what this says is that this person knows their love language. know to be loved. They know how they can love. And they know how they want people to love them. And that's what it says to me. After reading throughout this entire book, I just had so many moments for myself in relation to my life and how I've just been boundless for so long and where that even started.
Courtney Brame: I'm able to trace it back to the earliest origins of recognizing my boundarylessness and how I've upheld my boundarylessness through being transparent in the negative way. Let's call it lowercase t transparent to where people can't connect with me. They don't know. They don't know what I need. And even when I had the conversation with my dad that I referenced in an older episode, he said, "It seemed like I didn't need anything." And I think that a person with boundaries, it's easier to identify what it is that they need, whether they tell you or not. And at the very minimum, what they need is for you to honor their boundaries. And that's how you can demonstrate what someone needs.
Courtney Brame: So, for me to have been needless to my father, one of my providers, I've not had boundaries. I've not been able to actually receive or give love. And this book has really opened my eyes to that. I want to talk about how being boundaryless with herpes kind of goes hand in hand a little bit because I noticed that many people that I've spoken with, they don't necessarily see herpes as its own entity in relation to how it impacts us.
Courtney Brame: our beliefs, our emotional health. It almost seems to highlight something that was already there. And typically, it revolves around boundaries for a lot of us. And here it makes us put in the boundaries to give you some examples of having this to disclose. You now are filtering people into your life that you're wondering If you are someone that is interested in being intimate with someone physically and putting them at risk, you now have to set off having a conversation around sexual health. You have to set boundaries around the kind of person that you're going to go for. Even if your boundaries are strict or if they're loose boundaries, it's important to be able to have them.
Courtney Brame: So what herpes essentially does for us by default is if we are in fact ethical people, we value choice for ourselves and other people, then we're going to have the boundary of always disclosing. So that's one example. And then as I mentioned, herpes highlights things that were already there. So essentially a lot of cases like boundarylessness were there. So if you have regrets about having slept with the person who might have put you at risk for herpes, then your boundaries moving forward are going to be intimate with people who value you. And if you have boundaries, you'll know that this person is or isn't compatible.
Courtney Brame: It's a great compatibility test from for instance, if you disclose to someone and you disclose to them and they respond in the way that they respond, you get that response from them and you kind of see where their boundaries are and you see that this isn't someone or it is someone who will or won't respect your boundaries, So, this helps us with identifying intentions from other people as well. just by having this diagnosis. So that's a really good way to view herpes and to examine it and make it something useful. use this as a reason to establish, uphold and set boundaries in your life, right?
Fear of Success and the Lowercase Self
00:15:00 Courtney Brame: And so as I look through my experiences with my herpes diagnosis, I find it to be in my love life that I've been In my passion, I've been boundless. In my career, I've even been boundless. And it's impacted me. I can trace it back to all these situations of being a yes man at work, being a yes man in relationships, being a yes man in my passion, like stretching myself super thin all the time, and just wanting to just be liked by everybody.
Courtney Brame: and the kind of person who is liked by everybody that I am. I've given that part of me a name that I've come up with in therapy. Now, I'm going to go ahead and drop this in here. If you are considering therapy, please you can support the podcast and support yourself by visiting www.ethe betterhelp.comsp and you'll get 10% off your first month of services. So, this next section really is going to sound like an ad, but I'm really going to just talk about my own experience with my therapist that I connected with through again, that's www.gethelp.com/spfpp. We get money to be able to help other people with getting therapy as well.
Courtney Brame: So if you do decide to move forward, just know that you're not only helping yourself, but you're helping someone else as All right. So, I've come up with lowercase Courtney and then there's caps lock Courtney or all caps Courtney, whichever one sounds fitting at the moment. I just mentioned, seeing boundaryless Courtney, who I will call Courtney, lowercase Courtney, has trouble with emotional expression. And what ends up happening is that emotional buildup becomes intense by default… intense. I'm a Scorpio.
Courtney Brame: I keep hearing people say that. So, there must be something there, and this intensity just erupts due to me not releasing or expressing it. And the eruption looks like a breakup abruptly. It looks like quitting a job abruptly. It looks like me leaving from a state city that I claimed to have loved, that I was thriving in, and just impulsively making decisions that in the moment weren't the best ones that I could have made. And not having boundaries led to the eruption that happened. And I've learned through therapy and working with my therapist that I
Courtney Brame: in fact I have a fear of success in my passion, my career and in my love life. I mentioned in another episode that I was in a situation where everything was happening right. I courted someone from start to finish and then got to the point of success and just didn't know what was next. I got there and just got complete anxiety around what was going on, in the real world because I talk about how I want to do things, and then I find myself in a position where I'm doing them, I'm doing them, and then I get to a certain point to where it's like, wait, this is real right now. And it just seems so unreal to me. I'm not responding to it in a way that a normal person should be able to.
Courtney Brame: I should be able to handle the unknown once I'm there. But that's been a challenge for me. And then we talked about how now something positive for positive people. There's five people in therapy. I put five people in therapy and yet I'm here and the anxiety is at an all-time high because I'm worried about how I'm going to f*** this up. And that's a real thing. In the situation with relationships and my passion, they parallel one another. And those parallels stem from that whole feeling of fear of success. And one more thing happened over the weekend that I'm going to share here is that I got to observe lowercase Courtney at a funeral.
Observing Grief and Emotional Numbness
00:20:00 Courtney Brame: I went to my great uncle's funeral last weekend and he unfortunately passed away from COVID and when I was there I got to really observe myself and my family and I was very resistant to going to the funeral. I had every excuse. It's just like I need to work. If I don't work I don't make money. if I come like
Courtney Brame: What's the likelihood of me passing COVID on to some of these people or getting it? I made every possible excuse not to go to this funeral. It was probably the best decision that I've made all 2020 because not only did I get to know my uncle and see a lot of the similarities that we had, unfortunately, we didn't get to really connect on those, but I got to know him.
Courtney Brame: I got to know him through the celebration of his life and it felt like a church service. I ain't been to church in probably a dozen years. But it was nice. It was just a very pleasant experience. And what I took away from it was seeing my relatives process grief, how they grieve. my mom for instance, we had some edibles before we went in. We don't like funerals. We all got anxiety. And so I know that my mom is a funny person. My mom has a great sense of humor and she uses her sense of humor often. This day she was more humorous than usual, which I knew that this was kind of like an overcompensation of emotion that she was really feeling.
Courtney Brame: I noticed that the daughter of my uncle who passed away, she's very angry because people were trying to just tell her what to do and everyone was just yelling for her to do this, be here, trying to be there. And I noticed her attitude, and I don't mean attitude in a bad way, but just that she's powerful. She's independent. And when she spoke, she spoke about her father and she was so strong. She was up there. She was holding it together. She said everything she needed to say. And then after everybody sat down, everybody lost it. I sat next to my grandfather and on the other side of him was and my mom just lost it. So people around me are just losing it.
Courtney Brame: And I'm sitting there and I'm just still and I hear myself don't cry here. And I'm telling myself things to keep myself from crying. And that's where and this brings it back to the therapy thing. My therapist, he called it robot Courtney, but I think this was when I named it lowercase Courtney because what lowercase Courtney was doing was protecting me from expressing emotions due to a childhood event and I know exactly which I never felt safe expressing emotions and so we're going to get to that next as well.
Courtney Brame: fortunately took notes because this is all going to tie in a way that actually makes sense. And I'm not just rambling here, but I observed that I wanted to cry. I was in a safe space to cry. People were crying around me. But lowercase Courtney protected Capslock Courtney from expressing his emotions and in turn potentially blocked off Capslock Courtney from that pain from the feelings of grief from the feelings of being able to be connected to even right so these were the observations
Courtney Brame: that I made at the funeral about just seeing how different family members were coping and then being able to observe myself and my thoughts and being able to identify this robot Courtney that my therapist calls it that we've now identified as lowercase Courtney. And that's one of the things that therapy has done for me is give a name to my habitual persona that self- sabotages because it's trying to protect me. If that makes sense. I really hope that makes sense. But trying to protect ourselves sometimes looks like self sabotage because what am I protecting myself from? I'm protecting myself from expressing emotions.
00:25:00 Courtney Brame: And what's happening in turn is I am doing something that is resisting connection because the emotional expression lays the foundation for us to be able to connect with people and be connected to. And so in protecting myself, I'm sabotaging myself from being connected to. Granted, we're in a pandemic. We're in COVID and it's a funeral. Everybody's wearing their masks, but people still need to be comforted. People are still grieving. and I shut myself down from that. That's what lowercase C Courtney did.
Courtney Brame: And so through this particular situation and talking about this in therapy in combination with the next thing that I'm about to go into this is going to lead us to the end of it where it all ties together. So, the next thing that happened, my friend I had sex with, we agreed that that's what we were, asked me, "Do you have feelings for me?" And my heart dropped.
Courtney Brame: Not because I have feelings for her, not because I don't have feelings for her, but because of where my mind went, because my mind was blown at this question. Because I immediately thought the last time that I had feelings for someone. And when I had feelings for someone was back in** seventh or eighth grade. This is how long I've been shut off. I went to college and I didn't even kiss in college until my junior year. I had sex. I just didn't kiss because I didn't want to have feelings for someone or someone else or for them to have feelings for me because that was painful. And the first time that I experienced that kind of pain was the last time that I experienced that kind of pain.
Courtney Brame: Mind you, it was puppy love, whatever the hell you want to call it. But I thought I was getting married. I thought we was gonna get married. I thought this was going to be my first sexual experience. That's what I thought. And it didn't happen that way. So her asking me that, I gave her an honest answer. I was just like, no, but what does having feelings for you look like? Because to me, what it represents is attachment. and I haven't been attached to a partner since probably seventh grade. And that was like I remember crying my f*** eyes out. her mom I don't think they listen to this but if they do they hit me up. Her mom still calls me on my birthday. that's to give you an idea like yeah you say seventh grade. you were young you should have been over that by now.
Courtney Brame: But no, this was and her mom knows how hurt I was because she still reaches out to me once a year and just wishes me a happy birthday. And It's just pleasant to talk to her and say," But I believe that that very good experience has to do with either the birth or maturation of lower caps Courtney because I expressed feelings at point in time and it hurt.
Courtney Brame: Those feelings that were expressed were feelings of loss, pain, despair, loneliness, and did I mention loss? That was the last time. And on all my dating profiles, I have had, and I even tell people how emotionally available I am. I have this seemingly infinite emotional capacity to be whatever people need me to be in the moment. And that's***. After having reflected on this past week and doing my journaling and doing my processing, I'm not emotionally available. I am more accurately emotionally numb.
00:30:00 Courtney Brame: And not just due to that experience, but backtracking from funeral to being asked this question to recalling the childhood traumatic events that showed me that expressing emotions weren't safe. I'm not emotionally available. And as I processed this, it's like this is something that I understand I got to work on. and being able to express that emotion. and this ties into the next thing that we're going to I'm really proud of myself for being able to stay on task and how I took these notes because I just kind of wrote down what I needed to say and then just numbered so down the list it's 452361.
Courtney Brame: So, I'm having to jump around a little bit in my notes here. Yes, I'm emotionally unavailable, and that's what I look for in partners. I look for that emotional unavailability as well, because it's safe. childhood trauma. And, I don't know that it's really relevant that I bring that up here, but, it's got to do with just not being safe to express emotions. My neighbor just got here and he just walked his dog. So they're going to go upstairs. It's a big ass dog. So you're going to hear some dog running around above me for a few minutes before it just bears with me through that. So despite my emotional unavailability, I do know what I want as far as relationships go. I just don't know what it looks like.
Courtney Brame: And I know how important freedom is to me. And I was thinking to myself, perhaps I'm attached to freedom and how it looks in relation to being able to do whatever I want with whoever I want whenever I want. And this is why non-monogamy is so appealing to me. But what happens if I'm shown freedom by someone who** sweeps me off my feet in a way that I could never have imagined and it just looks like something completely different. Maybe it looks like someone just seeing me for who I am and embracing me and all my intensity that I try to hide. someone who sees cap a lowercase Courtney and is like, "No, that ain't this ain't what it do. we ain't f**** with that. I want to lock Courtney. I want caps lock Courtney all the time.
Courtney Brame: Caps lock Courtney is who wants to be seen, who wants to be experienced, who wants to be swept off his feet, but lowercase Courtney continues to protect caps lock Courtney and just being seen how powerful that to be is as simple as that. Why is it that the thing that it takes to sweep someone off? Being seen is the thing that
Courtney Brame: is so hard. It's really challenging for you to find, I've never had the freedom to be myself. I almost cried in* therapy yesterday because what my therapist said, he said, "It's okay for you to be yourself. Even if you mess up, it'll be all right." He said that and I was like, I feel myself about to cry. I'm not going to, but I feel I recognize it. And I was just like, "f*** that." and I let him know this and he was just like, " maybe you need to tell yourself that more." even if you f******, it'll be all right. You can handle it. And I have nothing but proof that after all my f**, I've handled it. I'm still here. I have more proof that I can handle things then I'm not able to handle things.
Courtney Brame: worst situations that I've been in as far as I mean s***, I just had chlamydia. I have herpes. I've lost people. I've lost jobs. I've lost friends. I lost relationships. I've experienced a loss. I experienced a lot of negativity. Someone asked me, "Courtney, how do you stay so positive all the time?" And I Courtney caps lock Courtney went to be like, "Dude, I'm f****** negative as s***.
00:35:00 Courtney Brame: I'm always looking at things like how's this going to go wrong? Where is this going to f** When is this going to be f***** up? So I'm prepared for it. So I'm always in this state of negativity and react to it in a way that I guess is perceived as positive. The way that things come out is a conscious choice of me not to allow the negativity to continue or take over. So this is just how I am, in my head. Y'all won't see it. I don't want to show that to y'all. But Lowerase Courtney has to give up the reign sometimes. Caps lock Courtney if Lowerase Courtney continues to take things over, Caps Courtney is going to be the one to f*** this all up out of an explosion. Like I said, I've left jobs. I've left relationships.
Courtney Brame: I've quit things because of that intense eruption that has taken place. I don't feel like that's where I'm at now. Because I'm aware I can have my releases. I can have my boundaries. Going back to that, I can put my boundaries in place that allow for me to take care of myself and be able to express my emotions. And that's what this is for me right now. As we talk about this lowercase Courtney repressing and protecting caps lock Courtney's emotions and from that pain I'm also protected from experiencing joy. All of this stuff is connected. I mentioned my dad's issue of when I get excited, I expect to be disappointed. And even that just comes from not having boundaries.
Courtney Brame: And even with that, if I'm not experiencing disappointment, I'm also not experiencing excitement. So, this goes back to the numbness that I reference here and just how being emotionally numb has just been something that I've done to get by and survive. And this has been such an experience for me. because it's challenging to have this realization because now I have to act accordingly. I can't let myself just do what I've been doing.
Courtney Brame: I see when lowercase Courtney is stepping up and when he's showing up and doing what he's doing and I have to consciously press the pause button and then just decide that I'm going to do Whatever that something different is, it could be just the complete opposite or it could be something like what I would have done but more mindfully, more consciously with a little bit of emotion injected into it and feeling because I'm 31 years old. I'm about to be 32 November 10th and I'm a grown ass man who has emotions. And the less I express it, the more I'm going to disconnect from people. And as a person who values connection over everything else, that just doesn't make sense. I value connection.
Courtney Brame: I'm waiting to be swept off my feet by somebody who's going to connect with me by giving me my freedom in a way that I've never experienced before. How am I going to do that if lowercase Courtney is self-sabotaging by protecting my emotions? And this s***'s intense. it really is because when I do have it, I've scared people away. Y'all think I'm vulnerable on these podcasts. I make people vulnerable on these podcasts like the guests who share and then decide not to allow me to post the episodes. We get deep. I have those experiences in my head. Unfortunately, I can't share with y'all. But these have been some really vulnerable conversations. Even in my love life, I've scared people off who can't handle the intensity of this vulnerability.
Courtney Brame: And those rejections have kind of hit me in a way too to make me think that it's not safe for me to be who I am. It's not safe for me to be emotionally intense. It's not as safe for me to express that s***. And then there are people who want it from me and I just can't give it to them, because lowercase Courtney is protecting caps Courtney from pain, from getting connected and closed and then experiencing loss. I can't tell you how many times I've extended vulnerability and have it just not observed. And that causes me to withdraw. And so this goes back to being boundaryless.
Courtney Brame: when you try to just connect with anybody, Who's sacred? What connections are actually valuable and valid? Are any of them? So, if you continue to extend that emotional extension of yourself, you continue to put that out there in the same places and you're getting met with the same reaction. You got to do something different. And that's what caps lock Courtney is saying to that's what I'm saying to myself. But lowercase Courtney is like, No, don't do that. That's not safe. It's not safe." That's the voice that's in my head. There's literally two of us. And I'm deciding to be Caps Courtney, which I'm very proud of. But there's also a place for lowercase Courtney. And that's really what I really need to process right now.
Stepping Into "Caps Lock Courtney"
00:40:00 Courtney Brame: I think lowercase Courtney needs boundaries in order to be effective, in order for Caps Law Courtney to be free. That's what these boundaries do, they set the foundations for your freedom. So, this can just look like not allowing yourself to talk to yourself a certain way, not allowing yourself to be talked to a certain way, not talking to other people a certain way. We set these boundaries and we show people, hey, here's give me. Here's how I can honor you- I respect you. Here's how you can love me, respect me, so that we can be more free to just That's what that s** does. Highlighting herpes and my initial trauma.
Courtney Brame: throughout this I mentioned emotional numbness and I mentioned my early traumatic experience that I recall. I believe that lowercase C Courtney was created after an advance for emotional connection to my mom where I was met with a rejection. She was young when she had me and I can't imagine having had a toddler in my 20s. And so I remember, not just once, but a few times where she'd be I come in there maybe for a hug or just to be up under my mom and she'd be like, "I'm on the phone. Get out of here." and regardless of what the tone was, it was very rejecting. And I remember feeling like always being there when my mom needed emotional support.
Courtney Brame: So, kid Courtney, let's say I was 10, I don't know, let's say it started at 10, had this narrative that I can receive. Receiving. Giving emotion is rejection or that's not safe. So, in order to survive, I need to be the kind of person who can take in all the emotion. But I can't give it out. I have to be selective in who I give it out to. And that girl in seventh grade that I gave the emotion to,** that up for everybody, that's where it started. That's where lowercase Courtney was born.
Courtney Brame: Lower case coordinate has run my life from the time I was 10 and created this whole environment and space to where I'm with I guess maybe not emotionally unavailable women but women who are in fact emotional and I know that they have partners who are emotionally unavailable so they come to me, aka my mom did. I'm their emotional boyfriend and I get this s*** dumped on me on a regular basis and I take it because I can because that's what I'm used to.
Courtney Brame: And then even with something positive for positive people people come to me with very intense emotions and in an intense head space. And it's almost as if I like that because it's what I wish I could do, what I want to be able to do, what doesn't feel safe for me to do. and I welcome that some people I got an email from a guy who just was talking about being suicidal and he really went in and I was going to read the email on the podcast episode, but this wasn't the place for it. Not this episode. Perhaps I'll share it in a future one, but receiving the emotional intensity from people. That's what this does.
00:45:00 Courtney Brame: Me having herpes allowed for something to be created that fit the needs of 10-year-old Courtney who, mom dumps emotion onto Courtney. Courtney can't do it back. Courtney doesn't feel safe doing it back. Let me say that. There have been times like, I hug my mom, never consistently rejected me. I just remembered these particular times better than I remember anything else. and it's just like even with this people come, they dump their emotions on me, they take what they need, and then they leave. And I've been okay with that. I'm fine with that.
Courtney Brame: I think that caps lock Courtney made an emergence in saying hey if you got any value out of this conversation then leave a donation so that we can support someone else who really needs it by giving them therapy. So I get glimpses of caps lowercase Courtney on a consistent basis here. and I'm really working hard to be Capslock Courtney to be someone with boundaries, someone that people can connect with that there can be a mutual connection.
Courtney Brame: People feel connected to me, but I feel I can name three people who I honestly believe know me because I've allowed them to because I've over time and experiences just felt safe with these people and never been emotionally neglected by them. So that's wait. I'm supposed to talk about how herpes highlights the initial trauma. So, the development of something positive for positive people. and my herpes diagnosis really brought that to the surface because now it's amplified by infinity. So, it's not just the relationship that I had as a kid with my mom.
Courtney Brame: My mom and I have a great relationship. By the way, there are a lot of times where that pattern is still repeated. I'll talk to her about it once I have the right language in therapy because that's another thing is that I've not had the language before now and I'm picking it up as I work through this with my therapist and having my experiences and being able to observe lowercase Courtney, Caps Courtney throughout day-to-day life. But yeah, I mean, having herpes and really being able to see that looking at my relationships with women and how I'm essentially pursuing partners who aren't able to handle my emotional intensity. And when people are able to handle my emotional intensity, I want to make them friends. I think that these are great people in my life.
Courtney Brame: and I value friendship over partnership because I've seen more lasting friendships and I have successful relationships. That's a whole another podcast episode. but yeah, I place a significant amount of value on the people that I call my friends. And so in the workplace looking at how I create that same kind of environment to where I'm needless. Don't p your s*** on me. I'm going to make it work. I'll make these deadlines, but then when I need help, it just seems like it's nowhere to be found. That's been a pattern in corporate America for me. I don't necessarily have that
Courtney Brame: and then with something positive for positive people like I said people contact me on a regular basis in some dark places in some high places as well but I'm welcoming that intensity from the place of 10-year-old Courtney and this whole fantastic wonderful amazing thing has been created as a result of it. I am viewed as an amazing person as a result of it. But looking at what herpes is highlighting here for me, it's that looking at my emotions and how repressed they've been and glimpses of this persona that I've created to protect my emotions is the very thing that's keeping me from getting what I want out of life.
Courtney Brame: connection, freedom. That's the kind of stuff we need to look at. These are the kinds of things that we need to process. boundaries. I mentioned earlier that I'm taking this week off of social media. It's needed. I'm still going to post this podcast episode on time. but yeah, this is a lot for me to have to process and I'm processing it. This is not something that has been processed. It's not incomplete.
Closing Thoughts and Outro
00:50:00 Courtney Brame: this is where it is right now and I got work to do. I'm always going to have work to do. But understanding that I have the ability to turn on this emotional numbness or a more accurate statement would be that I struggle to turn off this emotional numbness and be able to make myself a person with boundaries. Being someone who people really can genuinely connect with, being someone who can genuinely express my emotions to people. That's what's going to be needed if I'm going to take this to the next level. 10-year-old Courtney responded to the needs of his mother and the situation that he was in at that point in time. doesn't apply here. Not anymore.
Courtney Brame: And I think that that's probably what's gifted me to this point to be able to have gotten something positive for positive people to where it is now. But if I'm going to keep it going, I gotta be cap Courtney, not just on this podcast, but in my day-to-day life as well. I'm doing some s*** behind the scenes. I'm doing some good s*** behind the scenes. but once you become aware you can't look back, you can't unsee what it is that like harm you caused or good that you've done, And I'm seeing all of that now from a bird eyes view of caps Courtney, lowercase Courtney. And the challenge here is deciding who I want to be.
Courtney Brame: What use am I going to give the other persona? Because I mean, I don't plan on just flat out killing it, but one of these has a purpose, the other one doesn't. Yeah, that's been my week. I thought that this was really good for me to get off my chest. And while I struggle to extend my emotions to real life people, I look back and I think that something positive for positive people has in fact been my outlet for emotions. As numb as I may seem to be or as that's how it's a bad time. I'mma upload this and then pass TF out.
Courtney Brame: as emotionally numb as I am or seem to be. I don't even know where I was going with that. Lost it. But long story short, y'all have boundaries. Your herpes in itself comes with boundaries that you can or cannot implement. Whatever you choose to do, it's your decision. You do what you want to do, but understand that there are going to be consequences for taking away people's choice because that's not consensual. Let's get check.com nope. Nope, that's not the slash.'s get checked.com. Let's get checked period is an STI testing kit at home. They also offer COVID test.
Courtney Brame: So, if you're meeting someone new, and you met them online, you want to meet in person, that's a good way for you to get this thing started. You can get an STD test and you can get a COVID test sent to your house with 30% off when you go to www.trylogic.comsp with no vows. So that's t r y lggc.comsp and you'll save 30% off your first at-home test kit. And for me I got… I got the full screening and I mentioned how herpes can show up in your pee as non-reactive which was new to me.
Courtney Brame: So, if you're someone who is dealing with your diagnosis and perhaps you're worried about shedding or you just want to see for yourself, maybe you are having an outbreak or maybe you are feeling a tingling sensation and you just want to know if this is a time period where you're shedding the virus in your urine or at the point of genital contact where the urine comes out. and just what it says cuz mine said non-reactive so I don't really have any like I would love for that to have said reactive so that I could ask more questions about that but for me it was just non-reactive and so if you go to www.trylgc.com/spfpp
00:55:00 Courtney Brame: www.trylgc.com/spfppp. Again, you'll save 30% off your first at home test kit and I believe there's still a drop down for you to enter the promo code. So, you can put spf in at checkout as well, just to be sure. As I mentioned earlier in the podcast, something positive for positive people is a 501c3 nonprofit organization that is paying for people to get therapy if they are struggling with stigma and live in the state of Missouri. for your support. You can go to www.spfpp.org and you can scroll down a little bit to see different options to donate. You can become a Patreon subscriber, if you want to commit to making monthly donations. If you want to make a one time donation, I'm very easy to connect with.
Courtney Brame: And if that's not something that's in your price range and you want to just leave a review for the podcast or if you want to share it, I'm not going to be on social media this week. So, when this episode comes out, you can share it to whatever communities you're part of and belong to if you found some value in it because I found value in just talking through this myself and reading through it. my buddy I mentioned Tyler whose wedding I just went to. Congratulations, Tyler Bren. He said to me, he was like, "Do you even listen to your own podcast?" And it's not the first time it's been And I think, even my therapist mentioned it. So, I'm working on being that all the time. This is the person that's expressing emotions. The robot, the lowercase Courtney, is not in charge right now. Not in control. That's how Courtney is.
Courtney Brame: And this is who I'm demonstrating out to the world. This is me putting out that signal for me to be swept off my feet. for me to be successful here, for me to have boundaries and set these boundaries and uphold these boundaries and for me to call out b***** that I see on social media from people who claim to not be again. I'm not against Black Lives. I'm not against Black people dying. No, Black people are being murdered by cops by white cops and there are not consequences being had.
Courtney Brame: White cops are being trained that it's okay to shoot and kill someone with dark skin who doesn't look like them for whatever** reason they're choosing to. And I'm being taught that it's just not safe to have dark skin. So, let that marinate. If you decide that you want to navigate the fence there and say, " the cops are the best thing that ever happened." No, don't do that s***. You say things like that that demonstrate like a
Courtney Brame: an avoidant neutrality of mutuality. And if it's public, I'm sharing that s***. I'll tag you in it. And if we have any further conversation, everybody going to see it. But I'm not having any more discussion outside of what I have to say about it. And that. I'm putting my foot down there. Boundaries. All right'all. This concludes this episode of Something Positive for Positive People. Please rate, review, subscribe to, share this podcast episode if you found any value from it at all. I mentioned where you can go to at. www.spfpp.org and yeah, Thank you for holding space for me and allowing me to get this out. And I hope that it really helps someone because my experiences, my stories, these are things that people are resonating with and I'm hoping to be able to do this more, especially since interviewing is challenging and I want to get to a point where now I want to be interviewing people in person.
Courtney Brame: So, we got a lot of great things coming up for Something Positive for Positive People. I was invited to kind of a mini Pride event to have a booth set up and be able to tell people about the podcast, tell people about the nonprofit. It's going to be in Asheville, North Carolina. I'm going to one of the herpes meetup events. It's going to be in Cincinnati in October and I am going to be speaking with Ray from Positive Results on Instagram at Antioch University. That'll be in Seattle, Washington in 2021 hopefully. And yeah, I'm supposed to go to New York in November. So yeah, lots of cheap travels during CO, but I'm masking up and taking all the precautions as you should as well. Till next time, stay sex positive.
Meeting ended after 01:00:31
