Episode 60: Identity Validation in Seeking Support
Why's it so tough to seek out what it is we need for support? I think identity validation is what we look for in support spaces. How do we find that? Who's the best source for it? I believe our people who knew us before are the key. .Here's why....
Episode 60 Transcript
Ep. 60 - Transcript
Courtney Brame: Welcome to Something Positive for Positive People. I'm Courtney Brame. Something Positive for Positive People is a 501c3 nonprofit organization that serves as a suicide prevention resource for people living with herpes. And the nonprofit in itself is actually the product if you will, because it serves as an emotional and mental health support resource that gives people sort of this support group feel, if you will. just by being able to listen in a safe way that protects people's anonymity and they can comfortably just check in as they need whatever it is that they need for support.
Courtney Brame: My long-term goal for this is to just be a place where people can come and get therapy just like free mental health resources at no cost to them. But got a long way to go and I hope that someday we'll get there. I am checking in here mainly to just offer up the opportunity for people to reconnect with who they are prior to their diagnosis. So, if you're someone who's listening to this and let's say you're newly diagnosed, first off, I want you to be able to acknowledge the fact that you took a chance coming here seeking out support.
Courtney Brame: And I want to just allow for you to take that in for yourself. A lot of people don't seek support. A lot of people think that they'll be fine. And it takes a really strong person to admit that they aren't feeling strong right now. So, I hope this episode is something that empowers you and makes you recognize and remember who you were prior to these feelings, who you were prior to the awareness of your diagnosis, and that you're able to reconnect with who that person was and understand that you are still that person.
Courtney Brame: Nothing's changed outside of the fact that the way that you navigate your sex life may be a little bit different than what you're used to, which is never always a bad thing unless you choose for it to be. I'll share my experience having been diagnosed with genital HSV type 2, the herpes virus that primarily causes genital outbreaks. I was diagnosed… I'm in my ninth year and I say ninth year because it's 2022. I'm just going back and recording and uploading this here. And a lot of what I've learned throughout the course of listening to this podcast has been that there is such a strong interconnectedness of sexual health and mental health. I argue that sexual health is mental health. And the more conversations that I have with people, I'm recognizing that an STI diagnosis has such an impact on us because so much of our identities are interconnected with our sexuality.
Courtney Brame: So when you receive that diagnosis, it's like you're just having this thing just shatter who you believe yourself to be. And now you have to put those pieces back together. And that takes resilience, that takes support, that takes confidence, and it takes vulnerability more than anything else to be willing to look at yourself in a way that you don't want to be seen. You have to see the And often we don't even know who the real me is. I say but I think I might have worded that wrong. We don't know who we really are at our core.
Courtney Brame: And we lose sight of that because there's so many layers upon layers that are stacked on our core based on the expectations and labels of so many things like skin color or your genitals or your length of your hair. The things that we place value in and the things that we take pride in and the things that other people may praise us for or talk down to us about. We make these things more of our identity than we do our identity. And like I said, it takes such a strong person to be able to look at that. But I think that a strong first step for us is to seek out support. That's not something that we do. and this is a step in that direction. But I can only be so supportive.
Courtney Brame: This resource can only be so supportive because we can't validate your identity and who you were pre-diagnosis. When I was diagnosed, my grandmother was there, my mom was there, and I reached out to a couple of former partners, and my mom didn't treat me any differently. My grandmother didn't treat me any different. And it took for me to go through navigating this for years. I think it was, maybe two or three years before I told who I considered my best friend. And when I told him, he didn't look at me any different. I don't even think he asked questions.
00:05:00
Courtney Brame: And then that level of, s***, I'm still me. Nothing's changed. When I received that, I was able to take that on to the next person that I shared my status with. And this was someone else who validated my identity and that they didn't treat me any different. They were supportive. They were like, "Yeah, that doesn't change anything. You are who you are and don't a lot of people have herpes?" So they were able to share in a very identity affirming way that they still saw me. I wasn't invisible to them, nor was I tarnished or damaged at all. And this is something that we really can only get from people who've known us. When we receive a diagnosis, it can't be expected for the doctor to be able to remind us exactly who we are.
Courtney Brame: And we're often so in a dark place about it that we don't even recognize who we are. This person that we've become as a result of a health status change. That doesn't mean anything in the grand scheme of all of our years that we've spent on this planet in this body becoming who we've become at this point in time in our lives.
Courtney Brame: Does that mean nothing in comparison to just the awareness that now we're living with a perfectly manageable A virus that might be contagious sometimes. A virus that triggers an emotional or mental response. A virus that if we choose for it can teach us some stuff about ourselves. One thing that I've learned throughout the course of my experiences with my herpes diagnosis is just how picky I can be now.
Courtney Brame: And it's not picky in the sense of, I'm now too big. I'm… not in a cocky way. You know what I mean? When I say picky, I mean I am very much more consciously choosing who I decide to be vulnerable with. Vulnerability to come Vulnerability is extremely rare to be able to and safe to present to another person. When we talk about being vulnerable, we're not just talking about sharing something and then having an emotional response. We're talking about something that has possibly just been festering inside of us and just screaming to get out.
Courtney Brame: And for us to have a safe space to just release that and experience the feelings of having that release in the presence of someone who can hold space for that thing that was festering inside of us to be able to come out and just let out what it needs to let out and for us to have the experience after that. Because it's the pressure inside of us that just builds up. And when we finally feel like we can release that, that's what vulnerability is. It's not the act of extending the information. It's also being willing to have the emotions and the thoughts and the feelings and the expressions physically of what it means to experience that relief.
Courtney Brame: to be witnessed by someone who very well could make us feel a lot worse in that vulnerable moment. But in giving them that power, we also give them the power to heal us. And that's what sharing our herpes status has the ability to do for us if we wanted to. And there's no surefire 100% way to disclose your status to a loved one or a friend or someone that means something to you. There isn't. Assess the Look at the relationship and what that means to you and how you value that relationship. How do you value that person? Does that person see you?
00:10:00
Courtney Brame: Have they demonstrated trust? Because so many people have people that they claim that they trust around them and they're deathly afraid of them finding out about this. And It breaks my heart that there are people who have people that they claim they love. They'll do anything for. That's my ride to die. That's my homie. That's my day one. But you won't tell them that you're struggling with something. You'll tell them, you'll vent to them in anger about a relationship, a relative, some bad thing happening that day. But why is this where we draw the line? Why with an STI? We'll tell people we are sick. We'll tell people that, maybe I'm not feeling up for this thing.
Courtney Brame: We'll say things to people that hurt them far more than what we expect to hear back hurting us. We'll do the rejecting, We'll do the judgment, if you will, and not in a knowing way, but the way that we expect for people to respond to us about our herpes diagnosis is probably rooted in how we think we would respond if it were the other way Give people the opportunity to make that choice for themselves. And also trust yourself that you are making good friends and connections that welcome this kind of vulnerability that welcome a space for you to be able to share that you're struggling with something and you need help and that you just may feel a little bit lost. You may not know where to go. You may not know what you want to do. You may not know what next steps to take.
Courtney Brame: But someone who knows you is, hopefully going to be able to give you a lot more sense of direction than what you will find here on this podcast. And I'm so grateful for the people who listen, for the people who reach out to me and give me feedback about these podcast episodes, telling me how they saved their lives or how it helped them with sharing their status or they heard their story in somebody else's podcast interview. Love those things. But all I can do is just get you to a certain point in your experience to where you have to start to take action and act on it. The lessons that are in here are abundant. There's many stories about herpes, not about herpes, but you'll see that you can interchange any adversity with herpes, and you've got an experience that is useful if you choose for it to be useful.
Courtney Brame: I can't tell you how to use this podcast. I can't tell you how to utilize a nonprofit or how to utilize the resources on my social media pages. But what I can tell you is that you have choices. And my intention is to bring as many of those choices onto this platform and to offer as many voices and opportunities to hear these voices as I can… as I know how cuz it's tough, It's really tricky to be able to navigate this and it's a lot harder to do alone.
Courtney Brame: And if Something Positive for Positive People is something that helps you feel a little bit less alone. Hell yeah. But we got to back that up with action. So my challenge to you is if you're listening to this episode and you're someone who's deathly afraid of disclosing to someone who supposedly loves you, ask yourself how much more harm are you doing to yourself? by having an energetic tie or connection with this person that you don't even trust to support you through a rough time. That's what that says to me, if you're unwilling to share something with them, you don't trust them. But your bestie, your BFF, like your person, whatever you want to call them, if you aren't able to be seen as you are by them, is that a friend?
Courtney Brame: why not use this as an opportunity to let them see themselves out of the connection? I don't think that's the case. I think that if you are genuinely certain that someone's a friend and you don't want to tell them this. I think that that's an inconsistency. That's something that's worth exploring it within yourself. Maybe exploring with them. Ask them, I want to tell you a secret, but I really don't trust you. Why is that? You don't need people like that around you. You don't need to surround yourself with people you can't trust. No. And I'm happy to go over this with you if you reach out. I'm on Instagram at h on my chest and Tik Tok at hers_my_ wait Hersore. No, hers_on_my_ chest. It's H on my chest with this underscore in every syllable. I guess the word.
00:15:00
Courtney Brame:: H on. Yeah. Yeah. I get distracted way too easily. That's what I wanted. I wanted to share that. I want for people to understand that the identity validation can only come from people who know And if the people who are around you who know you are unable to validate your identity or you don't trust them to do so, it might be time for you to evaluate those friendships, those relationships, those partnerships, and go find you people who will. And like I said, you can start here. I'm here. I'm happy to be your friend. Reach out and I'mma hype you up.
Courtney Brame: I'mma do everything I can in my power to get you to a place of being able to further do the investigating here throughout this space, this platform, and then be able to take it in the application of your day-to-day life. That's my goal. That's what I want to offer you. So, I'll end that here. And it's just something for you to think about. I hope that you continue to listen through this podcast. I hope that you find what it is that you're seeking. And if not, reach out to me and I'm happy to point you in a direction or talk you through whatever it is that you need. For donations, Venmo is at Courtney Brame C O U R T N E Y B R A M E. Same thing with Cash App. Courtney Brame, all one word. No special characters. And then on PayPal, if you're not in the United States, it's paypal.com/spfpp Patreon is patreon.com/spfpp.
Courtney Brame: I'm always looking for opportunities for media podcast guests as well as funding for the nonprofit. again, it serves as a suicide prevention resource and speaks to the interconnectedness of sexual and mental health and hopefully serves as a tool to support people in navigating stigma and how they communicate around their sexual health and sexuality in general. So, if you find this useful, I ask that you just consider making a donation, engage with the content, rate, review, share this podcast, and until next time, stay sex positive.
