SPFPP 366: What Herpes Taught Me About Anger

I recorded this episode on the 12-year anniversary of my herpes diagnosis. In it, I talk openly about the grief I've been processing following a recent breakup, and how anger—something I’ve long masked with niceness—has been quietly shaping my relationships, my work, and my sense of self. I explore how my childhood experiences, emotional suppression, and fear of being perceived as violent have all played a role in keeping me from fully expressing what I need. This is about reclaiming my anger—not as something destructive, but as a compass that points to my unmet needs, boundaries, and desires. It’s also about integrating the split versions of myself I’ve been moving through: the safe, stoic me and the playful, impulsive one. This episode is as much a check-in with y’all as it is with myself.

Episode 366 Transcript

Grieving a Breakup and the Return to St. Louis

00:00:00 Courtney Brame: Hello and welcome to Something Positive for Positive People. I'm Courtney Brame. Something Positive for Positive People is a 501c3 nonprofit organization supporting people who are navigating herpes stigma. I want to thank y'all for your patience with me. I have been experiencing grief probably over the last several months. Um arguably three I would say and I'm at a place now where the grief has sort of detangled like a lot of the emotions that were bundled up in that grief. I'm able to more clearly articulate and name uh as well as deal with. And when I say deal with emotions, I don't want to sound like, you know, these are things that you like have to deal with begrudgingly, but to be able to look at them and say, "Oh, there's a lesson in this. There's a lesson here." And so, what I want to first name is that I've moved back home to St. Louis, Missouri. Um, I am in an office space as you can probably see behind me, but it's not… it's not really together yet.

00:01:49 Courtney Brame: So, I'm going to put that together. Um, and this was very unexpected. I want to say, but I'll speak as best I can to it in a way that is just using me statements and I want to do so in a healthy way while still being real about, you know, where we are, how we got here. So, uh many of you might know this. If you regularly have listened to the podcast, you'll have heard me mention uh my now ex-partner, but you would hear me talk about the relationship that I was in and some of the ways that I talked about it. Uh and I spoke to that relationship in very positive ways. Uh it was very positive um on my end and my experience with it. So I was real about what was happening. And so unfortunately um over the last few months you'll see that podcast episodes were inconsistent. You'll see that um maybe if you follow me on social media you'll notice some inconsistencies there in terms of like frequently posting the events that I've had.

00:02:58 Courtney Brame: I've been cancelling stuff over the last few months and that's really not like me. So, it's important to me that I name that here and with this audience. For those who don't know that I was in a relationship, like I was in a relationship and it's over uh like officially um at least since I moved out of or moved away from New Jersey, it was ending for a longer time than that. And yeah, it's something to grieve. I've had my moments of having really really good days and really really bad days. Um, there have been sad moments. There have been uh moments of like thinking, "Oh, this relationship could work if only..." And even exploring like my own willingness to do the things that on the surface seem required in order for that relationship to work out in the future. and something about it just didn't seem accurate to me. So, as I've been working through the grief process, I haven't been posting anything on social media because I don't want anything to leak out that I'm unaware of.

00:04:15 Courtney Brame: Um one of the things that I wanted to do is be very intentional with how I'm engaging with people. So, I like to just name that for the things that I have cancelled, the things I have had to show up for. I've just named very early on, “hey, I'm grieving right now. I'm experiencing some grief. So, I might lose my train of thought. Uh I might get a little scattered. I may uh forget, you know, some important information.” Uh perfect example, teaching a yoga class, right? Doing one side of something one way and then doing the other side and kind of out of order. This was actually something that has happened recently. Um, but given that it's been a consistent several good days for me now, uh, I'm recognizing after journaling today, uh, enough to where I will speak to you all about what's going on. But in addition to that, uh, this is my 12 year herp-versary, the day that this is being recorded, the day that this is going to be posted.

00:05:19 Courtney Brame: Um, I've had my herpes diagnosis now for 12 years. It was Yeah. 2013. Um, and I can… I can talk about that a little bit later, but I think it's more important that I just speak to this one time, be done with it, and not have to bring it up again. Uh, one of the things that I've been working on since moving back home to St. Louis, Missouri is uh asking for what I need and being able to set boundaries. So, if you are someone who knows who my ex is, which I mean I don't think a lot of people knew we were together. I think or people probably know that we've ended the relationship or that we've broken up. Uh just concerns with how she's been or how I hear she's speaking about it online. Uh that's been the case and I don't want to give it any energy. Uh I don't but I do think it's important for me to just name uh what I've come to learn not just from that but my patterns of… as well as how it's played out in Something Positive for Positive People.

The Relationship Between Herpes Stigma, Suicide Ideation, and Anger

00:06:29 Courtney Brame: So I think that these go together very well. My mom would always say “Courtney, you have a lot of anger. You are an angry person”. And I just I wouldn't I never really understood that. Um, and in 2017 when I started Something Positive for Positive People that started because of a reaction that I had and I never looked at this as anger until uh I got into it. And when I learned that people with herpes had suicide ideation, I recognized that I have an ugly relationship to suicide. I have… I'm not going to name who but my family members who have uh threatened suicide. I have an ex-partner who made an attempt to end her own life and I called and something was off to me. I made a phone call and uh people were able to get there and save her. Like she… I recently talked to her cuz I was curious. I was like, "Do you have herpes? Is that why you tried to kill yourself?" And she was like,

00:07:35 Courtney Brame: "No." um everything's good. She made a donation to the nonprofit, thanked me, and it was just a pleasant full circle closure moment. And this was born out of my anger. This is a very productive use of my anger. So over the years, as I've continued to have this be a space where I'm able to channel the energy of anger for a cause, I think that that's led to me really not having to deal with my anger on a personal level. So this is something that I'm passionate about. It's my career. And in addition to that, I'm not really having the practice of expressing anger. My mom saying that I'm angry and have a lot of anger. I've always been very resistant to… once I stopped being resistant to it, I was like, "Oh, I do." And I have so much capacity for anger or my emotional bandwidth is so big that I'm able to channel that anger into Something Positive for Positive People.

00:08:47 Courtney Brame: And my recent relationship ending, one of the things I learned is that I very much shifted what I poured into Something Positive into my relationship. And so Something Positive began to kind of like downhill decline with me just kind of maintaining the bare minimum. But I'm pouring emotion into the relationship and it's emotion that is unpracticed right… practically with another person on an intimate relational level. Throughout this, I wrote down, I have my notebook right here where I wrote today about anger and I wrote down that I am angry. Saying that just gave me a sensation in my body. Um I've tried maybe 17 times at this point to be able to just record a podcast sharing my relationship ended. I'm going through some grief. I moved back home and here's what happened. And I'm very glad that I had all those takes to try and get this out because I don't think that it would have come out as concise and with as much clarity and from a place of just calm as it is now.

00:10:16 Courtney Brame: And I believe that this is part of my process of moving the anger. My yoga therapist and uh mentor uh Antonio I do not say his last name correctly uh he does yoga for grief relief and one of the things that he said is that in order to move anger you need to let the person who made you angry know that they made you angry so my relationship didn't end because I'm an angry person my relationship ended because I mask my anger with niceness. This might look like not having boundaries, not letting people know what I need. This may look like letting people know that they make me angry. And throughout the relationship, I've questioned the balance between what is healthy and like … Instagram therapy and the healed version of things versus what's real. Emotion is very real and there is an intensity behind it that I understand way more than just someone telling me, "Hey, Courtney, you did this thing. I don't like that you did this thing. Instead of doing that thing, next time can you do this thing?" And the language that I'm used to is

00:11:43 Courtney Brame: aggressive single Black mom like yelling, got the belt or even granddad um or just like whoopings like I'm used to violent consequences and expressions. And that's somebody that I've never wanted to become. I never want to be violent or abusive in relationships. So when I think about expressing anger, I never really thought about it as being able to communicate it in any way that channels a connectedness to a person where things can get done. Um, I also recognize that masking anger with niceness by not letting people know the things that they do that make me angry is something that makes me angry because it's not only what they do, but it's also what they don't do. Now, as someone with anger, and I fear my anger. It has not been safe for me to be angry except for when I played sports on the football field or to sort of like let the intensity of that emotion come out as a sense of connection with sexual partners. Right?

00:13:00 Courtney Brame: So the “do me harder” or the yeah like give me that emotional intensity. I'm trying to be very PG here because I also recognize the natural evolution of the Something Positive audience and know there's like healthcare workers here that might be listening to it who I might work with in the future. So, uh don't hold it against me. This is something that I've been doing for the 8 years that I've been running the podcast at least. So, uh yeah, just, I just want this to be real. I want this to be useful. Um, and the reason I'm bringing this here is because it is in fact affecting me. Um, I hear about how my ex has talked about the end of our relationship and I have anger even about that. And it's important for me to not let that anger manifest as any sort of passive aggressiveness or any like anger or rage or any maliciousness. Let me not say that because the anger does need to come out and it doesn't need to come out in name calling.

Over-Calibrating Safety and Forcing Freedom

00:14:12 Courtney Brame: It doesn't need to come. And in fact, it's not letting my anger out that I believe is the real reason that the relationship ended. Had I not been afraid of my anger, had I not had I been able to have more of a connection with it, I think that the repeat offenses of me bottling up and pushing down my anger would not have turned into me allowing the relationship to end in the way that she believes that it ended or believed that it ended. There was a part of me that was just like, “Courtney, you know what? This is your out. Just go with it. Get out of here and we'll figure it out from here”. I call that version of me Capital ‘C’ Courtney. And this is who I've been for a while, I believe. Um, indulging in the safety of my life, whereas lowercase Courtney is who I became. And that version of me really indulges in the freedom of life.

00:15:22 Courtney Brame: So there's this inner imbalance within myself between safety and freedom. And I think that being given uh freedom early on in my relationship made me want to see, okay, we have this thing here, but what about this other thing that I need? let me see and test and without naming that this is what I need because I didn't know that that was what I needed to force that here. So I've tried to make my relationship home. I've run away from home. Not run away literally, but like my lowercase self has impulsively moved to Texas. And then my more rational and security, safety self, higher self called me back home. And then my impulsive self moved me to Portland, Oregon. And then my capital ‘C’ Courtourtney brought me back home. And then I moved. my plan was to go from uh well my plan was to stay home in St. Louis. But then uh my living situation fell through and I was able to move back to Portland, Oregon.

00:16:36 Courtney Brame: So impulsively or rationally I would say it made sense for me to just go back to Portland. So I was there and then I visited New York. I liked it. I enjoyed it. I rationalized it and was like what? I'm going to move to New York. And along the way was when I met my ex-girlfriend and ended up living in New Jersey. It was a better opportunity for me. I could get back and forth to New York easier. I could see her more and it was cheaper and I could have my own space. So that really really worked out well for me. And throughout the acting on lowercase Courtney, the impulsive self, there was a lot of me that didn't give my safety version of me the opportunity to like step in and be like more. This is one of those grief moments. And be more assertive. I think that I associate assertiveness with anger as well.

00:17:41 Courtney Brame: I'm very assertive with my direction in Something Positive for Positive People. But as far as it goes in my relationship, I think that I associated anger and assertiveness with… so I fear feeling or I fear telling people what they aren't doing because of my anger. I remember, you know, my mom and my dad, the way that my mom would interact with my dad was always from a place of anger. It was you ain't doing this, you not doing that. And my responsibility was kind of in this triangle of communication. Mom tells me to ask my dad for something. When my mom tells me to ask my dad for something, I'm not asking him for something. I'm telling him, my mom said this is what I need. So, I'm very indirect about getting my needs met or asking for what I need. Yeah, I know I need school clothes, but I'm making do with what I got. I know we ain't got no money.

00:18:47 Courtney Brame: I know that, you know, it's a luxury to be able to get new school clothes. I know my clothes are fitting differently as I'm growing. But my mom told me to tell my dad I need some school clothes. So, I told my dad I need some school clothes. So, this is how I was taught to communicate about what I need. Someone else needs something for me and I need to tell somebody that because otherwise I made do with what I had. I remember washing my two pairs of jeans every 3 days because I knew how to use the washing machine. So granted, I might be using more laundry detergent to wash these two pairs of jeans so that they were clean for me to go back to school, but it would have been a lot easier for me to just, “hey, Dad, um, this is what I'm doing right now. I'm wearing the same two pairs of jeans for the week. I'm washing my school clothes and I could use more school clothes.

00:19:53 Courtney Brame: Can you get me more pants, more jeans?” My dad heard that. There is no reason that he wouldn't have taken me jeans shopping or school shopping. And just for background, my parents weren't together. As far as I can remember, my parents have not been together. And I just thought that this was normal. Even where I grew up, uh, all my friends, we saw our dads on weekends. And there was… we lived with our mom and another man. Um or one of my best friends actually his dad just worked in another city and um he was still there but that still counts. So going back to the anger thing, my mom got angry at my dad for what he didn't do. So when I'm telling him, “hey, my mom said I need new school clothes”, he probably just kind of dismissed it, whatever. And it took for my mom to blow up on my dad. That I saw this before anything got done.

00:20:50 Courtney Brame: She never hit him. There wasn’t anything like that. But she'd call him over the phone and just rage, and I'm like… or even when one of them would drop me off to the other, she would get on him about what he wasn't doing. And here I see it right here. It makes me angry. Not only what people do, but what they don't do. It's all right here. It's all right here. And like I said, like I fear my anger because when my mom asked for what I needed, which I mean I guess is kind of what she needed. Um she did so in a way that I didn't like. There was a lot of anger behind it. The yelling was unnecessary. Um I don't, I don't, I can't remember if there was name calling, but I do remember yelling. And these were things that I said I would never do.

00:21:46 Courtney Brame: And I think that my mom knows… I'm intuitively I would say cuz she's seen me rage bad times in different situations. That to me called for it. Um I think that when I would fight somebody, I wasn't fighting that person for the thing that they did. I was fighting everybody that I couldn't fight. I got into a fight every year in school except for second grade. Every year I got into a fight. And when I did, like that was the releasing of the rage except for um you know playing sports, right? Like playing sports was a way for me to release and express a lot of that anger. But I wrote down here, perhaps this anger is from a place of not just asking for what I want from the person. Wait, hold on. Why did I say that? Perhaps this anger is from a place of not just asking directly for what it is that I want from the person.

Blindsiding and People Pleasing

00:22:50 Courtney Brame: I'll reject myself by saying they probably can't give me what I want, so I just won't ask. And then when I do ask, finally, they're blindsided because the chances that I had to express what my needs were and ask them to meet them were not met with this request. But an attempt uh an attempted expression of niceness. So an example of this is let's say I know what I want from somebody, right? Like hey, I see that you have chocolate chip cookies. I'd like a chocolate chip cookie, please. No, you can't have one of my chocolate chip cookies. For whatever reason, like I'm selling these or these are mine to eat. That's a person setting, you know, a boundary. You got to respect it, right? Let's say I go, "Damn, those cookies look good over there." And they're like, "Oh, yeah, they do, don't they?" It's like, yeah, I wonder what they taste like. Wonder what they smell like.

00:23:54 Courtney Brame: Oh, how much are they? Right. Like I'm, I'm being nice and I'm not being direct. I am indirectly hoping that this person has a cookie for me. And so time goes on and every time I don't get a cookie, there's anger. And the anger's building up because I don't know how to ask for a cookie. No one came to me and said, "Courtney, go ask that lady for a cookie. Courtney, go ask your dad you need some school clothes." For me to be like, "Hey, you know what? So and so needs this." And I think that this plays out in my work with the nonprofit. Like it's so easy for me to say, "Hey, these people need support. These people need the resources that I'm offering. Like these people need me to go and do these things that I often get rejected for and seemingly am not affected by. So my childhood trauma has shaped me to do this job very very well.

00:24:55 Courtney Brame: Uh I'm appreciative of it from that perspective but it has not done a good job in training me for being in relationships with people. I am able to um have sexual relationships with people, but when it comes to the long-term things of expressing anger, because there's not really the in your face situations that warrant anger and for that anger to be expressed. So, I'm not just saying, "Hey, can I have a cookie?" and then hearing no or yes and then moving forward. So, because I'm hoping for a cookie secretly and I'm asking, "Oh, man. Like, I see how many cookies you got. You have a lot of cookies over there." Yeah, I'm I'm I'm selling them. Oh, you're selling them. How much are you selling them for? And I'm not like I'm not just directly going, "Okay, here. I'll give you, you know, this for the cookie." Because this person doesn't know that I like they don't know that I want a

00:25:52 Courtney Brame: cookie. So, I know I want a cookie. They don't know I want a cookie, and they have the cookies. So, imagine if this person didn't have cookies and they had crackers and I see those crackers and I'm like, damn, those crackers look… Man, but I really want a cookie. Hey, what you got over there? Oh, that's what you got? What? What you got on the crackers? Oh, okay. Like you just like eating crackers. Okay. Huh? What else you got? Oh, okay. Damn. Like, I'm hearing in the back of my mind, I'm like, "Oh, all they have is crackers. I don't want no damn crackers. I want a cookie." Oh, okay. And I'm not even just saying, "Hey, do you have any cookies? Like, I really want a cookie. Do you know where I can get some cookies?" They may be able to tell me where I can go to get my needs met,

00:26:42 Courtney Brame: where I can go to get a cookie, but all they have are crackers. So, this person has told me, "Hey, all I have are crackers here. This is what I have. This is what you know this is how much they cost here's how many I have and I'm just like inquiring and that's the the niceness so the more that I'm not offered a cookie by this person who only has crackers the more anger is happening and I'm also not like just it it it maybe anger feels like a strong word but that's what it is the intensity of emotion is kind of like it's kind of like being rejected but the person has no idea that they're declining any offer that you're making. So, I'm not making an offer. I'm not saying, "Hey, person, I don't really like cookies. Do you like cookies?" "Oh my god, yeah, I love cookies." "Oh, well, hey, like, let's get cookies together." Let's get cookies together with someone who has and likes crackers. Gives them the opportunity to say, "No thanks. I don't like cookies." Or,

00:27:48 Courtney Brame: "Yeah, like I know this good cookie place." or hey, well, where can we get some cookies? None of that. So, the more that I'm not asking, the more that there's this pressure being built up of an intensity of an emotion. And the emotion in this situation is anger for me. I'm repeating the childhood pattern by asking someone for something that they don't have, hoping that they'll have it or be able to get it for me. And then in the process, I'm being nice. I'm being nice and I'm like, "Oh, well, maybe we can go get some cookies sometime." Like, whoa, I just talked to you for 20 minutes about crackers and you throwing cookies in here all of a sudden. And now, like, I'm fully aware that this person's not okay with cookies. They don't like cookies, whatever. And now I've found out. So I'm in shock like oh my god. Like oh my god this is the worst.

00:28:53 Courtney Brame: Like she knows that I like cookies. Men being shamed for liking and wanting cookies rather than just being told “hey Courtney only thing going on over here is crackers. Okay. So if you want crackers I can help you with that. But if you want cookies I ain't your person. So you can go down the street to the cookie shop. Uh I don't want cookies with you. I'm fine over here with my crackers”. So, I blindsided this person with my anger of being shamed for liking cookies, but also for finally getting to a point where I do express my needs because it's a very difficult thing for me to do. And despite every opportunity that I had to say, "Hey, cracker person, oh my god, that is that sounds terrible. Hey, person with crackers, I want some cookies." Every opportunity was an invitation for me to be like, "What do you mean you don't have cookies?" Even if that were the expression of anger,

00:30:02 Courtney Brame: like it wouldn't have dragged out so long. And it's very much the same way that I talk about the uh herpes disclosure, right? You know you have herpes, the person doesn't know you have herpes, you're communicating, you're communicating, getting to know each other, and now you're talking about sex. Bam. When you make this contact where the conversation goes from, I like these things in bed and I like things in bed so I can see these things happening with you. The longer we go without that person knowing that you have herpes, which is important information, they're building assumptions about what the relationship's going to look like. You're building about what the relationship's going to look like, but you have much more currently relevant information than they do perhaps. So, by the time you do decide to say something, bam. And that bam is kind of like this rubber band collapsing your expectations together and just shattering them on the floor for everybody to be like, "Well, what the f***?" And that to me is

00:31:08 Courtney Brame: very synonymous to my experience with my anger. Um, and the resentment that comes from that because I'm not saying instead of, "Hey, I have herpes," it's, "Hey, I want cookies. So blindsiding a person in that way is also just one more way to not get your needs met. And it's a very solid self-fulfilling prophecy because the longer you go, you know, doing this, it's almost like you you intuitively know, hey, this person is not able to meet my needs, but I'm going to instead of and there's something in the anger that I've been resistant to and I'm I'm I've written about it. So, it's here somewhere. I got to get there. Please bear with me as I get through this. Um, the niceness the niceness kind of lowers people's guard, but it raises it in a way to where people might be a little bit more suspicious of, uh-huh, you know, I'm I'm not sure what this person wants from me, but I like what they're giving to me.

00:32:18 Courtney Brame: And the niceness is the give, right? So, every nice act is stored in this bank of I did this many things for you. So when I cash in for my reward, you have to say yes to what my ask is. And then the anger comes in when I'm presented with clear indications that this person is incapable of meeting said need. And then I have feelings about all of those instances rather than them rather than just expressing what they are. Like even leading up to that, there's always hints, right? Even in the example that I gave of those cookies look really good. Those cookies you have a lot of those. Oh, what kind of cookies do you have? Do you have this flavor of cookie? Like being kind and just giving the energy and the attention to it. Or maybe I go, "Oh, you know, here's uh I'm going to pay you more for these cookies. I'm not going to eat them,

00:33:23 Courtney Brame: but I'm going to just give you money for these cookies because that's a nice thing to do that I can store in my bank of things that when the time comes, I can cash out. Right? So, this person's incapable of meeting my needs and I have recognized that. And I'm also like not saying, "Hey, here's what I need." At any of those moments early on, I could have gone, "Yo, do you have Oreo flavored cookies and cream cookies?" For her to just say, "No." Okay. Do you plan on having them? Yeah, maybe. Maybe one day in the future, but not right now. And then I'm given the option basically to Okay, I can move forward with another kind of cookie or I can go, "All right, thanks. No thank you, but no thank you. I'm going to go and find the cookies and there's no hard feelings. But my fear of my anger maybe even comes from being told no and then dipping the f*** out.

00:34:28 Courtney Brame: And it's yeah, like there's fear of my own anger. And we can go into all of that, but yeah, when I get that clear indication that somebody's not capable of meeting my needs, that's when I have my explosion. And the explosion is from a buildup of not having just like it's it's to myself like for not having said, "Yo, uh-uh, this ain't working." And I can't do that without boundaries. I can't do that without knowing what my needs are. So, how can someone ask for what they need or what they want if they don't know what those are? And if the things that you know you need cuz I wrote the first line was I'm angry that I'm not getting what I want. I mask anger with niceness. Not letting people know the things that they do to make me angry actually make me angry. And it's not just what they do but it's what they don't do. And I don't express my anger for the things that people So also like even in making asks for things to happen or get done or making requests, the way that I've made the request or the way that I express my feelings about the request not being met even after it being agreed to, people interpret anger differently.

No More Mr. Nice Guy

00:35:55 Courtney Brame: I express anger in violent ways. That is who I am. And I the the Instagram s***, the therapy stuff, like that's cool, but I think maybe sometimes people need to intuitively know and feel the anger and know that that's what it is so that they can respond accordingly. And that's like something that I struggle with and I'm brushing up against because it's not safe for me. A f****** 6 foot 220 whatever pound Black man who is a big Black man. Like that's just the only way that I can put it. It's not safe for me to have anger that is expressive in that way. I have not been taught how to manage that anger. The way that I manage that anger has been fortunately over the last 8 years through Something Positive for Positive People like putting that anger towards a cause that I believe and that is a fixed thing that I've unfortunately stopped pouring so much into because I have named this before that I don't believe that I can have a family and run Something Positive for Positive People.

00:37:06 Courtney Brame: I need to be flexible. I need to be ready to move at any given moment. I need to be able to have the access and the availability in my schedule to be able to talk to people randomly to be able to um go to these conferences to be able to fly anywhere that I need to be for some opportunity that I might not otherwise get. And I threw all that s*** away because it was more important to me to take care of business, of course, In my relationship and work towards and build that than it was for me to, you know, run Something Positive for Positive People efficiently. Like I started a whole other business as a result of me not expressing my own anger. You know, the same way that I've not asked for things, there were things that were asked of me that I had the opportunity to say no to, but I didn't. I met instead of meeting it with a no and what my real feelings were.

00:38:07 Courtney Brame: I think that that might have been interpreted as not emotionally connecting because I'm like, "Oh, well, you know what you're saying makes sense." But if the thing that is being said that I'm agreeing to or submitting to arguably is not in alignment with who I am and my values, my needs, my boundaries, then that's when I say no. And if there's any push back, that's where the boundaries come in. But the boundaries to me seem like they can only be upheld with some emotional investment. And the emotional investment maybe is in that realm of anger and assertiveness because that's what I've associated uh assertiveness with. And I don't, I just haven't thought that there was room for anger in my relationships because I've seen abuse in my family growing up. Uh domestic abuse. I've seen it in people around me and I don't want that. But another type of abuse that I haven't seen is emotional abuse. And I don't know that, you know, not knowing that something's going on and doing your best to communicate it could be seen as emotional abuse or manipulation.

00:39:21 Courtney Brame: It's more so uh neglectful, I would say. So yeah, like I was, I was writing here and my therapist and I came up with these two versions of myself. There's the capital letter ‘C’ Courtney and then the lowercase ‘C’ Courtney, right? And I asked myself here like “how can I set expectations about what I want if I'm unwilling to do what it takes to find healthy people to meet those wants for me?” And when that came up, I thought about, you know, unhealthy people attract unhealthy people. Despite how healthy I may have thought I was or have been, something in me reverted to this unhealthy or broken or divided version of myself. Like I was moving in capital ‘C’, Courtney, for a while. And then there were things I guess that happened that made me revert back to my lowercase ‘C’ Courtney self. And the lowercase ‘C’ me very much values freedom and play and fun cuz I didn't have that as a kid.

00:40:36 Courtney Brame: It wasn't safe for me to have fun. So there was an overindulgence or over-calibration of safety and security as a kid with the prioritization of survival. And now as an adult that you know seemingly has a little bit more freedom or a little bit more security and safety. I made room for that version of me, the lowercase me, kid me, to be able to just play and be impulsive and do whatever it is that he needed and wanted to do. I'm not getting what I want and my anger might be where the solution is. Anger has saved me regardless of the buildup. And if Antonio, the yoga therapist on Twitter that I have had, says that when we're angry, people need to know that we're angry. You know, he gave me an example in class. He was like, “you know, let's say you came late to class, right? And I was like, you know what, Courtney? It really makes me angry that you're late to class.

00:41:40 Courtney Brame: Please don't be late to class again or else I'm going to have to kick you out”. So he let me know, hey, you're angry and here's the consequence of you making me angry again. That was a boundary. If you're late again, I have to kick you out of class. So me not having the emotional safety of myself to experience and utilize my anger is something that's fearful to me because it means that if I do set boundaries, if I do set expectations, any violation of those is going to warrant anger. Like, hey, it makes me angry when you violate my boundary. like now I gotta leave. And can you imagine doing that for somebody who has like a very anxious attachment style who when you need space, they need closeness. And then what that does is that your unspoken boundary becomes violated because you're prioritizing said other person, giving them what it is that they need or are asking for while compromising yourself. And the anger is not outwardly directed.

00:42:56 Courtney Brame: It can't be like, hey, you got to sit with the consequences of your actions. Now, new consequences are being created because of my own unwillingness to be with what my anger is and take from that anger that there's an importance of boundaries. So, what's in my anger can be what creates the boundaries and the expression of what I need. um being a response of anger in a way like a healthy anger response being the consequence like all right yeah you might not like that I need space but that's what I need and you knew not to do this thing that we talked about you not doing for me to be able to make this a consequence so that I think that that's where a big solution is for myself because I violated my own boundaries ies often with without even knowing what these boundaries are. So a need of mine is that I can't get angry and express my anger in a way that another person might be able to receive the way that I know anger is a very familiar way of experiencing anger from a lot of people.

00:44:15 Courtney Brame: And not expressing anger might seem like me not showing emotion, but like I can't like I can't lose myself. And yeah, I'm afraid of my I've seen what my anger's done to other people, but I've also learned over the last you love. you're in a relationship with and go, "All right, let me use this thing that I learned." Yeah. Do for all therapies out there. Yay. We form the tools, you know, into things. But I think that one thing that I've done for sure for myself is I've tried to not be this toxic version of myself. And the word toxic is so f****** overused. It annoys me. But sometimes toxic is just real. It's real. It's raw emotion. healthy maybe integrates like practical tools for healing into that what we call toxicity but it's real and I've not been able to be real relationship my therapist challenged me on this I've not been real and on the podcast mass there's a mass of niceness I do a lot of free s*** and while it may not be the expectation I've just noticed what happens is that for who can't give still serving them in the way that I have and the way that I do and the way that I will

00:46:12 Courtney Brame: somebody else out there kind of just like pays it forward out of nowhere like a huge donation out of where I'll get a grant or an opportunity and to me like it all pays for itself and I can't say with certainty that there's been anger no there has been actually there has been anger when someone books a free support call and then on the call they show up and they're they're driving like a BMW or I had this one person sign up for a support call for a dollar and I'm saying like dude's super flashy and I I didn't say anything but I absolutely need to start doing that. So, it's very ironic that I'm home again. Uh because this is the very place where family, my friends, my community is. There's a lot of influences. There's a lot of people here who can influence me or be like, "Hey, Courtney, let's go out for a drink. Hey, Courtney, can you do this for me?" And I have to name my boundaries.

The Role of Boundaries in Protecting Energy

00:47:20 Courtney Brame: And one of the things I always say is, I don't think boundaries are necessarily for time, but they're for things. Boundaries around my time. Wait, what did I say? I don't think boundaries are for people. I think they're for things. Time to me is a thing. Emotional state, my energy, that's a thing. My finances thing. Health a thing. So, if I have boundaries that are in place and I think that asserting these is part of the anger. Uh because there's assertiveness… and I, again, I've associated that with anger. But to say to people, hey, you always ask me out on Fridays and like Fridays are a semi smooth, relaxing work day. I'm working half the day and then I want to make sure to make time to do this thing and this thing, right? So when my friend hits me up and it's like, oh, you know, I'm back in town like, come on, let's go get food at this place.

00:48:13 Courtney Brame: Like, okay, well, it's Friday and I do still need to do some things. Ah, f*** it. I'll do it later. That's a violation of my boundary. I communicate like “hey so typically on Fridays…” here's like you at this place or we can this time to use boundaries around my yeah like I can't, but I think about you know how finally presented itself after repeatedly being because of ask for something that one I don't know I'm asking for but I'm hoping for and two the other person doesn't know isn't of them that manifested for as needing to leave and walking away and this is where that lowercase ‘C’, capital ‘C’ Courtney come in because lowercase ‘C’ was compliant and just didn’t want to be angry at me and then capital ‘C’ Courtney was just kind of like shoved into a closet in a way until little ‘C’ Courtney saw like “oh my god like everything that I thought has been threatened by my existence my freedom it's threatened I'm feeling impulsive oh my god what do I do” and then capital ‘C’ Courtney comes out and just like saved me.

00:49:51 Courtney Brame: I've been split between this lowercase ‘C’ and this capital big ‘C’. And I think again at the beginning big ‘C’ was very masculine had you know more stoic and has like some intuition and is responsible for keeping me safe. Lil ‘C’ Courtney… wholesome. Lil ‘C’ Courtney is like, "Hey, we moving. Let's let's go to Portland. Let's go to New York." And much more emotional, but also that version of me is very needy. And that needy version of me that I've tried so hard to just get rid of. That version of me doesn't have boundaries. That version of me is nice. That version of me is anxious. And that version of me absolutely fears loneliness, fears my emotions, my anger, fears conflict, and it fears self limitations and restrictions of the spirit. I don't know how to allow these aspects of self to coexist. And that creates a barrier to wholeness for myself to be able to attract and maintain a whole person.

00:51:15 Courtney Brame: So I'm listening to the book No More… Well, I just finished it again. No More Mr. Nice Guy by Dr. Robert Glover. And so much of that book is what I have been doing not just in my relationship, my most recent relationship, but relationships before that, in my career, in my life, with my family, with my friends, even with Carl. Carl pointed this out to me. Carl owns the gym that I have this office space in that I'm teaching yoga classes in. You know, when I got here, I was like, "Man, how much is rent? Like, let me pay you something." He was like, "When you always do that, like just let somebody do something nice for you." And I think it was in that moment that I recognized like a need of mine for healing, which is to just flat out ask for what I need from people who are capable of providing it for me rather than finding people who can't or like getting one thing from them but then wanting something else from like if I were to just, you know, know that this is a need.

00:52:27 Courtney Brame: This is a need. This is a need. Okay, this person meets this need. Cool. This person meets that need. Cool. This person meets, you know, these needs in this realm. This person will be able to meet these things, but not this one thing. And be able to act accordingly and be able to have boundaries around the relationship. But I can't do that if I myself am not whole. To understand the needs that I have, I'm responsible for. these needs that I have that I don't know that I have. I'm responsible for identifying what these needs are. I am responsible for that and I'm responsible for getting them met. And so, you know, while the book title No More Mr. Nice Guy probably sounds like it's turning you into an a******, what it does is it teaches you how to exercise boundary setting. It teaches you how to identify what you need, how to ask for what you need, how to create a life for yourself that is whole and complete that a whole and complete partner can come into and merge into.

00:53:39 Courtney Brame: And I think that I was talking to my friend Will this morning about having your s*** together. And I think that that statement of having your s*** together, you know, didn't apply to me. Like I might seem like it's together, but like I I've moved a lot. I have not had firm footing planted anywhere over the last four, five years. Uh since 2020, 2021 when I left and moved to Portland, I've not had stable footing for that long. And here I am like in my last relationship trying to talk about having a family and like building towards that. And I was working in a different way and I divided my presence. I divided my focus in such a way that I was doing so much of this future planning logically right and that's where capital ‘C’ Courtney was like distracted like capital ‘C’ Courtney had to be there for that and then capital ‘C’ Courtney was also needed in the relationship and the capacity just was f****** dwindled.

00:54:50 Courtney Brame: And it was because I was unable to be whole. And yeah, that absence of what there is on the other side of my anger or what's in that anger, that's where the boundaries are. That's where the needs are. That's where the fears are. So, I've been practicing allowing myself to receive. Um, I've been practicing receiving just presents from people, gifts from people, food from people, just like rides from people, just support with settling into my new space. And I've also practiced saying no. Like my family wants me to have a car and I'm like I've not had a car for years. They all want me to have one. And so that was a very hard thing for me to do was to not accept like and accepting things has been a challenge for me as well. But I was able to say no without there being like any anger behind it despite the pushiness of it.

00:56:08 Courtney Brame: But I do feel much more equipped to do that because I now have the practice of saying no in an environment to people that I should not ever say no to according to my childhood. So I'm fragmented and not healthy myself. I attract brokenness because I too am broken. What's kept me safe has come at the cost of freedom and what's brought me freedom has come at the expense of safety. I go into one extreme and I try to get the other and then anger builds because I want that from someone and then boom, Low ‘C’ comes in or Big ‘C’ or Lil ‘C’ like drops the ball and then Big ‘C’ has to come in to handle things and save the day. So, in having looked at like my relationship structures, like I've been single for a really long time, like prior to me entering the most recent relationship that I had, and there were a lot of tendencies that little ‘C’ Courtney just carried into the beginning of the relationship.

00:57:19 Courtney Brame: And despite how impulsive, how immature Lil ‘C’ was. There was always kind of like this undercurrent of Big ‘C’ Courtney that was like operating in the background of what's most important. So while like the right now the intricacies of things that I've done through not having the skills that come from being practiced at expressing anger such as boundary setting, identifying your needs, asking for what you need, setting expectations, the bigger picture was always like taken care of by big ‘C’. And I see like what's needed now is integration. And what integration looks like is balancing my safety needs and freedom. I've been able to get safety needs met in some places. I've been able to get freedom needs met in some places. And for the first time in my life, I'm not dependent on one or the other. My home, my space, I signed a lease. My space looks the way that I want my space to look. Um, I've organized my space to where it looks like I'm going to be there for.

00:58:52 Courtney Brame: I haven't decorated a place that I've lived in since college. I moved to Houston in I believe at the end of 2013 or 2014. I was there for 3 years. I moved back to St. Louis. I stayed with my grandmother for a bit and then I moved into a place where I subleased for someone. Then I moved in with uh my ex at the time in 2018 2019. We moved in together uh in that same place. And then after that I moved into my own spot and I never decorated. I had a bed, a couch, TV, a little workspace. Like I had the essentials, man. And like for where I'm at right now, I'm I'm f****** proud of myself. I'm proud of myself for how I've been navigating this grief. I'm proud of myself for the support that I have gotten. And I'm very grateful for the support that I haven't gotten. Right? Like I I recognize that you know the people my people have checked on me and you know I don't want to make this a divisive thing but we we all have our own lived experiences and for me I think that me really leaning into this experience for myself and like not going to social media and getting whatever

01:00:30 Courtney Brame: people close to me and my friends like they've given me grace because I've been so hard on myself about why my relationship didn't work out. Been really hard on myself and giving them all of the information that there is to give, you know, to hear them say that and be like, "No, Courtney, like this wouldn't argue. And for me to have seen myself do such a great job of something that I haven't had practice with has shown me that like I'm I'm a damn good partner to someone someone's whatever that ends up looking like. And as this continues to get worked on and as I begin to integrate my capital ‘C’ Courtney and little ‘C’ Courtney, that balance of freedom and safety is coming from here. It's coming inside out. So, as I'm talking to my therapist like two to three times a week right now and I'm around people who allow me to have my feelings, like I got to be angry with Carl or not with him, but like in his presence yesterday and that felt good.

01:02:02 Courtney Brame: I got to just talk about anger and being angry and do some reading about it and that's where I'm at now. You know, I thought I was sad, but there's just a lot of anger. And there's no anger like at her. Like the anger is very much like toward myself for not coming. I presented capital ‘C’ Courtney, masculine, safe, and emotionally intelligent. And then I presented little Courtney, lowercase Courtney, who impulsively eats freedom. And these are two aspects of myself that I'm integrating as I live here and as I get to be in the middle of the United States where, you know, I have the safety, security, family, friends, home. Uh I now know that I can make enough money. My living expenses were triple what they are living in St. Louis or when I was living in New Jersey and I'm not like paying for two people now. So yeah, I mean as far as how things go with that, I have more freedom to be able to go do the things that bring me joy.

01:03:20 Courtney Brame: I'm able to go and play more and do more of the traveling that doesn't require like crosscountry flights. So as I do this, it means less pressure buildup of anger because in setting boundaries, this protects my time, my emotional state, my energy, my health, my need for safety and freedom. And that's what I'm doing and I'm working on it. Right? So this means really expressing the emotions within my boundaries of expression. If I need space, I need to say that. And I need to communicate my anger. Like my anger is not something to be afraid of. It's not something to be mad about. My anger is nothing to be mad about. So, this wasn't supposed to turn to all of that. It was supposed to have been, you know, it's just me sharing my experiences with anger. um being in my 12th year of my herpes diagnosis and having started Something Positive for Positive People out of anger.

Full Circle Moments and Conclusion

01:04:39 Courtney Brame: This just feels like a full circle beautiful moment. It was 8 years ago that I moved home around this time and I started Something Positive for Positive People. Uh it was mid-February. It was around March in 2019… or yeah, no 17. Damn it. 2017 March was when I moved back home to St. Louis from Houston, Texas. Here I am now, right? Like picking where I left off uh and completing the cycle. My astrologer, shout out to Tasha of Pluto on Instagram, who told me we are in the process of completing like an 8-year cycle and it's just a beautiful moment for me to over the last 8 years to have been able to use my anger work-wise and now I've been forced you know unfortunately at the expense of a relationship and you know whatever relationships that you know go along with that with losing that one um it's unfortunate you know like um I've gone from I've gone through the process of being sad and it'll come up again, I'm sure.

01:05:57 Courtney Brame: But yeah, it sucks to think that your life is going to look one way and then it doesn't. And now, you know, I feel like the grieving process is more revealing to me of having the certainty of what my life is going to look like rather than focusing on what my and someone else's life is going to look like. Because again like that came from a place of brokenness for me of not being whole. You know my masculine self, the capital ‘C’ Courtney and the feminine self, the lowercase ‘C’ Courtney that I was talking to um someone. It's like two magnets both north poles and just like trying to get them together these two parts of myself and I'm forcing this. I'm very much like with the magnets when if you just kind of relax and surrender what'll happen is one side's probably just going to flip around or you know when you stop trying to force these sides together I think like if they're long magnets they just clamp together and they integrate and that's what this process is for me being home I got to integrate this anger my anger is the resistance So, I have to healthily express it.

01:07:31 Courtney Brame: I can't fear my anger. I can't fear that my anger is going to trigger somebody in the same way that my anger has been triggering for me. I also recognize too that I can't keep doing this like Instagram therapy s*** in my relationships. I just can't. Like, I got to be a real f****** person. And if I don't like something, I need to speak up about the thing I don't like. If I want something, I need to ask for that thing that I want. And that's what I've learned. That's what I've learned. And yeah, like I wish my ex well. I think that um she is going to be successful at what she does. And and you know, our relationship didn't work out. and I know why on my end and I know what I need to work on for the next relationship. Um, but yeah, I wanted to take some time before saying anything about it other than I'm experiencing some grief right now and today just feels like a very it feels like the right time to do it.

01:08:41 Courtney Brame: Um, just with my herpes anniversary, my 12 year herpes anniversary. Um, I want to apologize for cancelling a few of the Safe Sex Expo. We really only had one person registered by like Tuesday and they bought a ticket and we had all these plans for that day that just fell through. Um, and I think that where I was energetically at the time is what kept this from happening. Um, and I'm grateful because it would have turned into that particular thing in that way. Um, a couple of just updates. I completed the hardest module of my yoga, my yoga therapy training. Uh, the anatomy and functional part was hard, y'all. But I finished it. So, now it's just like a matter of completing a few more modules. Case studies. If you're somebody who's curious about yoga therapy for people with herpes, please hit me up. It's not doing yoga. I promise there's much more talking with it.

01:09:46 Courtney Brame: Um, I'll share case studies and testimonials as I come up with like more workshops for us. Uh, I'll just be doing some of that directly because people… I cancelled the event SafeSlut and I we were going to do. I think that I'm going to accept back so many people in life where… we, our diagnosis and stigma that it just makes more sense to do things virtually rather than trying to do things in person. So, that's what I'm going to be doing. Um, I'm going to continue to focus on healing for myself. Um, my self-directed anger is something that I plan to practice letting go of today. Um, and yeah, I think that speaking about moving forward feels good, but this is going to be the only time I talk about the end relationship. I do believe that uh isn't the place for, but I do believe that y'all need to know like my state of wellness, which is why it was so important for me to be on camera, too, so that y'all can see my face and know that like there's no like hard feelings.

01:11:20 Courtney Brame: You know, I do think that a lot of things uh there's a lot of things that if I had access to, I would have done and communicated differently. Like we work together and that's something that I always wanted like I always like envisioned being able to work with and travel with, you know, my person despite the relationship style. But being able to book these conferences and be able to get paid and turn into a little vacation and also being able to be in the field that we're in and have that understanding and all this stuff, man. So, um I got some work to do. I got some work to do around my anger. Um I'm not sure what else will come up in that, but I'll put it appropriately where it needs to go. Um, if you are unaware, I have another podcast called Self where I speak about my own emotional wellness. It's kind of like a diary, a verbal diary, if you will. Um, and I think that that's more appropriate for me to talk about upcoming experiences as I navigate the next steps after this breakup.

01:12:31 Courtney Brame: And it's not anything big. I think like five people listen to it, but it's more for my own accountability. um uh have the practice of flexing my emotional wellness muscle. You know, some people journal, which I do too, but um I think that it's important to utilize that podcast and that safe space that I created from is one of accountability and one that I need to be consistent with. So, that's it. This is how I'm celebrating my TW sorry. This is how I'm celebrating my 12 year herp-versary. Um, I would like to get some gooey buttercake. That's a St. Louis thing. Um, yeah, there's plenty of places I can probably get it. Oh, I should go to High Point. Ah, I don't know. I got so many options. So many options. But it does feel good to be home. Um, if you're somebody here in St. Louis, I'm teaching yoga classes at Given 100, the gym I used to train people at. It's at um, it's in University City close to Forest Park. Come holler at me. Um, yeah. I'm here. This is my home. I'm finally home. We want to call it a homecoming uh full circle moment, whatever, between coming out about herpes and now I'm coming back with my herpes. Um, yeah, that's it. I'm going to stop that. Let me go ahead and hit stop record. And yeah, till next time, y'all.

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