SPFPP 409: What We Don’t Metabolize Will Metastasize

Episode Transcript

Intro: What Doesn't Metabolize, Metastasizes

00:00:03 Courtney Brame: Hello. Welcome to Something Positive for Positive People. I'm Courtney Brame. Something Positive for Positive People is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization supporting people navigating herpes stigma. Today's podcast episode, if you're new here, you don't want to start here at all. This is not where you want to start listening to this podcast.

00:00:26 Courtney Brame: This one is much more for people who may have been following me for a while, who've been here, who regularly come check in and observe, listen to the podcast. This is for y'all. I'll do the announcements and everything at the end of the episode just because I'm at work right now and I just so happen to have a long enough lunch break to be able to speak freely and openly, and release this thing that's been here for a while. So I got notes. It took me like an hour and 20 minutes to write up the notes of this podcast episode. And I'm grateful because I don't think that otherwise I would be doing it. I wouldn't be as confident as I am saying the things that I'm about to say and using it as a teaching tool that hopefully applies to anyone who does decide to listen. So here we go.

I even got a title for it out the gate: What doesn't metabolize metastasizes. That doesn't sound as smooth as I thought it did. Like, if it don't metabolize, it'll metastasize. So metastasis is the spread of cancer cells from an original or primary tumor to other parts of the body.

00:01:55 Courtney Brame: I'm using this word specifically because I want you to think of a life event happening. Think about a trauma. That trauma lingers, it sticks, and the root of that trauma leaks into other areas. The thing about metastasis is the cells of an existing cancer travel away from that tumor, that cell, and then they park in other parts of the body and then begin to form new cells, new cancers, new tumors.

00:02:30 Courtney Brame: Right? And I think that this is true for emotions, for traumatic life events, where if we have not cleared out and dealt with that which has metastasized within us and the residuals of that, the reproduced aspect of those things will begin to leak out into other areas of our life in general. It's not just about the physical body, but it's about the emotions.

00:02:58 Courtney Brame: It's about our energy. It's about our social relationships with other people. We'll show up in those spaces and the event that happened to us, or whatever that happened to us, begins to operate as what functions and happens through us. So I want to first name that authenticity is what I believe to be the cure for a lot of the emotional metastasizing things that we have in life, and the things that we don't metabolize, integrate, and then begin to express that gets suppressed within us and then begins to take shape in our day-to-day life.

Experiencing Suppressed Grief

00:03:47 Courtney Brame: And it becomes a part of our identity whether we want it to or not. So I think that the intention of this particular episode—I'm so happy I got my notes. The intention here is to be able to speak to that from my own personal experience, right? I've done fewer podcast episodes and I've been b*********** about my reason for that. And the reason is because I've been experiencing grief. I can honestly say that I've been experiencing grief over the last year and a half. And I got my own little intentions and boundaries here that I'm going to set. And the boundary is that yeah, it's been a year and a half since my last relationship ended.

00:04:34 Courtney Brame: And I don't want to talk about that. I don't want to talk about what she did, who she was. This isn't about that relationship. For my intention, the last year and a half what's happened is that I've held on to these emotions to protect her and protect even my image, right? Even while dealing with the outbursts initially of what was said about me, what was done. But that's not what this is about. This is about me grieving and dealing with the initial aftermath of things having metastasized within me.

00:05:23 Courtney Brame: So these were very heavy spectacles of my past self. It's important for me to name here that I'm validating my own identity. And yeah, I'm metabolizing that stuck s*** that's been in my body, in my hips. It's been in my throat. It's been in my communication and it's been in my overall presence.

00:05:52 Courtney Brame: I think that I said that I'm making one podcast a month just because I'm condensing and making things more efficient. But I got s*** to say. I've got lived experiences and for the last 10 years, this has been my outlet to say a lot of the things that I've said. You know, I love when I get feedback from people when I do podcast episodes like this where they're like, "Oh my god, that resonated. Thank you for that. That helped." Because I don't really hear from people about the podcast often. And that kind of feedback is helpful for me because I then will get caught overthinking or I will hear something that's like, "Hey Courtney, like that was really personal. I don't know if that's really what you want to be doing." But the whole thing here is that authenticity is something that doesn't just keep away what doesn't align for you, but it also draws in what is aligned for you. And that's my problem. It took me a year and a half after the ending of a year-and-a-half-long relationship for me to realize really what the issue was, right? And this is for me again just taking accountability for myself.

Two Triggers: Invalidation and Confidence

00:07:07 Courtney Brame: So let's talk about what got me here. The first trigger—because I caught myself getting triggered twice in communication with a friend and somebody that I've been intimate with. Trigger number one was being asked by somebody really close to me, "What did your ex do to you for your confidence to be so low?"

00:07:30 Courtney Brame: Now, I've not been on social media probably much since said ending of relationship. I have gotten quieter. I've not been posting my thirst traps like I normally do. I haven't been active. And you know, part of it is that there was some confusion for me about how I want to show up, how to show up.

00:07:54 Courtney Brame: And there's also a fear, like a fear of putting myself out there in this way that somebody can get that close to me again and say all the right things and present themselves as someone who is this perfect fit and then I get excited about it and then that doesn't work and I get hurt. That's what I've been operating from.

00:08:16 Courtney Brame: So that is why my friend was able to say this to me because even in dating and relationships, I'm very fortunate to draw in the kinds of people that I draw in because that lack of confidence is picked up on. But I think some people just don't care. It's like, "Oh, this is who you are." But then at the same time, the lack of confidence and how it shows up is in a way that I don't think people would really be able to pick up on unless you were close to me or you've known me at a confident stage in my life. Because I do things.

00:08:45 Courtney Brame: Because it's important to me. If I set my mind to something, if I say I choose to do some s***, I'm doing the s***, right? So, there's nothing that can deter me away from following through on whatever decisions I made. And I recognized for myself, like, there was such an invalidation of that identity for me because that relationship was something that I chose, right? It was like I'm choosing to be here. I'm choosing to show up. I'm choosing these things.

00:09:27 Courtney Brame: And it didn't work out. So there's an invalidation of my identity as somebody who goes for it. And I've not been going for it in my intimate life. Let's say that. My career is going great. I'm making money. I'm doing the things that I'm passionate about. I'm able to continue to maintain consistency here with Something Positive for Positive People in a sustainable way.

00:10:03 Courtney Brame: I think that there were 450 something support calls that were signed up for. Not everybody showed up this first half of the year and things are good. Things are good, but they can be more aligned for me. And to hear from someone who knows me to say that my confidence is low and ask "what did she do to you?"

00:10:32 Courtney Brame: It's like that put something in my chest. Like my chest got heavy and almost collapsed in a sense because it's like, no, I can't tell you that. I got to keep that from you. Keep that from the world. Right. And then there's this little bit of identification with a victim mindset in the sense of like I don't want to have an answer for that.

00:11:00 Courtney Brame: Like what did your ex do to you for your confidence to be so low? For me to be honest and answer that feels like playing a victim on one hand, and then on the other hand too, like it disrupts this savior complex that I've had about protecting people and protecting their identity. And also just protecting myself from the vulnerability that it takes to share that. I had a therapist. We were in therapy... I had multiple sessions over weeks talking about this and yeah,

00:11:40 Courtney Brame: it still feels like maybe there was still some residuals there perhaps, but I see it. I see far too clearly when that was reflected back to me, especially after so much time, that let me know that there was still some work to be done. And the work to be done... people say that s***.

00:12:00 Courtney Brame: But I'm here today to explain exactly what that looks like. But first, what I want to do is speak to the second trigger. The second trigger came from an intimate partner. She sent me a text and we were having a conversation about something that's coming up and sharing space and being around other people that we've seen, are seeing, whatever.

00:12:23 Courtney Brame: And she was just like, "Just be you. I'd never ask you to dim your light." And I got that same feeling in my chest, like a collapsing, a weight, a heavy forward falling feeling. And the reason that it hurt was because that felt invalidating because my shining light, my career, my community, my identity was the very issue that caused my last relationship to end.

00:12:55 Courtney Brame: Who I naturally was became what the problem was. And here I am now faced with somebody who sees me as I am. And it's like, can I trust it? Can I believe you? Do you really mean that? Can I really shine? Are you going to dim my light?

00:13:17 Courtney Brame: Is that going to be a problem? And so here we are like with these two things that are triggering me. And it's like there's no escape. Ain't no escape from it. Like it's just there.

The Somatics of Dancing and Being Present

Courtney Brame: And as I've been dancing Brazilian Zouk—boom chick!—I had a fellow lead, man. Shout out to Mike. There's a few Mikes, but he'll never hear this, but I told him one day, I was like, "Hey, something you said really stuck with me." And all he said was, "Dance is communication." He's like, "You're having a conversation." And adding to that, I know that what makes a conversation good is presence.

00:14:02 Courtney Brame: And I told him that, I was like, "Yo, thank you for that because it's helped me. It's helped me understand dance significantly better." This is the first dance that I've ever done. It's been almost 12 months now. It's been almost a year that I've been dancing, not just dancing Zouk, but dancing period. And so I brought that up to him and I just thanked him. And he was like, "Yeah, you know, sometimes I get in my head and if I'm in my head, what gets me out of it and what makes me present is just remembering, oh, there's another person here." And I realized, man, when he said that, this was over the weekend. He said that to me at one of the dance socials that we were at, and I had this big ass aha moment.

00:14:47 Courtney Brame: I used to be a damn good communicator and recently I, in dance specifically, have recognized that I'm so much more terrified. I'm terrified of stepping on people's toes, bumping into their knees, being too rough with them, and that is showing up on the dance floor in a way that I'm not dancing. I'm absent. I'm not present.

00:15:14 Courtney Brame: Because I'm so, "Oh, let me watch my knee. Let me watch my step. Let me watch my feet. Let me watch how much tension I put here. Let me watch how I pull." I'm doing everything but dancing. I'm going through the mechanics and I'm not trying to break this s*** down and intellectualize what it means to dance. But what I am doing is somatically allowing myself to have this experience because I'm learning something at an energetic level. And the more that I let go, the more that I accept, the more that I relinquish these beliefs about myself, the more fluid I'm becoming. And I also got a deep tissue massage which I think I put here in the notes as well because that is really metaphorical and important to the points that I'm trying to make here.

00:16:01 Courtney Brame: And so the combination of those two triggers—my friend asking what did your ex do to you for your confidence to be so low, and then for a partner to be like, "just be you. I'd never ask you to dim your light." And then hearing from a fellow lead in dance that dance is a conversation, I realized like there is a conversation that is happening.

00:16:28 Courtney Brame: And s***, when I was podcasting and interviewing people, that's all I did. That's all I was doing was having conversations with people. And another issue that I recognized in my relationship was that the very thing that made me who I am became an issue, which was my podcast, the conversations that I would have, the topics that would come up, the intimacy, the vulnerability that would be exchanged in these conversations. That's who I am.

00:16:58 Courtney Brame: And so I even got to a point where I was suppressing that like, "Okay, well maybe I can just not have those conversations, right?" A lot of accommodations that in those accommodations really invalidated my own identity. So in dance there's a leader and a follower. And the way that I see it is I as a leader, I'm the initiator and then the enhancer is the follower.

00:17:21 Courtney Brame: A good dance is that conversation. If I, the initiator, the lead, am unclear, or if I'm hiding my power, if I'm dimming my light, then the enhancer can't add anything because there's something off about it. If I'm not present in the conversation, it's like I'm just f****** saying words. And if I'm just saying words, they have to guess what the sentence is that I'm trying to say.

00:17:48 Courtney Brame: So if I'm leading a bonus, if I'm leading a lateral, if I'm leading a simple turn and I'm just like in the middle of doing one thing, I'm doing something else. And I'm recognizing her response and I'm like, "Oh, let me change." And it's incongruent. It's the mechanics playing out more so than the actual presence of the dance.

00:18:16 Courtney Brame: And so that being metaphorical as a conversation, dance in a sense is just using words. And I mentioned the communication, like there's metastasization in my communication, in my voice. Like I feel like I've been clearing my throat and s*** for the longest because I have things to say that I'm not saying. Like I'm holding on to that s*** at a somatic level.

The Suicide of Self-Identification

00:18:45 Courtney Brame: And I've been in yoga therapy training for damn near three years. It's been almost three years now. Damn. And with that, I'm seeing this. I'm having clear language on what this means. So I put here the suicide of self-identification. So I guess this is where it's relevant, right?

00:19:13 Courtney Brame: I don't believe that suicide ideation comes from loss of control or deep sadness, but a constant invalidation of one's identity. If you're not thinking about killing yourself, you're killing yourself by invalidating your own identity. And in the dynamic of my last relationship, the very things again that made me me became points of friction in the relationship.

00:19:40 Courtney Brame: And rather than having boundaries and holding the boundaries, rather than me establishing and holding them, I went on and internalized said friction and allowed for my identity to be invalidated. And I did that to myself. So I don't blame nobody for things that I did. I did what I thought was right because whether it be accommodating for another person or thinking, "Okay, well, this person has my best interest at heart, so I'm going to make the changes."

00:20:17 Courtney Brame: But that's the thing, I doubted myself. That which got me here or to that point in time. It was almost like I just threw that s*** away rather than just saying no. I was like, "All right, how can we fix this? How can I do this? How can I make this better for you?" It wasn't no.

00:20:39 Courtney Brame: And you know, who knows? Maybe things would have continued or maybe things would have ended a lot sooner. But that's where authenticity comes into play because if that which you are is who you remain as, what is not for you will not make it into your bubble and stay in your bubble, or your orbit, right?

00:21:01 Courtney Brame: Think about the sun. The sun has nine planets and then asteroids and stuff, but if you get too close to the sun, you burn. If you're too far away from it, you're cold. So, you adjust yourself accordingly and the sun is just there. And that's what planets have done. They've oriented themselves to the consistency of said sun.

00:21:20 Courtney Brame: I constantly reference David R. Hawkins. If you haven't already, you can check out the yoga tab, spfpp.org/yoga and you'll be directed to the videos on letting go of herpes stigma using the framework of David R. Hawkins in the book Letting Go. And in this book, there's a story that he tells about a guy who believes he cannot dance.

00:21:43 Courtney Brame: But what's happening is as he shows up, he's on the dance floor and he's supported by someone. She was like, "Just do what I do. Just move your body." What happens is that resistance that he let go of released these trapped emotions and he started to remember things. He started to remember that he has danced and liked to dance and he suddenly starts just dancing.

00:22:09 Courtney Brame: And I think about that cuz I listen to that book a hell of times. But I see myself in that particular character in the book. Like the dancing, the ability to dance didn't leave me. It's just been buried under all this metastasized ass emotion that's coagulated because I haven't metabolized it. And the way that I metabolize things is I'm an energetic being, a storage container for energy.

00:22:35 Courtney Brame: Basically, I input, I store, I metabolize, I output. And that's the same thing that happened with me when I got herpes. I get my herpes diagnosis. That's the input. The storage of the energy of the experiences that I had over those first four years and more input from people that they wanted to kill themselves because of their diagnosis which led to me choosing the output being into Something Positive for Positive People.

00:23:03 Courtney Brame: So rather than me storing and metabolizing or metastasizing my own internalized stigma, I chose an output, an outlet for that energy that is constantly being poured into this space, this space that is Something Positive for Positive People. I have not done that for a year and a half with the emotions, the experiences that came for me through the realizations after that relationship ended.

Breaking Up "Ama" (Toxic Energy) Through Massage

00:23:39 Courtney Brame: Now, I mentioned the deep tissue massage. I've been getting deep tissue massages weekly for three weeks. Has it been three weeks now? And the reason for that is because I just hadn't done it in a while and my body has been like screaming at me that something's not right. So When I speak to metastasized emotion in Yoga Ayurveda, there's this thing called ama.

00:24:08 Courtney Brame: Ama is essentially toxins, sludge, things that the body can't digest. Not just physical food, but also emotions. Ama is the accumulation of that which has not been metabolized. So, it moves through the body and just kind of coagulates and gets stuck. And for me, a lot of things were stuck in my emotions. That lady dug her elbows into my back muscles, into my shoulders.

00:24:32 Courtney Brame: Like, I can turn my neck fully now. I couldn't do this two weeks ago. I'm able to swing my shoulders without hearing any crackling and popping. My hips are a lot more mobile and flexible. Sex game strong now. Like, I could do a lot. But I took a dance class this weekend and we integrated hips.

00:24:50 Courtney Brame: And I realized how little I do with my hips outside of weightlifting motions or thrusting, right? So when I speak to what metastasized emotion looks like, it looks like physical knots in the fascia. For me, that s*** got stuck in my hips, in my throat even. And even as I'm talking, notice I'm clearing my throat a little bit less and I'm releasing that s*** energetically.

00:25:18 Courtney Brame: And in my ability to be physically present, it's restricted my range of motion, not just in my body as I dance, but in my life as I express my authenticity. When I started to get those massages, she broke up hardened things. You heard the crunchy. You felt the what felt like speed bumps in my body.

00:25:41 Courtney Brame: And these were just hardened stuck toxins. I got so sick after my last massage. Even while she was massaging me, my nose started running. And what happened was those toxins were broken up and they started to flush into my bloodstream, literally making me sick. I was tired. I was heavy.

00:26:02 Courtney Brame: I was drained. Nose was running. I was spitting. And I had to lay down. I just had to drink water, lay my ass down, and let that stuff run. And after a week now, it's been like 10 days since that one, I have been draining those toxins. And my range of motion is new.

00:26:28 Courtney Brame: It's new to me. Like, it's restored, but I'm able to freely move in a way that I have never been able to move my body. I don't think that I knew what not being sore felt like in my hips, my calves, right? And I've also changed the way that I eat as well. Like I cook 70 to 80% of my food.

00:26:48 Courtney Brame: I know what's in it. I'm spicing things appropriately according to my dosha in Ayurveda. And you know, I notice a difference whenever I don't eat certain things. Like I started buying cage-free free-range eggs, right? And I genuinely believe that this has been making a difference in my life. Alaskan wild caught salmon, that s***'s expensive, but I got to ration it out.

00:27:13 Courtney Brame: And you know, I did the math and I'll spend more money on eating out than I would just cooking premium food at home. I mean, cod, the cage-free chicken breast, quinoa. I'm destroying some quinoa, y'all. I got a dog food bag of quinoa that I've been making with all my meals. I mean, Ezekiel bread with breakfast.

00:27:34 Courtney Brame: Come on now. So, this clarity that's coming up is as a result of not just releasing the toxins that are in my body, but also putting more clean things into my body as well. And I s*** you not, the things that are being pulled into my space, the gravity, even these little realizations... my body was not able, my mind was not able, my energy was not able to have this kind of clarity six months ago,

00:28:09 Courtney Brame: a year ago, a year and a half ago, two years ago. And part of that is because I've been away from people. Like I've been by myself for a very long time to the point where I'm able to hear my own inner voices, my own drive, my own will. When I say "I choose", that's my conscious voice and it's uninterrupted by another person being like "I don't like that" or that disrupts what my plan is.

00:28:48 Courtney Brame: And I recognize—like this is going to sound nihilistic as f***, but the biggest lie that I believe that we were ever told is that the world does not revolve around us. It does. And how you treat your physical space, your environment is going to directly reciprocate back to you. I genuinely believe that because I'm living that.

00:29:23 Courtney Brame: So I've gotten all this freedom now from allowing these toxins to just drain. It's not just again emotional energetic freedom, but it's even freedom in my movement. I move different. Even getting back into the gym, the way that I move the weights is different. The way that I move my body in yoga is more free.

The Physics of Identity and Keeping the "Embers" Alive

00:29:49 Courtney Brame: So that purge, man, it felt like a death. Like that s*** felt like a suicide in a way. Like it was the suicide of the cells that made up my emotional and physical body as it was previously. So speaking to this rebirth, I want to talk about the physics of presence and authenticity and where there is that death, that suicide, there's the possibility of rebirth.

00:30:17 Courtney Brame: And my embers, I just had embers. If you ever watched My Hero Academia, you see All Might when he gives up One for All to Deku, like he's got like these little embers that he's barely keeping alive because he's passed the flame on. And whenever one of the users passes it on, there's these lingering embers.

00:30:43 Courtney Brame: And that's what it felt like for me. And when I got challenged by my friend who was like, "What did she do to you?" And then the partner who was like, "I would never ask you to dim your light." This image kept coming to mind of me just trying to keep my embers alive, trying to keep that flame going.

00:31:00 Courtney Brame: And those people having come into my life and just thrown a couple of twigs in there for me to keep the fire going. And that's what people in my life have been. They've been people that have kept my fire going during a time where I was not able to keep it going myself. My own internal fusion process feels like it's picking back up now.

00:31:24 Courtney Brame: Like I don't need to protect it from the elements anymore. The elements need to be protected from it cuz that m*********** fire is back and it is roaring and it's not outcome dependent. It's not dependent on somebody else coming in and keeping that fire alive. I needed that. I got that and I'm so appreciative of it because I also didn't know that I needed it.

00:31:50 Courtney Brame: I thought that I was good. I genuinely thought I was good. But the people closest to me, the people who know me, the people most intimately connected to me are able to see me in ways that I can easily convince myself that I'm not. So, I appreciate each and every f****** one of the people that threw a twig onto my fire to keep that b**** from dying out.

00:32:20 Courtney Brame: And now I take accountability. I take responsibility for my own fusion process. Everything that's not me got to go. The inauthenticity, the f****** boundaries that I've put up for myself, but that aren't really for myself, but because I felt like I'm supposed to do that, all that s*** got to go. I genuinely believe that the physics of an identity is consistency of behavior and consistency of beliefs.

00:32:56 Courtney Brame: Consistency of behavior plus consistency of beliefs equals identity, and authenticity is consistent expression of identity. So I recognize, let's talk about the physics of presence, right? Like the way that I would have broken my own fusion process to where I depended on others bringing something to keep that fire going. I look at it like this.

00:33:27 Courtney Brame: Input is anything that our senses can take in from our environment. I took in very heavy input with the ending of my relationship, right? Slander feels like an aggressive word, but there were obviously things said about me that led to the outcomes of me no longer having a certain type of connection relationship with people and my storage was the metastasizing of that.

00:34:02 Courtney Brame: Like I interpreted, internalized those things. "Okay, well maybe these things are true. Maybe this is who I am." Like as an example, right? Being told that I was polyamorous when I knew damn well that that didn't resonate with me. Like I held on to that. I held on to that as part of my identity and that led to more metastasizations because that was an untruth for me that became a cancer emotionally that metastasized and the fragments of that identity went into other emotional areas of my life and I ended up in some polyamorous relationships where some people got hurt and they didn't have to.

00:34:34 Courtney Brame: And I believe that everything has a gravity to it. All mass has gravity. And so even these emotions when they metastasize and they solidify, they develop their own gravity that pulls in what's like it.

00:34:58 Courtney Brame: So boom, I'm coagulating these polyamorous ideals. And polyamorous people are making their way into my bubbles with the expectation of polyamorous relationships. And that's not who I am. I just held on to that untruth. And it took for me to really put myself in metaphorical emotional chemo to clear that up. And it was uncomfortable and it was hard.

00:35:25 Courtney Brame: It was a lot harder than it needed to be. Whereas had I been myself the entire time to just be like, "Hey, look, that doesn't resonate with me, but here's what is on the table." Now, there can be much more transparency on the connection point of said relationship. So things do develop mass. They become a tumor of what's blocked energy.

Authentic Output is Emotional Chemo

00:35:48 Courtney Brame: And that's what I believe is how unmetabolized emotions begin to metastasize our output. Outputs are words, our actions, our proximity, our movements. And at that time post relationship, I blocked my own output. I was very careful with what I said. I wasn't authentic. And I'm not going to say anything to slander anybody or anything like that.

00:36:18 Courtney Brame: But I recognized that what I did wasn't talking about it in therapy. That was helpful and healing but that wasn't how I normally process things. So, I've now taken the entirety of the experience and this is what I've come to realize for myself and about myself and I'm making it useful. It doesn't do anybody any good to just name call or create blame and s*** like that.

00:36:45 Courtney Brame: It does nothing. But what not doing those things can do is it creates this danger for ourselves because when we hold on that trapped mass, that trapped emotion, the trapped actions that aren't being taken, that stored energy that is not being metastasized and output, gravity is naturally attracting what aligns with this frequency. You leave that unchecked, what happens is that your identity begins to get disrupted by these toxins, the negative emotions, those traumatic experiences that you haven't metabolized, massaged,

00:37:24 Courtney Brame: and broken up so that they can express and move and go where they need to go as output. Because then what happens is yeah now your identity gets blocked, your light gets dimmed and what they do is they amplify, exaggerate and then they draw in more of what's unaligned into our orbit and then it can even disguise itself as part of who we are conscious and unconscious.

00:37:53 Courtney Brame: I didn't realize my confidence was low until somebody pointed it out to me that I trust to reflect things back to me. I didn't realize that I needed somebody to tell me it was safe and okay for me to not dim my light until I realized, damn, why does this make me feel uncomfortable?

00:38:11 Courtney Brame: And I had to examine that s*** and metabolize it because it was something that metastasized. And so looking at again the mechanics of authenticity is just pure expression of identity. We got to clear that environment. That's how you become authentic. And you can think about authenticity in two ways, right? There's a magnet in the shield, right?

00:38:35 Courtney Brame: Authenticity is going to naturally welcome in and draw in exactly what is aligned with you. The shield is that it's going to naturally repel what you don't want and protect you from what's not aligned with you. And that's very synonymous to what a herpes diagnosis is and does, right? Because now, okay, this herpes diagnosis, it's developed into an emotional tumor that's metastasized to impact our dating life, our confidence, the places that we go, the quality of partners we feel we deserve.

00:38:59 Courtney Brame: Right? That's four more tumors that are being fed by that trapped energy being here. If you're hearing this and you're listening to this, you're already trying to metabolize this. You're in chemo. This is chemo for that particular emotional event.

00:39:23 Courtney Brame: Because as you deal with the stigma, you're neutralizing its effect on the other growing cells to where now this can be energy that is metabolized and then output for us to be able to achieve the outcomes that we want. Being able to put ourselves in environments that are conducive to our identities and who we are. My mantra, nurture my nature.

00:39:48 Courtney Brame: It's to be aligned. It's to be authentic. I'm an energetic being of consciousness who deliberately chooses what I input, store, metabolize, and output. That's me. I know who I am. And I'll be damned if anybody come tell me I'm not that. Not again. No mas. So, wrapping this whole thing up, like the whole anchor and lesson here for y'all.

00:40:22 Courtney Brame: First off, I'm back to myself. Um, and the core truth about stigma, man, is that again, suicide ideation for people who get herpes is very rarely about the physical virus of having herpes. It is an invalidation of identity. The diagnosis represents said initial onset of a traumatic event emotionally that leaks into our sex lives. It leaks into our dating lives, our social lives, our behaviors, what we believe about ourselves, how we talk about ourselves and that begins to trickle out into our behaviors which then reflect our beliefs which then consistently folded in on itself becomes our identity which then shapes our reality.

00:41:03 Courtney Brame: So diagnosis makes you doubt who you are. Makes you doubt your identity at the core. And the same way that I can't lead on the dance floor because I let this old phantom of a presence dim my light. In that same way, people with herpes struggle to lead our own lives, because we let the stigma override our identity and you in chemo for it now.

00:41:43 Courtney Brame: So, you can't unsee this s***. Like, if you hear this like you should get it now and now you got to do something about it. So, the lesson here, but more than anything I would say is to choose your environment. I talk about identity validation all the time. Be around people who can validate who you are and point out when you're invalidating who you are.

00:42:04 Courtney Brame: You have to put yourself in environments where those embers can begin to roar again, where people can keep the spark alive. That's what we need people for. We need people because they serve as reminders of who the f*** we are. I want to dance, so I put myself around dancers. I want to neutralize herpes stigma, so I put myself around health professionals.

00:42:29 Courtney Brame: Now granted to get there like I had to get put I don't want to say put out but like I had to leave certain communities and environments as well. Maybe not necessarily by choice but it had to happen in order for me to experience the success, the joy, the pleasure, the freedom, the sense of safety that I have now that needed to happen.

00:42:54 Courtney Brame: And now I'm here with the output of this metabolized information. Sometimes we don't need to like have a thing happening then eventually initially just talk about it. Had I done that I think that the way that I would have spoken about it at the time would not have been healthy.

00:43:12 Courtney Brame: It would have not been a great example. But now the way I'm able to speak about it and have it be integrated into the wholeness of my experience, I think that this is far much more efficient. And I believe that nature rewards efficiency. Right? The path of least resistance is where you're supposed to be.

00:43:34 Courtney Brame: Maximum efficiency, minimal effort. You'll start hearing me say that more as well because I think that this was the most efficient way for me to metabolize that which had metastasized. So as a final takeaway, if you don't metabolize your diagnosis, if you don't metabolize the depth of that old identity, that s*** will metastasize into you. It will become heavy.

00:44:01 Courtney Brame: You will become anxious. You will become avoidant. Yeah. And that will develop its own gravity. You'll walk onto the dance floor of what life is. And that anxiousness will attract people who want you to play small. But then when you begin to metabolize it through just straight up authenticity, what happens is that that presence creates a heat barrier just like the sun.

00:44:35 Courtney Brame: And it'll also be protective in the form of a shield just like the sun. And just like how the planets get into orbit and they pick up the debris and things go into those smaller planets' orbit that don't ever make it to the sun so that that m*********** can keep burning bright and complete its cycle in the way that it is going to complete its cycle.

00:44:57 Courtney Brame: But authenticity naturally repels that which doesn't align and draws in that which does align. But it's also a matter of choice. Don't think that, oh, I'm going just be myself and you either like it or you hate it. No, you also have a choice in how you interact with the world. So, choose your environments.

Outro and Event Announcements

00:45:17 Courtney Brame: Choose authenticity. If it doesn't metabolize, it'll metastasize. That's it. I feel so much better. Um, last bit of announcements. Please take the herpes stigma survey. spfpp.org/herpes-survey. August 29th, which is a Saturday in New York City. We have our last in-person herpes support type event. It's a day of support, yoga, and then Jordan Denell, one of my board members, she's going to do this workshop on pleasure.

00:46:00 Courtney Brame: It'll be interactive. Right now, I think there's about 12 people that are signed up, which is great because it's super early. So, I'm expecting that most people will probably sign up at the end of August anyway. But, um yeah, the first one I did, I think there were 60ish people there. So, I'm looking forward to being able to host at least that for this one.

00:46:20 Courtney Brame: Be going out with a bang. And then afterwards, I'll just start planning for the herpes stigma conference, which is going to be more geared towards the professional space rather than it being about social activities. So, if that's something that you want to get involved with, if you want to support, please reach out to me, Courtney@spfpp.org, and we can get you situated in there.

00:46:44 Courtney Brame: What other announcements are there? Really. I think that those were just the big two things. But I think that this podcast episode was so much more healing for me than I can put into words. So to anyone who listened, thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for hopefully, you know, just getting the message in a way that I wish that someone would have been able to explain it to me.

00:47:07 Courtney Brame: And yeah, implement this, right? Like this is information that has been metabolized by me for output in a way that hopefully you can metabolize yourself. But I get it like we get this. It's an emotional tumor. It is an emotional metastasis. I think that's the word. But yeah, let me give you that deep tissue.

00:47:32 Courtney Brame: Let me get in there and break that up for you so you can process it. You gonna grieve. You gonna cry. You gonna be sick a little bit. Nose gonna run. You gonna need to rest. But I bet you move through the world a little bit better. All right, till next time, stay present.