SPFPP Episode 147: Accessing the CAPS LOCK SELF

I almost skipped this week because I didn't have much to say, and then I recorded a 53 minute podcast episode that brought the previous one full circle. My week off of social media, recommended by one of my board members was a great call. It allowed me to charge my batteries. After learning recently about boundaries, I see how boundariliessness has been really draining for me and I didn't know how drained I was until I began implementing boundaries. We take a couple of write in stories of the worst experiences two people who attended the "Something Negative for Positive People" fundraiser and use these as examples of where boundaries can be set in relatable situations for whoever comes across this podcast. I've been able to work much more effectively and give people more of myself since discovering the freedom to connect in having boundaries and I hope that by sharing that here, you're able to begin doing this for yourself. Thank you for taking the time!

Episode 147 Transcript

Intro, Therapy Funding, and the "Caps Lock" Self

00:00:00 Courtney Brame: Welcome to Something Positive for Positive People, I'm Courtney Brame. Something Positive for Positive People is a 501c3 nonprofit raising money to provide people who are struggling with stigma therapy. Right now we have eight people enrolled thanks to the donations, thanks to the sponsors, thanks to the podcast listeners utilizing our sponsors both betterhelp and let's getch checkck.com. So as you use those sponsors, the money that comes in is also able to support having gotten those eight people 12 therapy sessions each. So thank y'all for your support.

Courtney Brame: I didn't record a podcast episode in advance. I interviewed someone and there's some editing that needs to happen and we also have to do two episodes. So part of the reason that I hadn't been interviewing people for a while lately is just because I've gotten a new phone and a new way of having to record. I'm open to Zoom and just pulling the audio from there and then editing it accordingly. So, I have a subscription that I have access to now with that and we'll see how it turns out. But, I'm really leaning towards wanting to interview people in person and do more in-person things because the power of just community in general is to me at least the number one thing that helps with stigma.

Courtney Brame: being able to encourage people to reach out to be involved with their community, and of course tapping into their support system. the noise here, I don't know what's going to happen. My neighbor's home and the dog and their people running showers, air conditioners kicking on. So, I will try and make this a quick one. I don't have anything to talk about. I even started to just skip this week's podcast episode. It's been a very busy week for me. I hadn't been on social media. I have been really working through a lot of the stuff that I was discussing from the last podcast episode 146, and really working.

Courtney Brame: I'm wanting to do a much better job with training my clients, and getting more people to come because that's my primary source of income. That is my source of income now because I don't have my other two jobs anymore that I was doing with this. So, that just really requires me to be more present. While yeah, I tell people what to do as far as workouts go, I view personal training really is more of like a customer service job because you really got personalities, and understand that not every time that people come to the gym to work out, they're there to just work out.

Courtney Brame: We're in a time now with COVID, this might be the only human contact that people get and getting out of the house and away from their routine. This is like their vacation now. So, my workplace is everyone else's vacation. And it's important to acknowledge that and be able to have myself taken care of in a way that allows for me to pick up on that and be whatever it is that my clients need for me to be in that moment. So, that was part of the reason that I took a week off. One of my board members just advised me to do so. After having had such an intense therapy session, an intense week of just processing what I read in the book, Boundaries, and different things in my love life.

Courtney Brame: I'm at a point now where I'm recognizing a lot of the negative patterns that I've had and wanting to replace them with new ones. I called the last episode “Acknowledging the lower case self”. I am wanting to spend more time in the all caps version of myself, which is what I view myself as H on my chest, as the person that's posting the things that I post to social media. These are things that are coming from a place that lowercase Courtney just can't seem to comprehend or live by. So that's what I'm doing now.

Courtney Brame: And what's really a challenge is being People so casually just say be yourself. That is not an easy thing to do. It's not especially coming from a place of not really knowing yourself without context of the things that you're associated with. And I'll probably say this till I'm blue in the face, but just given where we are right now being a pandemic and having limited social distractions makes us have to be with ourselves a little bit more. And for me, I can't think the last time that I was by myself. I lived in Houston, Texas on my own… I was in a great place. I had a good salary job and I was able to do things, but I would just not want to be alone. I'd go to bars. I'd meet up with friends.

Isolation, Recognition, and Live Event Stories

00:05:00 Courtney Brame: Be social. And now that I don't have those kinds of distractions really, I have to experience that same discomfort that I had when I was at home in Houston alone. Only I don't have the option of going down the street to the bar and drinking and meeting new people or I'm going to say this in a way that's going to sound like I've done it all the time but it wasn't all the time go and hook up with somebody to help me at the bar. because it's happened enough time to say that it happened.

Courtney Brame: But yeah, those kinds of things just aren't appealing to me anymore. And I'm really seeing the value of what it means to be myself because I have such limited context and things to associate myself with. I'm not a football player anymore. I'm not an employee at a particular company where that became my identity. As far as working out goes. Yeah. People view me as a personal trainer. I mean my yoga teacher training. That's another thing. I didn't realize just how busy I was until I had that week off of social media.

Courtney Brame: And I realized just how much stuff there was to do. I look up and it's like, we got eight people in therapy. There's a whole process there. I get up, I have a pretty set routine as far as personal training goes. And then with all of the podcast stuff that I just do throughout the day, I looked up and there were four different interviews that I did that just all got released over the course of a week, a week and a half. And I was just like, damn, this is actually a lot. So that break that I took was in fact good timing. And I was also nominated for sexual health awards 2020. the category being grassroots organization of the year.

Courtney Brame: which is awesome because I'm hoping that with this recognition that Something Positive for Positive People is getting that it's going to bring about more opportunities for additional interviews, potential speech speaking engagements, for somebody to hear my cry out for an RV or a soundproof van so that I can travel around the country and interview people in person and get in front of these sex positive organizations that provide services to people in a queer friendly identity reaffirming, non-judgmental, sex positive way. And for it to also be accessible and affordable. Not everyone is able to. I don't have health insurance. I haven't had health insurance in damn near four years.

Courtney Brame: Especially because when I got it after I became self-employed, it was $400 a month. And the one time I needed it, I ended up having to pay $400 for the services I was using a co-pay because my insurance didn't cover preventative treatment. So from that experience being able to go into the St. Louis effort for AIDS and tell them, "Yeah, I don't have insurance." For them to still test me for HIV, syphilis, chlamydia, gorrhea. That was nice. I got tested and they gave me a lot of condoms, and a good conversation in relation to my sexual health. So, that was a pleasant experience, and I want to be able to pass that along to others.

Courtney Brame: like I mentioned, I didn't have anything really to talk about on this podcast episode. So, this was a really good time for me to go ahead and bring up a couple of the stories that got missed from the Indianapolis event. And there's another one for Halloween coming up. And this one's going to be in Ohio. And I'm not going to be able to make it. I'll double check the dates. I put everything in my calendar now. And since getting this new phone, I've had to put things back into my calendar. And I realized that that was the same weekend as my best friend's wedding, and I'm not missing the wedding. So, anyone who was going to that, I apologize. I'm not going to be able to get there, but it's going to be a wonderful time for y'all. It's the weekend before Halloween.

00:10:00 Courtney Brame: And if you're curious about that, just message me, and I'll see where you're located and that you're on being a part of the group if you're interested. But I know that thing was maxed out and I'm just going to be one less person who I'm going to be one person not in attendance. But going back to that something negative or positive people episode that I did, which was a live one, it was in Indiana. And what we had was people just writing down their worst experience with HSV that they've had. And we didn't make it through all of them. So I held on to a couple. I've got two here. And these are really long. So I'm going to go ahead and just kind of talk through these and give my feedback because I think this is a great alternative right now until I iron out the interviewing process because that in itself is a lot of time as well. When we

Courtney Brame: get through editing, when we get through being sure that people are comfortable with the content arranging times. And right now with construction going on, I have to record at really weird times. And by weird times, I mean 4:00 a.m. or 900 p.m. after 900 p.m. And that's not going to work because that's my bedtime. And at 4:00 a.m., I'm already getting up a little bit early in order to do this. So, here we go.

Story 1: The Male Nurse and the "Worst First Date"

Courtney Brame: Someone wrote in. Picture this. First date with a male nurse. Let's call him that. Great conversation, respect. I had worked with him for two years. He regularly would flirt and ask me out. I always came up with an excuse to not commit to a date. But eventually, I decided I was ready.

Courtney Brame: While talking and laughing at the restaurant, he asked what was the worst first date I had been on before giving me a chance to answer. I don't even know how to answer that. He went in on his story. A girl he went out with told him she had herpes. I remember him stating, "I'm in healthcare. I could never be with someone who has that. I'm sure he said more, but my stomach was in knots. This was before we even got our appetizer. I barely ate. The date continued. He walked me to my car, kissed my cheek. I drove home crying the whole time. Of course, he wanted a second date, so I dropped the news over text. I work in healthcare, but God is good.

Courtney Brame: And two weeks later, I got a new better job. I am still afraid of something simple. Dinner Days. I wish we would have read this one out loud at the event because I'm sure that there was a lot of feedback that others would have been able to give here. This is a personal situation where someone's biased who works in healthcare shows up in their personal life. As a health care professional that doesn't just default you to having knowledge about sexual health or how this ties into mental health, you're a health care provider, healthcare worker, male nurse, right?

Courtney Brame: if I remember correctly, I believe there's just a very small amount of what you learn in nursing school is dedicated to sexual health. And I'm not even aware that much comes up in the connection between sexual health and mental health at all. But this is why we need to advocate for positive health care. Those organizations that a social worker is the one providing you with your testing. These spaces do more for STI prevention in my experience than the public health space.

00:15:00 Courtney Brame: And I mean, I gotta stand on that. I've talked to some great people who are aware of my work, who have one-on-one conversations with me, who care about their work, who care about advocating for people who are advocating for better sex education. But at the end of the day, like I said, the best sexual health related treatment that I got was from someone who wasn't in health care as a social worker.

Courtney Brame: the people who are just passionate about sex and sexual health and who understand the importance of again identity affirming, queer friendly, LGBT plus, all of these aspects of sexual health really play a role in how stigma remains prevalent.

Courtney Brame: I don't have words here because I empathize. A lot of people do experience this where someone prior to them disclosing just makes a statement or they make a gesture or imply that it's not a good idea for you to disclose. And I'm sorry that I don't know who wrote this, but at the end of this here, I'm still afraid of something simple. Dinner date. Let that sink in.

Courtney Brame: to be afraid of something as simple as a dinner date where you just meet up with someone, you have small talk, you perhaps laugh a bit, you learn about each other, and throughout the majority of the date, I'm sure that this has been festering in your mind. When am I going to disclose? Are they still going to like me when they find out I have herpes? How am I going to tell them when's the best time and then you get the opportunity to do it in a way. There wasn't even an opportunity. You were just going to talk about your worst first date and he just jumped in. The worst date that I ever had was someone told me they had herpes. I work in healthcare though. The f*** out of here, dude.

Courtney Brame: Judging from where I collected these papers, I don't remember your name. Who wrote this down, but I remember your face. And first off, thank you for sharing. My guidance here is to not judge a book by its cover. Just because a person is in the field of healthcare doesn't mean that this particular aspect of it is going to be something that they're receptive to. And I'm sure you probably found other things that came up later that made you realize that you weren't even a fit for one another, that you weren't even a match.

Courtney Brame: the way that I want to think about it here, the way that I want to put it into words here is while you felt judged because of his interpretation of his worst first date being someone having disclosed to him, you judged him and held him to this standard of,

Courtney Brame: he works in healthcare, so he knows about herpes. I don't think we can make assumptions about what people do or don't know. So, the best thing that we can do is just articulate that to ourselves. And articulate that within ourselves. That not everyone is going to be as knowledgeable as we are. We're here. We're affected by it. Yes, he is in it to an extent.

Courtney Brame: But not directly impacted by it. And these are people. Unfortunately, you're going to run into people who don’t. I would think that they knew better. I would think that they'd be more understanding. People just aren't. People are people. And that's what we got to understand. We got to understand that people are people and they're not perfect. They're flawed. None of us are.

Using Community as a Battery Pack Against Stigma

00:20:00 Courtney Brame: And this person it's just so frustrating because unfortunately, it's common that someone just makes a comment like that and it's somebody that you like and do you want to not change your perception of them because when they do that you just immediately think “nope nope not my kind of person”. Perhaps there was a possibility of you being like, "I like making a joke out of it." if y'all were able to laugh and flirt, you'd be like, " this won't work out. This just got awkward." And you just be like, " I guess I'm tired from your worst first date." Or even ask questions. I understand you couldn't eat. Your stomach was in knots and everything, but challenge people in a situation like that.

Courtney Brame: if you've already made up your mind that you're going to disclose to them or if you dropped the news over text. So, if you intend on disclosing to someone and they drop this kind of thing on you, then I think that we need to use shame in a different way or guilt in a different way. I often confuse the two, but you felt guilty. Why? And I myself get angry for you because you shouldn't have been feeling ashamed or guilty. But that's what the stigma especially from the public health community compounded by the fact that this is a guy that you were interested in. So this is a potential partner works in the health field.

Courtney Brame: So, not only is stigma being pushed on to you by a medical professional, it's also being pushed on you by somebody that you're interested in. So, why not challenge him? Because you've just been shamed by the stigma. And It's not his fault. It's stigma. And the way that we combat stigma is, we look at community as our battery pack. The more access to community, our batteries get full and we're able to withstand the drain of people who aren't in our community and whatever aspect that may be. Right? So stigma can only do so much when your batteries are full.

Courtney Brame: So all this was a manifestation of stigma compounded between male nurse and potential partner. Right now know that you have community behind you. You have a support system. You have resources available to you. So what do you have to lose in responding to this person in a funny way or challenging them and being like, " why was that your worst first date?" because she had herpes? Because she told you “I have herpes”? One of my buddies put me on to that. Repeat back the statement that doesn't make any sense in the form of a question. Exactly what they said and it works every time because they have to think about it because they have to now find the real reason that they're saying what they're saying and answer the question because I would have been curious to know Okay. Why was that your worst date?

Courtney Brame: Crickets. That's probably what you would have been met with. But when we're able to operate from this fully charged state of our emotional well-being around our diagnosis, that puts us at a whole another level. we reverse that shame. It's like shame on you for calling that your first date. Shame on you for working in public health or working in the health care field and perpetuating stigma. This is the reason that people get diagnosed. This is the reason that people don't disclose. This is the reason that people go into these depressions and suicide ideation episodes. That kind of thing. So let's reverse shame. Let's reverse guilt because you felt that for having this virus. If you didn't have herpes and he told you that, it would have been s**** and giggles, fun and games, playful.

Courtney Brame: Because you wouldn't have been a part of this community. You wouldn't have understood. And this is me making an assumption. So, I shouldn't say it that way. But more often than not, this kind of conversation would have just completely blown by because not many of us know people with herpes who know that they have herpes. And not many of us are willing to defend a group of people that we don't have any sort of ties to. So let's say you're not a member of the herpes community, which most people listening to this podcast episode are. But if you're not a member of the herpes community, then you don't have access to the resources to support.

00:25:00 Courtney Brame: You don't have access to this community in itself that's going to charge your batteries in order for you to be able to do the defending that you may feel called to do. But coming from this empowered state that charges our batteries shifts that s***, right? And like I always say, I have no intention of getting rid of the stigma. A lot of people put a lot of their energy into that and it's not going anywhere until we're at a place where every one of us makes a choice in how we're going to navigate the state. Truth be told, that s*** don't affect me except for when I go and I get tested because I have an issue with my chlamydia story for instance.

Courtney Brame: Stigma impacted me because the medical professionals didn't tell me that I might have had chlamydia. Therefore, I wouldn't have reinfected myself. So, there's a whole new case just due to negligence, discomfort around talking about sex, right? So, imagine how much more often this happens. And then as far as just being a potential partner, you're just going to meet some people like this. So, what I want to say as far as the positive takeaway here, not just good writtens, that's too easy. But also, you got to go on dinner dates. Not everyone's going to be like this. I understand this is a traumatic event for you. I understand that it's going to be triggering every time now when you're going on a date with someone, you're going to make the assumption that this is what's going to happen because this has been your experience that you've drawn from.

Courtney Brame: Time's passed. You've changed as a person. The people around you. You changed your environment. “I got a better job” is what you said at the end there. And I am still afraid of something simple. Dinner** You a bad b****. All right. Wop came out. Be empowered. All right. Hey, nothing about herpes changed that from you being able to go out and just date, and even then, make people work for that disclosure. I strongly encourage you if you are listening to this to listen to episode 99 of Something Positive for Positive People. I cannot recommend this one enough. It's called Integrative Disclosure. We apply Dr. Evelin Dacker's STARS Talk to a herpes disclosure. And yeah, you can just go and listen to that.

Sponsor Break: Let's Get Checked

Courtney Brame: Real quick, I got to change up the way that I do the ads now. So, this one doesn't have to be pre-recorded, but moving forward, I'm going to have to record the ads and then put them in. So, my apologies, this sponsor is Let's Get Checked. All right. So, if you visit trygc.com/spfpp select whatever there's different tests but obviously we're talking about STI’s so the testing kit which I am due for another one- so I need to hop on and order myself another one to get tested because it's been a little bit over three months now since my last STI screening now I've gotten tested for chlamydia and gorrhea obviously

Courtney Brame: had to get treated for chlamydia. When you order your test kit and you go to checkout, enter the promo code SPFPP and you are going to save 30% off of your first at home STI testing kit. All right. I mentioned in the beginning of the episode all of these purchases that you all make with our sponsors using our promo codes. This really supports the podcast and it's helping us connect people with a therapist who can't afford it themselves. So, just think about all the healing that you're doing along with getting tested.

Courtney Brame: And the day of this being posted is Sexual Health Awareness Day and people are all on Instagram saying to go get tested. Order your … your at home STI test kit for 30% off when you visit www.trylgc.com/spfpp and use that code SPFPP at checkout. All right. Now, we're going to go into the next thing that was written in about. So, this one's a little bit challenging. There's a lot of scribbles and stuff on negative experiences. So, since this was scratched out, I'm going to start here. Okay, this one's in cursive. Bear with me. So, my ex had a revenge of stand… of what?

Story 2: The Trauma of Revenge Outing

00:30:00 Courtney Brame: That's not what that is. A revenge of sending a letter to my very conservative parents, my status. Not only that, but he said, "I want you to know that I did really inappropriate things to your daughter's vagina, mouth, and butthole”, to my parents, like he owned me or had defiled me in some way." All right, I got to flip it over. Holy s***. “So, not only did I get outed to my parents before I was really ready to tell them, I felt he made me want to suppress my sexuality because it now made me feel dirty, used, and disposed of. He had me feel like I was no better than some trash he used and threw away.

Courtney Brame: I buried my sexuality for a long time. Dated guys who avoided sex because I didn't want to feel that way again. He had a lot of…” Oh, this is a big word- complicated- he has a lot of complicated feelings and I didn't want to address it at all. It was a lot of complicated feelings. That looked like he and I didn't want to address it at all. I don't mind talking about it. I am not great at expressing myself in writing. All right. So, that. Holy f** s***. Never have I heard a story about someone being outed in this way. And that was just me.

Courtney Brame: The kinds of people that we choose to date, we don't really know people initially. I don't think any of us would just date a person that we knew would do some s*** like this, right? What's your screening process? What are your boundaries? I mentioned in the previous episode that I find myself I look up and I'm just in a relationship or I look up and I'm just in a job or I look up and I'm just in a place that I ain't got no business being or a situation I ain't got no business All as a result of not having boundaries. And I'm going to probably say this in my blue face, but Emily DePass, if you are on Instagram, Sex Education, it's Sex Education with an L in the middle.

Courtney Brame: Her Instagram page has a series on boundaries. Whenever the recording of this podcast is, whenever you listen to this, if you look at the week of this release, you can see where Emily talks a lot about boundaries. And I'm finding that boundaries not only protect me from being in situations where I just wake up and I'm like, "Oh s***, how'd I get here?" But I think that those boundaries are a huge part of this all caps version of ourselves. And I use self because I don't think selves is the right word. There is definitely a more in tune connected version of us that we tap into by having boundaries. Right?

Courtney Brame: And the way that I'm visualizing is like an armor, covering up our energy to where we're mindful of where our exchanges are going and what's happening with our energy exchanges with people. And this just doesn't sound like a good person that was there. It's not a good person. That's not something you do. A whole letter being written to your family about the things I did to your daughter's vagina and butthole and Come on. I can't say that there's really a positive thing that we can pull from this situation. And the way that I read it, there's more to the story, but the way that this reads to me is we got to pick people better.

Escaping Cages and Setting Exhausting Boundaries

00:35:00 Courtney Brame: And perhaps patience is a virtue here because when you give someone the time to really show them who they are and you can feel that you can connect with these people and that's why it's important for us to really tap into our all cap self or caps lock selves. I like calling myself caps lock Courtney now because in therapy we're working through that piece of myself that was created to protect me and

Courtney Brame: in protecting me also self-sabotages me, So, this all caps version of myself is the one that can acknowledge that and make a different decision. Sometimes we need to do that for ourselves, create our alter ego to combat the persona of perhaps patterns and behaviors that we don't agree with or that we don't want to continue to do. So, at the end here, what I read was I ended up holding on. I buried my sexuality for a long time, dated guys who avoided sex because I didn't want to feel that way again. So now this is a situation where I've been working in therapy on identifying this and we call it just like a robot, which is kind of an autopilot response to protect me and in turn self-sabotages me.

Courtney Brame: So what I know about my lowercase self and connecting with this lowercase self that is protecting you from this happening again for the beauty in this is that you can recognize that the fact that you were able to just even put that in writing following this negative experience if you're aware that you do this thing then you can be aware that you want to do something different and this is where caps

Courtney Brame: insert your name here emerges and now you recognize that okay this person had these patterns these things happened that were red flags. So now even if you're not aware of how this person's behaving in comparison to how the previous person behaved, you can look inside yourself and how's my body feeling? Why do I have the same feeling that I had from this person who outed me to my parents and talked about how disrespectful they were to my body consensually, I'm assuming.

Courtney Brame: but yeah, if you trying to get f***** in your ass, if you trying to get face f***** and do the gluck luck thing and have spit running all down your face and tears running down your eyes and you got the water works going, or you want to be DP, whatever the f*** you want to do with your sexuality, do that s***. You want to play with your vibrator while you have sex, if you want to, have a g*******, whatever. It don't matter what the f*** you did. You consented to it. It felt good. It was a pleasurable experience. You enjoyed yourself. But this is the outing there of people telling your parents, what the f*** kind of immature s*** is that? I'mma have to mark this podcast episode explicitly just because I said that. Damn.

Courtney Brame: But I'm sad for you because you used to have a good time. You used to have fun. Don’t let them take away your freedom to express yourself in a way that you enjoyed. Take that s** back. They didn't take this away from caps lock you. They took this away from you. And in order to protect yourself, you put lowercase U in the place of you so that you could deal with it.

Courtney Brame: And I imagine that your relationships moving forward continue to look like you can't express yourself sexually. sexually. You can't do those things that you enjoy. That's not you talking. That's not caps lock self. That lowercase capslock self can handle it. Capslock self is going to be all right. capsule lock self is gonna again do all of the things and be able to recognize if that feeling comes up from that you received from this guy that outed you and was disrespectful about it and shouldn't have told your parents why make a social media post that's what people do in 2019-2020 now he went as far as to write a letter to your parents

00:40:00 Courtney Brame: What takeaway here? Acknowledge the feeling. Not, you can also look at a person's behavior, but look at you first. So, if you have those gut feelings that you had when this person outed you or you felt the similar sensations of not feeling safe, not feeling like you can trust that person, u call it out or call it out or get out. It's one of the two, right?

Courtney Brame: I wish that we were able to continue this conversation and talk more about it because I feel like there is more there. I know who wrote this one in and we've talked about patterns in her other relationships and they seem to be just completely repressed. I am sad that you no longer have your freedom. I am sad that you are unable to express your freedom and I hope that if you listen to this that something said resonates with you and allows for you to be able to just protect yourself in a different way. But we can't keep living in these cages that we create for ourselves after a traumatic event occurs because in that cage the healing takes place outside the cage and it's our cage.

Courtney Brame: key. We're comfortable staying in our cages. We don't… We don't want to go out there and run the risk of not being in our cage because we have everything that we need in our cage, but what we want is outside of it. So, we got the key. Get the out. Let's get the f*** out of here. Let's get out of these cages we are in, all. Cuz I'm in this b****, too. I'm at a place in life now where I'm exploring the luxury of healing. co has taken a lot away from people. It's taken a lot away from people I'll never meet, people I don't know exist, friends of friends, family. But the gift here and I have to

Courtney Brame: this way is that I've now had the luxury of being able to explore my own healing and do it in a way that I can put it on display. that rob, but I'm able to do it in a way where I can put it on display and help other people find their way. Yeah, I did that one on purpose. this is powerful, y'all. this really is. And I guess I'll just go ahead and share, but I've had to do some things over this last week that were really challenging for me. Maybe two weeks. Setting a boundary with a really close friend that was really, really challenging. and have to stand tall in that s***. Set a boundary with a partner.

Courtney Brame: ending the kind of relationship that we had because it wasn't in line with my values. And so now that that's been transitioned and now that my boundaries are being asserted, It does get easier. It's challenging, but you do in fact have to be mindful of your energy, be mindful of your space because I was tired after acknowledging that I don't have boundaries. I don't know how trained and exhausted I've been not having boundaries in comparison to this. I'm aware now that I didn't have boundaries and so now I'm putting in boundaries and it's exhausting, but how exhausted have I been not having boundaries? And ask yourself that too. Where don't you have boundaries?

Courtney Brame: What relationships around you do you feel just completely exhausted drained from? And you may not even realize you're exhausted until you can compare it to a time where you're not exhausted. I saw a post that said something about being paying attention to the people who you feel good around or you feel energized around. We don't do that. I think that more often than not, we'll be around people and tolerate them be like, " that's just so and so. That's

00:45:00 Courtney Brame: how they are and they're draining our** life force out of us. How do you feel when you're around people that make you feel good, You may not be able to answer that. You may not know. I know when I'm around people who make me feel good, I might not even need to make my presence known or get their attention. It's just about being in their presence. You want to be around people who make you feel good, and you deserve to be around people who make you feel good.

Courtney Brame: allow yourself that and give these people who make you feel good the opportunity to love you and respect you by showing them how they can do that with boundaries. Do that for yourself. Do that because you love yourself. That's so important for us to be able to love ourselves. We love ourselves with boundaries because not only are we showing people how we can

Calling In Connection and Closing Thoughts

Courtney Brame: love them and respect them by honoring their boundaries, but also how they can love and respect us by giving them what ours are. So yeah, just capitalize yourself. caps lock your name, call even if you got to create this persona, call yourself caps lock and so because I'm going to go into this next phase of my life as caps lock Courtney and I got to stay in that paying off. I'm seeing it with how my clients are respecting the boundaries of time that I have because I do a lot of different things. They require me to be in different places, different times, and to see the respect of communication, the respect of showing up when they say they will and everything like that. That's amazing.

Courtney Brame: and the respect that I'm getting from the herpes community when people reach out now they're quick to say hey I listen to your boundaries or I looked on the page about boundaries blah blah blah and it makes me feel loved and supported by the people that I'm supporting and so I can continue to do this and I can do it at a high level. I'm just going to wrap up this episode and I'm calling out for the one wherever she is. I feel like I'm ready. I've decided that I actually know what I want. And all this time I've been thinking that to me what I want is just a long term. Ultimately, I do want connection. That's always going to be what I want. But I really value freedom. And I felt like for so long that

Courtney Brame: What freedom looks like is me being able to essentially figure out what it is that I want through dating everybody that I can. So that's one of the things that has been so appealing to me about non monogamy. And now that I am nominous, I'm finding myself wanting to spend more quality time with fewer people. because they give me hints of what it is that I am looking for and I'm ready to be swept off my feet. And what that looks like to me is just being seen to be seen and understood and accepted as I am, not to be changed. And I think that this is going to come in a way that I've never seen before.

Courtney Brame: So these boundaries that are put in place are allowing me to more so focus my energy and be able to serve from the highest place that I can and also be able to bring in the people that are going to help me and support me in serving to the best of my ability and also whoever it is that I'm supposed to do this s*** putting it out there. Hey, message me. Y'all know Instagram

Courtney Brame: number one dating site for people with her. let me know, girl, if you out there, wherever you at, or if you use them they pronouns. That's cool. I respect it. So that concludes this episode of Something Positive for Positive People along with my dating ad. So yeah, I am not going to be utilizing Twitter Something Positive for Positive People Twitter is private now.

Courtney Brame: I'll still be H on my chest, so if anyone does find me or anything like that, you can still access me, message me, or whatever you need to do. but I'm most active on Instagram, Tumblr. I'm not even active on Tumblr- is just kind of where all the posts end up. and I'm on Reddit often. I try to check in, make a post every so often so that the new waves of people that come in are able to find the resources of Something Positive for Positive People.

00:50:00 Courtney Brame: As mentioned earlier, we are paying for people to get therapy. So, as of now, the only people that we can serve are in Missouri because that's where our therapist is. So, once this trial period is over, we're going to get the data in and be able to replicate this in different states. Getting a network of therapists on board with supporting us and supporting the people who we send to them. And it's going to be powerful. This is going to be what people really need. a lot of the resources that we were looking for. What? It's been 50 minutes. I said this was going to be a long episode. I said I didn't have anything to Here I am saying all this s***. Thank you for listening and I apologize for lying to all. I'm doing better about doing what I say I'm going to do, when I'm going to do it, how I'm going to do it.

Courtney Brame: So, I'm really working on this. Let me know what you think of these solo episodes, please, because I'm gonna have to do them for a while just given the time frames that are available and technology and it's just really hard to find quiet time like this to be able to record the episode and then upload it. So, I hope you enjoyed this episode and find your caps use your caps lock self to find your lower case self and identify when that lowercase self is showing up so that you can be aware and then just correct chorus and then start to call yourself that all caps courtney has a nice ring to it or caps lock courtney caps lock Courtney sounds good but whatever sounds good for you and is fun to play with live your life enjoy yourself and try to take the lessons out of the negative experiences that we face till next time stay sex positive

Meeting ended after 00:52:27