Something Positive for Positive People

I chat with former traveling Canadian, Christian speaker, Meagan, who spoke to high school kids with a non profit organization called “Live Different” sharing her story about her herpes diagnosis for 5.5 years. Meagan shares the reality of what it means to be open about your status as a career before you've done your own healing. After experiencing compassion fatigue to the extreme, she shut off her emotions and went from enthusiastically inspiring hope to young adults through her story to just getting a job done. After falling into a depressed state, she quit speaking and eventually sought out therapy. Her therapist pointed out early on that her attempt to heal was a cycle of retraumatization that just kept eating away at her. We learn that venting is in fact NOT a form of therapy. We learn that not everyone is qualified to present a solution to a problem they aren't educated in and that we should seek guidance from those who are. We learn that it is important to take care of ourselves before we offer to be there and care for others as a way of avoiding our own healing process.

After ending her divorce from her first everything, our guest this week shares her experience entering the dating world after having done everything 'right' and then ending up with someone who did not disclose their HSV status to her. As we talk through her experience, you get a sense that he knew he had it and the point of realization was where she just got an intuitive nudge to open a drawer where his acyclovir prescribed to him with a date of six months prior resided. When she confronted him, he responded in a very dismissively honest way that is very scary and manipulative. I want to make sure I'm using this term here properly so correct me if I'm wrong when you listen, but gaslighting. So here we have someone who married her first, divorced and entered the dating world again, only to now be stigmatized because of her diagnosis of HSV. She had sex with two people. The stigma is not reality. According to the stigma of HSV, she had sex with many people and should've waited until marriage to have intercourse. She still got it. Where's the stigma and shaming toward people who know they have it but choose not to disclose? Where's the stigma toward medical professionals who spread inaccurate information and negate STD prevention efforts with their own self-shaming and stigma? Last thing to touch on here is the connection between sexual health and mental health. This episode says more about the person who exposed our guest to the virus than it does about her. Men's unwillingness to deal with their diagnosis in a healthy way is part of what keeps the stigma so prevalent. Women are susceptible to shame as a result of our actions whereas men can go into denial or repress the emotions altogether and act like they aren't impacted at all as you'll hear in this episode.

You ever disclose your HSV status to a potential partner and they still agree to move forward with physical intimacy? Afterwards, did you ever find yourself annoyed with them, recognizing areas of incompatibility, realizing you've become someone you aren't in the relationship and then look up and it's been a few months or years that this has been going on and now you want out? Or how about this . . . Have you ever found yourself matching with someone who also has herpes? You're attracted, you overlook a few red flags, and then look up and its been years since you were happy. You completely miss who the other person truly is because you've prioritized the convenience of your shared HSV status in order to just not have to deal with the feels that come with it. Herpes is inconvenient in more ways than outbreaks. And we learn we have to take care of ourselves as a result. Herpes sets boundaries with our bodies, so we have to inconveniently set boundaries for ourselves.

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!

The black indifference on my social media feed is disgusting and I'm calling out status quo perpetuation from those who hide behind mutuality. The things I tilt my head at that have a hint of racism in them, I'm sharing them publicly if able and calling these people into this space because I'm tired of it. What is self-apathy, boundariness, and what does herpes have to do with these things besides highlighting them for us? 5 people are enrolled in 12 therapy sessions with our Partner therapist. I discuss my fear of success and how protecting my feelings from the world is sabotaging my attempts at connection. "Do you have feelings for me?", I was asked by my friend I do sex with, and I told her I don't. Having blown my mind with the question and the thought, I explored this a lot and it centers around my emotional unavailability. We go way back here to the last time I expressed feelings for someone and how it hurt me. What does what we want in a relationship and passion look like? If you wanna be swept off your feet, what's the gift that person had better come bearing with your name on it? Lastly, how does herpes highlight YOUR lower case self?

Internalized herpes stigma looks like self shaming ourselves and masking it with external behaviors like disclosing our positive HSV status to someone low risk. By low risk, I simply mean their acceptance or approval of us carries little to no value. However, we're either looking to have our beliefs challenged or validated by their response. This episode will challenge that in you. Check it out!

I was joined by Clarice Connolly who's been a guest on the podcast a couple of other times to speak to a small group of people living with herpes at one of the annual weekend long get togethers. This exercise was called Something Negative for Positive People where we took one of our most negative experiences since our herpes diagnosis and anonymously shared them by reading it off after having written it down. The audience provides input from their similar experiences or their own learned lessons. This was useful to everyone and encouraged sharing from people who otherwise may never have spoken any of this aloud. It was a healing experience and we still have some experiences that didn't make this setting so I'll share those on upcoming episodes of the podcast. Please enjoy and if you're looking to get involved with the social support groups, just hit me up and I'll do my best to connect you to them. They are private or secret and usually on Facebook.

We answer some listener questions about men and HSV. Some men wrote in and asked some questions and I answer those as well. We discuss masculinity and how we deal with a herpes diagnosis differently that those in touch with their femininity, disclosure leading to 'me too', who has more outbreaks between penis and vulva owners, and the importance of communication as a herpes diagnosis changes the way we do sex. I hope you enjoy this episode and if you found it useful, please consider leaving a donation to SPFPP so that we can pay for people's therapy services and provide support for them after their diagnosis.

Have you ever dismissed your intuition as prejudice? Have you ever seen something happening and then a voice in your head tells you this shouldn't be happening the way it is and that something is just off? Our guest this week shares their story of having dismissed their intuition around red flags landing them into Urgent Care for chlamydia treatment twice over the course of the same week. This episode highlights stigma from the health care field in that seemingly none of the providers seemed to want to discuss sex or sexual health. Nor did anyone want to say there was a possibility of the presented symptoms actually being an STI despite their lack of concern for it. This experience teaches us the importance of asking questions when we feel ourselves sensing that something just isn't right. I hope you'll learn as much as I did from this experience.

The human behind the Instagram @makegodgayagain and I did a live and were having technical difficulties with the formatting so we were able to record this audio and add it as an episode. She challenged me and asked some great questions about intersectionality, dating, herpes mythunderstandings and let me share Something Positive for Positive People resources with her audience which I'm super thankful for because a couple generous donations came in to help us get to a place where we can get therapy/counseling for those navigating stigma post-diagnosis.