Velvet Rage

This book helped me to understand that my journey as a gay man was so similar to others.

That we fall into a cycle of shame that leads to self-destructive patterns.

Understanding that my life was part of a patterns helped me so much to begin breaking it.

Here are my notes:

Most gay people say they don’t feel shame. But most also struggle with the private belief that “if you really knew the whole, unvarnished truth about me, you would know that I’m unlovable”. So we set about on the business of ‘earning’ love and escaping the pain of believing we are lovable. This is the creator of the fabulous gay man and his destroyer.

No other group of people is better equipped to bring the message of self acceptance and authenticity to the world then gay men and women. Nearly all terrible acts of humans are intertwined and motivated by rageful reactions to personal shame.

Why are gays synonymous with fashion and glamour? Is it an innate ability? Or is there something about growing up gay that forces us to learn how to hide ugly realities behind a finely crafted façade.

We share an emotional wound which is the trauma caused by exposure to overwhelming shame at an age when you weren’t equipped to cope with it.

Authentic validation (honest validation of something that matters to you) is absolutely necessary for the development of a strong sense of self but the young gay boy who stays in the closes is starved of it. Without the inoculating effects of authentic validation, shame is debilitating. As a result, the avoidance of shame becomes the single most powerful driving force in his life.

Inhibited emotions are feelings that we successfully avoid and therefore don’t feel. Splitting is where a life is lived in two parts, where who we really are and what we truly feel is something very different from what we display for others in that moment.

Stages of the gay journey:

• Stage 1: living in the closet
• Stage 2: compensating for shame, no longer shamed by sexuality but holding the deeper belief that there is something fundamentally flawed about ourselves. We go about seeking validation to assure us we are worthwhile and deserving of love. We become wealthy, chiselled, and collect sexual encounters. There is a low tolerance for any perceived invalidation, like cheating or even just a joke about taste, leading to removing from or silencing he source. Sex is a major source of invalidation and refusing a partners bid can lead to a chain of withholding.
• Stage 3: upheaval of life that destroys everything nice, dear and sacred and preserves only that which is real and honest. The great danger is that the gay man forecloses on ambiguity. Rather than allow this to resolve itself naturally, he attempts to create artificial clarity and too quickly defines an endpoint to his journey. Or he turns back into the ways of earlier stages. This could be taking up anything that you think will take away confusion and give a sense of identity, like changing careers, moving city, or taking on a new spiritual path. Foreclosure is jumping track suddenly, thinking you’ve found the silver bullet. Resolution on the other hand comes slowly, organically, emerging out of a chaotic background. Resolution requires that we tolerate the distress of the crisis long enough to resolve it rather than escape it. It comes with radical acceptance of capacity for both good and evil and shedding the belief you are flawed. Let go of the fabulous and be yourself however glamorous or not.

There can be difficulty in learning from mistakes because they trigger shame. Hence a man jumps from one relationship to the next to avoid thoughts of failure or allow a friendship to end instead of apologising.

The only way to reduce shame is to expose oneself to it. Like the monsters under your bed, the longer you’re unwilling to look the greater your fear builds.

Process addiction: using a behaviour to regulate your mood, like having sex as a way of alleviating distress. It starts as a choice and then begins to feel out of control.

Acceptance of betrayal is about accepting that all men, gays in particular, have shortcomings, and that betrayal is the by-product of the betrayer’s woundedness and not the fault of the betrayed.

The learning and practice of passion, love, and integrity is what creates meaningful contentment in our lives. Once we have shed the shackles of shame and seek to create a life worth living, these three become the ultimate goals of our lives.

Passion is a repeated experience of joy in doing something. It is a meta emotion - an emotion felt only after observing other emotions over time. Joy is the feeling of painless lightness within the body. Joy tends to be a quick spike in our emotional field, much like an orgasm of the soul. It is fundamentally different than other emotions like shame or sadness which can last for twenty minutes or longer because after the initial feeling we have a tendency to dwell on other thoughts of the same emotion. Gay men can confuse joy with the satisfaction of validation but joy is intrinsically generated and emerges from the inside. Pursue an activity not because others approve but because it brings you intrinsic joy. Eventually as the gay man structures his life around the pursuit of joy, he becomes surrounded with people who validate his behaviour (but only as a secondary benefit).

Love is also a meta emotion. It is only felt after noticing the ongoing experience of joy. While passion is about feeling joy in an activity, love is about noticing joy in the presence of another person. When the experience of another person regularly stimulates joy within us, we begin to feel we love that person. When the gay man begins to truly experience love, it is because he is mindful of the subtleties in his partner that bring him joy. A look, a smile, a laugh, a walk, a touch. These consistently bring him joy and pleasure.

Integrity means the absence of hiding parts of yourself, no longer splitting, and allowing all parts of yourself to be known. This is the crowning achievement as he moves from shame to authenticity.

The more critical you are of others, the more difficult it is for you to reveal your true self to the world around you. When you have not allowed others to be less than perfect, it follows that you cannot be less than perfect.

When you are experiencing a distressing emotion, the most effective course of action is to engage in something that elicits and equally strong, opposite emotion. For example, if you are feeling lonely after a break-up, spend time with close friend talking about their lives. Do something. The emphasis is on ‘do’ and not ‘thinking’ or ‘obsessing’

Walk away from an distress to ‘change the channel’ and get some space before reacting. So don’t dwell if you hear a comment that makes you upset, talk to someone else or go outside to distract and soothe yourself. Then act afterwards.

Let others see your mistakes. Be generous in admitting your shortcomings and social missteps. Be the first to take responsibility for your share of a conflict. If you practice this consistently, you will find your life filled with loving and supportive people who make your life truly worthwhile.

In each moment we’re all doing the best we can.

The most authentic person learns to find what is true and honest in another person, call that out, and support it.

Secrets create emotional distance. Like two parallel lines, one changes trajectory by just a fraction so that in time the distance grows and the lines move farther apart.

Feelings pass over you like waves. At one point in the day, you may be enraged with your spouse for not picking up the dry-cleaning and at another point, proud of him for having earned a great promotion at work. Feelings ebb and flow, washing over you and then subsiding. Only when you have observed a feeling reoccurring consistently over time can you conclude that it is a fair representation about how you ‘feel’ about someone.

The secret to life isn’t an idea - it’s a behaviour. You must do, not just think about, what is likely to bring you joy and peace.