Gay Men’s Culture As a psychotherapist who has specialized in working with gay men for the past 26 years, I know that part of gay men’s culture is an emphasis on a youthful, lean, muscular physique. The sentiment is pervasive, and competitive — sometimes good-naturedly, sometimes aggressively and cruelly. Gay men’s culture has identified the … Read more
The Clarity Through Contrast Worksheet: Identifying Your Core Values as a Gay Man As a psychotherapist and career/life coach who has specialized working with gay men for over 20 years, much of my work involves helping my clients get what they want in life. But how do you KNOW what you really want? Some of … Read more
How to Accomplish Your Goals: A Guide for Gay Men When approaching a goal or important task ahead of you, especially those that you feel excited about, please try to avoid allowing the thought in your mind, “I don’t think I can do this.” If it’s important to you, use Thought Stopping as a technique … Read more
Gay Men and the Daily Accomplishments List: Tools for Living With the new year, it seems everyone has new plans under way. Students go back to school. Workers go back to a new year of projects on the job. Couples make plans to vacation or socialize more. Everyone wants to implement ways to improve … Read more
If you’re like me, you can’t go to the gym without your music. I derive inspiration, energy, and stamina from my personal selections of playlists to energize my entire fitness routine. At home, I will put on music when I have to do some mindless but nevertheless necessary chore. And when I’m feeling not-so-great, physically … Read more
Have you been watching the Olympics? Are you impressed with the skill, style, determination, stamina, endurance, grace, and aesthetics of the athletes doing what they do best? If you’re like millions of people across the world during these weeks, you are. Seeing various Olympic events gets me thinking about how these athletes are in many … Read more
One of the most common themes I see in my office doing counseling, psychotherapy, and coaching with gay male individuals and gay couples is that of low self-esteem and low self-confidence. It’s not surprising; as little gay boys, we get exposed to anti-gay messages outright, or at least to the “invisibility” that comes with the … Read more
In psychotherapy and coaching sessions with my gay male clients every day, I’ve noticed lately that a frequent focus is about work issues. This makes sense, given that the news and current events atmosphere has focused on a volatile political and economic climate: we get bombarded with news daily, from everything from Facebook to newspaper … Read more
I thought about this recently, after a particularly busy day of sessions of clients in my practice. Is having memory a blessing, or a curse? I was moved by stories of clients who are abuse survivors, with their ability to recall the traumatically abusive incidents that happened to them in detail from various self-indulgent and … Read more
What is professional self-esteem? In recent years in my psychotherapy practice, I have noticed a dramatic increase in the demand for more “coaching”-style services, and I have been happy to develop this for my clients. There are personal coaching issues, to be sure, but what I find much more frequently is that clients need professional … Read more