I’m proud to be a gay man myself, and even prouder that I’ve had the privilege to work with many people like me in my coaching practice. One of my readers asked me the other day if I’d do an article on some of the most common issues I tend to see among the gay men I work with. 

‍

At first, I hesitated, because if you’ve been reading my writing, you know that I think the entire concept of identification itself is fraught. But that said, I do think it’s sometimes helpful to deal with these issues as generalizations about a community of identity—especially if it helps people feel less alone. 

‍

I do want to caveat, though, that the issue that I’ve shared below (and the ones I’ll share in other articles) doesn’t only apply to gay men—people from other backgrounds might struggle with them, too. And also, I’m certainly not saying that all gay men share these struggles. 

‍

I’m simply highlighting what I’ve personally observed in myself and in others in the community. Further, I haven’t yet had the pleasure to coach anybody else on the LGBTQIA spectrum who is not a cis-gay man, so I am very intentionally using the term “gay men” throughout this article. 

‍

Ok, with all that disclaimer out of the way, let’s get into it with the number 1, top issue I see among my gay male clients. 

‍

Conditional self-acceptance

‍

If I had to select only one issue that I wish I could excise from the minds and hearts of my gay male clients, it’s conditional self-acceptance. 

‍

To conceptualize what that is, I think it’s first helpful to start with its desired opposite—unconditional self-acceptance. 

‍

Unconditional self-acceptance essentially says: “I am worthy of love, enjoyment, and all the good life has to offer simply because I took a breath and am alive here and now.” In other words, the love you have for yourself isn’t dependent on any external factor or thing being present—it is with you always, and in everything you do. People with unconditional self-acceptance operate from a place of inherent goodness. They love and trust themselves just because they’re alive! 

‍

Conditional self-acceptance tends to be the result of internalized shame, which is a term my gay male readers might be familiar with if they’ve read The Velvet Rage before. Internalized shame is an inherent sense of brokenness, “not-good-enough”-ness, and/or wrongness. And quite frankly, mainstream society has done a great job of making gay men feel a deep, rotting sense of internalized shame. From the time we’re born, we’re abused by the standards of toxic masculinity and forced to act in ways that aren’t authentic to our true desires or needs. 

‍

This societal abuse causes us to adopt a very damaging belief that we are not worthy of love and acceptance as we are right here and now. The psychological adaptation gay men make to address internalized shame is often conditional self-acceptance. 

‍

“I need to have a six-pack in order to feel hot.” 

“If I don’t achieve at work or school, I’m worthless.” 

“If I don’t have money or status nobody will like me and I’m a nobody.”

“If I’m not right all the time, I’m stupid and no-good.” 

‍

These are all statements that I have, at one point long ago, said to myself. I’m sure you might be able to relate if you’re a gay man. These statements reek of conditional self-acceptance. 

‍

They essentially say “Ok, if who I am deep down isn’t good enough, then I can go find something in external reality to fill the gap! THEN I can give myself love and acceptance! ”

‍

And I will be very honest friends—this is a hard and miserable way to live. 

‍

People that struggle with conditional self-acceptance have essentially made loving themselves contingent on the whims of external reality and the perceptions of others, both of which are constantly changing and in flux.

‍

Living like this means that gaining 5 lbs during a stressful period, not getting a promotion, screwing up publicly, or not having a fashionable outfit aren’t just minor aversions, they’re full-blown attacks on one’s sense of self-worth. You can imagine this perspective causes one to live in a ton of anxiety (“Oh god what if I gain the weight/lose the job/fuck up/looks like a fool”) and depression (“Not enough people liked my new photo on Instagram so I must not be worthy of love and attention.”)

‍

I will also call out that society benefits from everyone—not just gay men—having conditional self-acceptance because that makes us good consumers. If we are convinced that we can’t fully love ourselves until some “flaw” about us is fixed or enhanced, we’ll spend a lot of time and money trying to fix that flaw. Only to mysteriously have another one pop up 6 months later! 

‍

Look at your behaviors, and not your beliefs, to determine if you’re conditionally self-accepting 

‍

Now when I make this point to a lot of clients, I quite frequently get pushback. Here’s an example from a client who had a lot of conditional self-acceptance around his physique. 

‍

“Oh no, I just work out because it makes me feel good and I want to get ripped for me, not for anybody else. But also, obviously body image matters. Guys pay way more attention to me on Fire Island when I’m ripped vs. when I’m not.” 

‍

The first part of the response poses an interesting question—how do you determine if your efforts to improve yourself come from a place of love rather than lack? It’s not as easy as it sounds because we’re all very good at lying to ourselves. Our brains know that of course the thing we should say is that “I’m doing it for me and nobody else” so it’s easy to gaslight ourselves into thinking that’s our truth even when it’s actually not. 

‍

That’s why in my practice I advocate for assessing and checking for behaviors rather than evaluating perspectives when it comes to conditional self-acceptance. Our brains lie to us all the time, but our behaviors do not. 

‍

Behaviors that indicate the presence of conditional self-acceptance: 

‍

• Checking and comparing yourself to others on social media or real-life. If you were really doing it just for “you,” it wouldn’t matter what others were doing, right? 
• Obsession. If you throw every hour of your day into something, it means that thing isn’t just a nice-to-have: it feels vital and essential. 
• Constantly seeking validation. We all love to feel praised and special, but if you’re doing this frequently, it’s a sign that you really think those “likes” or “follows” actually mean something about your worthiness. 
• Hyperfixation. For example, if you spent a lot of time talking about how much money you dropped on vacation or how rare your designer outfit is, it might indicate you think these things say something about your worth and that you want others to know you are, in fact, worthy! 
• Urgency. If you NEED to have the thing RIGHT NOW, again, this is a signal that it’s not just nice-to-have, it feels essential. 

‍

There are probably many more that I missed, but hopefully, this gives you a sense of the feeling tone behind conditional self-acceptance behaviors. They tend to be urgent, domineering, and anchored quite a bit in external validation. 

‍

The validation part itself gets even trickier, because as my client above said, one does tend to notice positive responses from others once they get ripped, become successful, or get some flattering work done. Isn’t that an indicator that, actually, those things are in fact a part of our worth?

‍

Well, still—no. It is likely true that if you got more conventionally attractive, more people would probably be attracted to you. I’m not denying or disagreeing with that. I’m disagreeing with the idea that becoming more conventionally attractive makes you more worthy of love and acceptance from yourself and others. 

‍

Because why should it? If this were true, then we’d be saying that only supermodels deserved to love themselves the most. If we’re talking about physiques, then only bodybuilders deserve to love themselves the most. If it’s money, only the billionaires get to love themselves the most. 

‍

I don’t have to explain to you how misguided that is, right? 

‍

How does one develop unconditional self-acceptance?

‍

Ah, I’m so glad you asked! This is the fun part of the article—actually transforming a noted problem into a solution. 

‍

Again, here is where coaching differs from therapy. If you want to deeply understand and unpack why you conditionally self-accept, a therapist can help you work through your past hurts and traumas. 

‍

I, as your life coach, have a near 0 interest in your past. I care about the behaviors you take today, and whether or not they’re serving you well. Ultimately, change of any kind is realized via changing behavior—not ruminating on the past. 

‍

 The path to unconditional self-acceptance starts with stark acknowledgement, and forgiveness. 

‍

Stark acknowledgement—your brain is a literal behavioral input and output machine that you do not have conscious control over. That means that you only think the thoughts that you think and do the things that you do because you have rehearsed them again and again. 

‍

If you post a million shirtless photos on your Close Friends story, you only do that because you probably did it yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. And a longggg time ago, when you did it for the first time, it started with a simple thought. Your “self” is the result of a long-chain of determinism, a repeating system of internal processes. And you don’t get the power to consciously stop that repeating system until you gain awareness of it. 

‍

Which also means, that right here and right now, you can forgive yourself for the conditional self-acceptance. You did not “choose” to conditionally self-accept, and you do not get to hit a button and magically turn off your conditional self-acceptance tomorrow, either. 

‍

The way out of this is simple, but not easy. 

‍

Change will come from you noticing the stimulus that prompts conditional self-acceptance, and then choosing a different behavior that comes from unconditional self-acceptance instead. 

‍

Ok, but what does that look like in practice?

‍

Here’s how it went for the client above who spoke about his physique. 

‍

He’d be in Fire Island (a gay beach paradise) in a Speedo, walking around with his friends. The automatic stimulus his mind would produce without his conscious choice, would be to compare his body to other boys walking down the boulevard. If he found somebody that was more ripped than he was, he’d feel an almost immediate pit of unworthiness and sadness, as if he wasn’t hot enough to belong in Fire Island in the first place. 

‍

His work was first to reclaim his awareness and notice when his brain started doing this. Bringing awareness to the unconscious pattern allowed him to begin to take back agency. Oh, I’m comparing again. Let me bring my attention back to what’s actually happening here and now around me with my friends. I’m not choosing to do this, my brain is just doing it for me! 

‍

This awareness, however, didn’t do anything about the pit of sadness and unworthiness that the automatic pattern brought with it. The next part of this client’s work was arguably the hardest part. It was to fully feel those feelings of unworthiness and sadness and do absolutely nothing about them. 

‍

Yes, I’m serious. The work was quite literally to sit in the shit of that feeling without any resistance or escape. No putting his shirt back on, no running away, no ‘positive self-talk’ about how he’s actually worthy and this feeling isn’t real. Nothing but allowing the sadness to flow through him until it ran its course—which, by the way, is somatically only about 90 seconds. 

‍

And no, I am not a masochist. The reason this was the work was because fully allowing the negative feeling without resistance was a new behavior that signaled to my clients brain that its pattern of comparing bodies to others was irrelevant and unnecessary. 

‍

As I’ve said before, the brain only understands behavior, not thought. Doing anything at all that gave this feeling importance—even inner positive self-talk—would’ve just taught the brain that the automatic pattern of body comparison served a purpose. And if it served a purpose, well, then obviously the brain would just keep doing it! 

‍

Over time and with practice, this client’s automatic tendency to compare fell away. And with the pattern gone, the negative feelings it brought disappeared, too. And only then, when those feelings weren’t as prominent in his mind, was it easier to see that yes, he should unconditionally accept himself exactly as he is! 

‍

Unconditional self-acceptance is a belief and a perspective, but it is only brought to life and becomes “real”  when our behaviors can connect back to it. 

‍

If you are stuck on conditional self-acceptance, you will have to do a version of this practice customized to your own issues to navigate away from the repeated patterns that keep you stuck. 

‍

And of course, if you’d like help from a fellow gay man who has been through it too, my inbox is yours. Please reach out to me and let’s see what we can do! 

‍