08-03-2018, 01:02 PM
(This post was last modified: 08-03-2018, 02:43 PM by gayprojectforum.)
Following the publication of a post on anxiety [http://gayprojectforum.altervista.org/T-...nd-anxiety] in Gay Project Forum, a user (Serpy) added in the following comment.
Thanks, Project, for this post whose topic really touches me very deeply. Above all lately it happens that the agitation catches me even at night; this involves waking up and turning very often in the bed, feeling very tired in the morning. Reading what you wrote, I came to doubt that the very strong homophobia in the environment in which I live is the cause (if it is not the only one, certainly the most important) that brings me to this state of constant anxiety. You wrote:
1) Being submitted to the questions of parents and relatives like ”Do you have a girlfriend?”
Here, this situation happens to me frequently, all family members ask me such questions; practically every night that we meet together by my grandmother comes out the name of a girl who could fit me, according to them, and I inside gnaw my liver because I cannot be honest. Then you wrote:
4) Finding themselves temporarily in situations of close cohabitation with other people with whom one inevitably comes to talk about emotional relationships and sexuality.
This happened to me last year with my ex-housemates (all homophobic) and just this is why I could not feel at ease with them at all. Regarding the fifth and the sixth situation, well, even those have done their part in the past. You wrote also:
“When the mind concentrates on the research at all costs of an answer to a problem connected to sexuality, it ends up neglecting and minimizing other fundamental aspects of social and relational life.”
Project, how true this thing is! I still have to get out of this stalemate, but I just cannot! Also because what I miss is a sincere affective relationship, which I have never had either by friends or especially in the family. According to you and according to the other users of the forum it is I who don’t really have the will to get out of this whole situation by myself, despite the advices, or maybe there are cases as desperate like mine of guys who, like me, to come out of this, really need an emotional support without which even the best psychologist in the world can’t do anything for them?
I responded so to this email:
I would like to try to tell Serpy what I think about going out of anxiety by yourself or not. I am deeply convinced, because I see it every day, that everyone needs important affective relationships and I don’t speak of love stories, but above all of family relationships and friendships that, despite being lived in an unconscious way, form the basis of the interior serenity of a person.
Precisely in relation to Gay Project it happens to me practically every day to talk in a chat with some guys and to also maintain exchanges of letters that last over time, even for years. I have often wondered why I spend my days on the Project and the answer is simple, because, through the Project, relationships are created that have a serious emotional value, it is not a professional activity but the creation of authentic human relationships, mediated by mail or msn, but authentic, all this gives me a basic tranquility, allows me to feel useful and I happen to think that just as I enjoy receiving an email from those who write me,
the same way, who writes to me can feel happy to receive a serious answer, I say serious but I mean not technical. Sometimes I have the impression that even exchanging an email can have a stabilizing value and can clearly move us away from an anxious vision of things. In fact, what I do in the Project does not consist in finding solutions to real problems but in dissipating the anxiety that is often created around issues that are objectively not problems but that become problems because are lived with fear.
I received an email today from a guy I had not heard for some time, I felt him serene, even proud to be gay, well, I've never met this guy in person and probably I’ll never meet him but I cannot deny that the email has me immensely pleased. If even an email can create certain effects, it is obvious that feeling the emotional warmth of others has enormous value. I give an example.
On the day of his birthday a guy receives a gift from his classmates, a group gift, but made with the heart, whether they are gay or straight, it matters little, what matters is that they are authentic things. Such a thing has an enormous value in terms of self-esteem and is a natural anxiolytic with no side effects. You don’t live well alone, you can accept loneliness as a temporary situation because we all need others, or better than others, we need those who love us, at all ages. My dream about the Project is that it can contribute a little to reducing the sense of loneliness and to putting finally aside anxiety in the prospect of a future considered with greater serenity.