Tackling coming out.
Hello, and welcome back to Empowering Gay Men the podcast dedicated to celebrating the diverse lives, experiences, and achievements of gay men around the world. I’m your host, Alan Cox, and I work as a life coach with gay men.
In a world where the voices of gay men have often been marginalized or silenced, this podcast aims to create a vibrant space where we can share our stories, celebrate our successes, and confront the unique challenges we face.
But this podcast is more than just a series of conversations or questions. I want it to be a community, a support system, and a source of strength for anyone who identifies as a gay man or as an ally.
In the previous episode, we looked at the process of coming out as a gay man.
I set out a definition of what coming out is.
Then I wrote out my own mixed story of coming out at various stages of my life – some positive and some negative.
We next examined the different components of coming out and described each one.
Then the different stages of coming out.
We also looked at different areas of gay men’s lives that might be affected due to the coming out process.
And finally, I included as a bonus, fifty positive questions people might ask a gay man while they are coming out and fifty negative and hostile questions.
Today is the turn of looking at how life coaching can support gay men as they come out.
There are two commonalities that run through these areas and this should be acknowledged immediately. They are the subjects of my first two issue-based podcasts: internal homophobia and a lack of self-love. I would recommend that you listen to both again.
When I carried out the research for this episode, I was profoundly touched by the level of suicide in gay men who preferred to kill themselves rather than come out. That is just wrong. It shouldn’t be tolerated. My aim for this episode is to prevent that and to enable gay men to feel empowered to come out confidently.
Here are the main issues surrounding coming out and the ways life coaching can assist.
Number 1.
Building Self-Acceptance and Confidence
This means a positive self-image. Gay men when they come out generally receive one of two reactions. Positive or negative. They may also receive another which could be:
‘Couldn’t care less. It’s your life.’
That’s a neutral stance but those people will also have an inherent opinion.
If it is the former then fantastic. The individual can feel empowered – ready to face the world. But the response can also be negative and then the world might seem to crash around them. Life coaching can help a gay man develop a greater sense of self-love and confidence. As well as that, a life coach can teach techniques such as the confidence cycle and grounding oneself.
Then there are affirmation techniques. A life coach can help a client formulate affirmations that can be repeated every day.
‘I am’ statements are the usual type of sentence – I am happy etc. But they aren’t very powerful. They need to be attached to a concrete reason so a phrase such as:
‘I am happy because I can now look at myself in the mirror because I have come out’ are much more effective and embedded.
By using affirmations the brain starts to believe what it is being told and behaviour follows.
The next suggestion is Goal Setting:
By now, if you have been following the podcast, then you might have realised that the Wheel of Life is one of my favourite techniques in my tool box as a life coach with gay men. It allows a gay man to prioritise the areas in his life so that he can grow more satisfied.
Regarding the coming out process, you could label the Wheel of Life with different sections such as:
Family
Friends
Colleagues
Associates
Others
And then decide what level of satisfaction you have reached at the moment. Mark it on the wheel. Then where you would like to be.
You might be completely satisfied about not telling your parents, in which case you would be a nine or ten. Ten is pure satisfaction whereas a 1 is extreme poor satisfaction. But that’s probably not the usual case.
I would suggest most men would have a low score in that area since they are unhappy telling their family.
But let’s take the example of a fictitious gay man called David.
David is 35. He has an older sister and is close to his parents but feels that he cannot come out to his parents because he thinks it might hurt them in some way or even destroy their relationship. He might have already come out to his sister who has also shared in this ‘mutual secret.’
So he has kept quiet. He has had a few relationships but they have not lasted in the past and referred to them as friendships. He may never have told anyone at work too.
Things have now changed. He has met someone who he would describe as ‘the love of his life’ and doesn’t want to live in the closet anymore.
They might want to have a celebration or go through a marriage ceremony. But where does that leave his family and others he knows?
The level of satisfaction regarding his parents knowing about his sexuality is at a three. He knows it will take time for them to accept this new situation so probably wouldn’t aim for a ten because it isn’t realistic.
So what does he do and what could we do in his situation?
The first thing is to establish SMART targets.
SMART is an acronym meaning:
SMALL
MEASURABLE
ACHIEVABLE
REALISTIC
TIMEFRAMED
There are different definitions but they cover the same areas.
So, working with a life coach, or a close ally, he could start by setting a small target such as talking more about his ‘friend’ John. How do his parents react? That’s how he can measure a response. This can be achieved easily by talking more about ‘us’ etc then he can build things up. Eventually he knows that he will probably just have to be completely frank but he will have set out the way forward. They have become accustomed to hearing about John.
In the next section of the podcast, I will talk more about the confidence cycle but I will mention it briefly now. David can get ready for any negative response by arming himself by working through different scenarios.
But guess what? Sometimes it can be positive:
I know that I was dreading telling my late grandfather that I was gay. He had been a prisoner of war commander in Scotland and was a real ‘man’s man.’
So, imagine the following scenario. I had just gone to his house after my other grandmother’s funeral. I was determined to let him know everything but my anxiety and stress levels were at a ten. He knew I had been through a lot at the funeral so he gave me a whisky.
And here’s the conversation although not 100% word for word.
‘Grandad, I’ve got something to say.’
‘What is it?’
Then a huge swallowing of breath from my side. Was I ready for the negative response?
‘I’m gay.’
Silence.
What the hell have I done?
Have I ended a relationship with a man who was like my second father?
He took a deep breath. And I will record his reply in an English West Country accent.
‘Don’t worry my lover (it’s a term of endearment where I come from). I was in the army. I know what boys get up to.’
What the hell?
At which point all those birds that had built so many nests in my head were literally thrown out and evicted forever – you will understand the reference later in this podcast.
We imagine the worst scenario too often. That’s when we create the stress but coming out can also be an empowering experience.
Through setting SMART targets you can be in control of your own coming out. You will be empowered.
The second area to look at is managing Anxiety and Stress
Many gay men do feel anxious and stress surrounding coming out. I covered that in the previous section. Very few of us are in a position where we can literally skip out of the closet unhindered. This anxiety could be relabelled as fear and in the episode surrounding self-love I spoke about the definition of fear, as advanced by the Coaching Masters’ team. It is False Evidence Appearing Real.
When we are fearful of something then it is because we have created a belief in our heads that we have made real. But often that initial belief is based on shaky or false evidence. We then make an image and our mind makes potential scenarios that back up that position. The belief that things will go badly does not mean that they will.
The German Martin Luther said:
‘We cannot stop the birds from flying over our heads. But we can stop them from building nests in our hair.’
That’s what thoughts do. We can’t stop them from happening but we can stop them building and appearing solid.
We have already revisited setting goals and mentioned the Wheel of Life.
As well as the Wheel of Life that I use with gay men, I also employ the Confidence Cycle. This has already been referred to.
This breaks down as follows:
If you build your competence and skills then it will lead to greater confidence. And these two things feed into each other.
One of the ways that you can do this is to work with an ally and go through the 100 questions that were at the end of the initial coming out podcast. They were originally designed for teenagers but are still valid for gay men of every age.
The first 50 deal with questions that supportive people might pose. That’s great.
However, the fifty remaining questions might be those that non-supportive members in your life might also ask.
Work through them and decide what your answers might be. Arm yourself with the skills and responses you might need when you come out. Become empowered. Then your confidence will grow.
The inverse is also true if you don’t decide how you might act when asked a difficult and challenging question then your confidence will lessen. That weakens you and that’s when those birds start building those nests in our hair or heads.
Many gay men are concerned about what the impact of coming out will mean in their employment. Will it affect their rights? Will they be dismissed? Again, we can be guilty of creating scenarios.
We might think that if we come out then we will be dismissed. Know what your rights are legally. Have them to hand if you have a discussion with someone in a higher level and you are worried about their possible response.
I adore what Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple said about being gay:
"It’s been tough and uncomfortable at times, but it has given me the confidence to be myself, to follow my own path, and to rise above adversity and bigotry. It’s also given me the skin of a rhinoceros, which comes in handy when you’re the CEO of Apple."
Tim Cook had put on his ‘rhinoceros skin’ through knowing his rights and asserted them. He had developed the confidence to do so through evicting the birds that might have landed and built nests. You can do the same.
In this follow up episode on the subject of Coming Out, we have examined different ways that the process can be eased through employing Life Coaching techniques.
These have included:
Building self-acceptance and confidence by having a positive self-image and affirmation techniques.
Then we looked at the importance of setting goals and using the Wheel of Life as a framework as well as SMART targets.
We introduced the fictitious man called David and followed a possible path on how he could come out effectively and in an empowered manner to his parents.
Finally, we turned to another tool in a life coach’s box - the Confidence Cycle - and how if we work on our competencies and skills we can become more confident and empowered.
In the next episode of Empowering Gay Men, the podcast we will turn to another subject that affects gay men which is that of body image and how it affects us. This will be followed in turn by how life coaching can help gay men when faced with it.
Thank you so much for listening to Empowering Gay Men the podcast. I look forward to catching up with you in the next episode.
In the meantime, please feel free to contact me on:
empoweringgaymen@gmail.com
especially if you have been affected by what we have covered in this episode.
I run individual and group coaching sessions for gay men who are going through the issues I cover in the podcasts
or please leave a comment on our Facebook page: Empowering Gay Men, the Podcast.
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Let’s start building that strong and resilient community together.
I don’t want any more gay men to go down the route of suicide rather than coming out.
Wishing you as always an empowered life.
Alan