We make sure to stay recording. All right, Green light, blue
light. Welcome to Something Positive
for Positive People. I'm Courtney Brain.
Something Positive for Positive People is a 501-C3 nonprofit
organization supporting people navigating herpes stigma in a
variety of ways. One of those is primarily
support calls. There have been a lot of support
calls coming in, so I've been very, very busy with those.
I'm grateful to the healthcare professionals and mental health
professionals, educators and people who have been referring
people to something positive for positive people.
Shout out to the AI platforms for being very forthcoming and
having people reach out to something positive or positive
people because I've been busy. Like for perspective, in
January, I think there were 70 calls that were signed up for
February, around around 70 as well.
So yeah, urban days, I've had like 8 in a day.
So I'm busy and I'm managing the support groups which meet on
Mondays at 7:30 PM Eastern Time. The women's group is the 1st and
3rd Monday, the men's group is the 2nd and 4th, and if there is
a fifth Monday, then we will have something that is blended
so both groups will meet. You still register for those the
same way you make a donation to that support group that you are
affiliated with and then you'll get the calendar invite for it.
If you were somebody who has not attended a support group before
and you want to be a part of it, we have to just have a
one-on-one support call first so that I'm able to make sure that
you're getting what it is that you need from the support group.
You know what it is that you're signing up for and all the stuff
that people wouldn't read if I were to put it on the website.
And I'll be able to answer some questions for you, right?
I got called out for I called out by a credible source, one of
my board members for my last few podcast episodes seeming like
Diaries or or journal entries, which I was like, damn, you're
right. I can't even see that And I, I
don't want to say I'm running out of shit to talk about.
I think that I've been really playing it safe in terms of what
I share. I'm much more comfortable with a
guest and getting them to talk about their experiences and
pulling that out of people. And then moving forward, just
sharing bits and pieces of my own personal experiences within
that. So if you listen to this and you
feel compelled to share your experience, your story, living
with herpes and how navigating that has been for you, please
don't hesitate to reach out. Let me know if we can get you
the same way. We're doing this right here that
I'm recording. We can have you as a guest on
the podcast because people want to hear from others.
People want to hear others lived experiences and not everybody
really wants to share. So I would say for every 98
people who say that they want to hear other people's experiences,
there might be two that are for every 100 people, 98 want to
hear people's experiences and only two are willing to share
their experiences. So I'm, I'm going to be real,
like I am impacted by herpes in such a way that is completely
and significantly different than a lot of other people.
If you're watching this or listening to this, you'll see
that I'm not, you know, in my normal background, right?
I have taken the opportunity to view herpes in a completely
different way than what we're told to.
Look at it. As I talk about identity
fragmentation and how if we just take a circle and how a circle
has 360°, think about those as different aspects of our
personality, who we are ourselves, our roles that we
play in the lives of others. And imagine that having herpes
is just one of those degrees and the way that we dictate our life
around that 1° and making that affect the other 359 aspects of
our circle. That's what we can do.
And I think a lot of people do that unconsciously.
I have done it much more consciously and that, yeah, when
it comes to dating and navigating the conversation,
Like, I don't have a problem telling people I have herpes.
I have a problem with what comes after that because then I become
a motherfucking therapist rather than somebody that you know is
on the prospect list of dating or hooking up with.
So I have the problem of people more so gravitating towards me
when I tell them I have herpes and I end up somehow telling
them what I do. And then like that's it's kind
of like shut off at that point. So that is my experience and
literally nobody that comes in for a support call is ready to
hear that or can relate to that. And it's so far away.
It's so far removed that if I were to, you know, tell these
people that like it's, it's unbelievable.
And I got to be real mindful of that.
I try to not, you know, talk too much about my own experiences on
support calls because I want for people to make that about
themselves. I had one that was with a young
man who straight up told me he was like, I don't want to do
this. And you take that the way that
you would take it. But he, he seemed like he really
didn't want to do this. And for those who don't know,
when I started something positive for positive people
nine years ago, there was a woman who was in a relationship
with someone. She had just tested positive for
herpes, no symptoms. And she and I had become
friends. We've met on the dating app for
people with herpes. And she just wanted to be ready
for when or if he, her boyfriend had any symptoms at all.
And this is someone who, you know, was in a relationship, was
attractive, had a good job, and over time, we had become
friends. And I remember her telling me
that she, too, wanted to end her life.
And when she said that, I was just, I was shocked.
I didn't understand, like, why you you got the relationship,
you don't have symptoms. You just found out about this
information and now you don't want to be here.
And for this person, it felt like kind of a flashback, like a
reminder of why I show up to this, like why I continue to do
the work that I do. Because in this young man's
case, it was very similar. He didn't have the relationship
necessarily, but he has a support system.
He has family, he has friends, he has people around him that he
feels very supported by. But there's something still
there that, you know, he, he doesn't want to do this.
And when we were having a conversation and he shared with
me that he had called the suicide lifeline and that they
said, you know, it's not the end of the world, that gave me a
feeling of anger. Because that's literally the
equivalent of saying something to a person that is so far
removed. Like you're, you're, they're so
far removed from everything's going to be OK.
Eventually you'll be over this. You're going to find someone to
love. You don't nobody, ain't nobody
even receive that at this point. No one can receive it at that
stage of where they are in their diagnosis, right?
Like if somebody's talking about they want to end their lives
because of their herpes diagnosis, the last thing that
they want to hear is, you know, something that's so far removed
from their imagination. And I'm not a mental health
professional, I'm not a doctor. I'm just somebody who actually
engages with and talks to people one-on-one to understand what it
is that they're feeling, how they're thinking, and what their
behaviors are. And I, I believe that that's not
helpful. It's not helpful to hear.
It'll be all right. It's not the end of the world
because it is the end of the world.
It's the end of your world as you know it.
Yes, things are going to change, and the reason that they're
going to change is most likely because things needed to change
and they haven't changed. And that's really what this
comes down to. The nervous system is going to
gently whisper to you when things are out of alignment.
Maybe you can't hear it because your awareness isn't in your
nervous system, because your awareness is out there.
It's at work, it's with your friends, it's your social life,
your family, whatever else you got going on.
Or maybe it's your relationships.
Your awareness is in your relationships and your
relationships are generally impacted by your sexuality.
Your sexualities tends to be something that revolves around
your genitals. And so when the nervous system
can't get your attention in the sense of, hey, we're just
regulated, hey, this isn't normal.
Hey, we need to get away from over here.
Hey, can you pay attention to me?
All right, What are you paying attention to?
Oh, you're paying attention to your genitals.
Let me see if I can get your attention there.
Boom, herpes. I I know how ridiculous that can
sound to somebody who's not really ready to hear that.
But it's relatable. I know that it's relatable
because, you know, I'll ask people, hey, were there any red
flags around the person that you think might have given it to you
or what was going on in your life around that time?
And I give this exercise to people called Nurture Your
Nature. And the idea is for you to
identify what your nature is, who you are, and then begin to
look at ways that you nurture that aspect of yourself.
So rather than asking people who are you, right, it's more of
like, well, what are you made of?
And I'll mean like skin, bones, teeth, whatever.
What I mean is I want you to see the parts of yourself that are
not seen, that you cannot visibly see or physically touch,
hear, taste, smell, right, but are to be perceived and
experienced not just by others, but by you.
How do you experience yourself? What is yourself?
What are you made of? And I, I try not to lead people
with my own examples, but I have these eight CS curiosity,
choice, challenge, connection, creativity, community,
completion, consistency. Oh, what's that Them all.
I usually have to stop and think about it.
But those are like my 8 CS of self that I believe are my
nature. And there's three places that
these tend to come out, and that's work, rest and play.
So how am I expressing my curiosity in work?
I ask questions, I interview people, literally.
I ask people about their experiences with their
diagnosis. How am I experiencing connection
and play, sex, relationships, intimacy and a shared activity
where there's like a game being played, right?
Or there's some type of a goal, right?
How am I experiencing? What's another one completion
through rest, right? I do a lot of things yoga,
certified in yoga, but I'm more so practicing for myself.
I'm in yoga therapy training. I teach medical students to give
genital exams in order to play the in order to pay the bills.
I've been running something positive.
I do the support calls, support groups, I'm also doing events.
I'm also building community, right?
So throughout the day, throughout the week, throughout
the month, throughout the year, all of this is going on.
And for me to really complete the cycles of everything that I
do, I have to make space to rest.
And so completion to me looks like being able to rest, right?
Like if you are biblically inclined, on the 7th day of
creation, source rested. And that to me is how I nurture
my nature. I nurture my nature by through
those vehicles of engagement with the world.
Like that's how I see myself, that's how I experience myself
and express myself, and that's how others experience me as
well. And so that exercise helps
people to begin to validate their own identity outside of
how they see themselves in that sexual aspect.
Because again, going back to the circle, there's 360°.
Imagine a low notch at every degree.
And if you pick one of those and that's your herpes diagnosis,
imagine if you just like put it to the side and you just looked
at the circle, you would see 359 things about yourself that have
nothing to do with herpes. And we limit ourselves so much
into identifying with that piece that it makes it difficult for
us to see beyond what the, the physical limitations of dating,
relating and connecting with people in ways that have nothing
to do with sex at all or intimacy.
So I, I, I challenge people. And if this is something that,
you know, you feel compelled to do, like take that, you know,
nurture your nature because you should be able to do that for
yourself. You should recognize, like what
of those invisible aspects of yourself that need to be
nurtured, that are your nature? What are they and how do you go
about it? Because you know, we do talk
about self-care and it's not take a bubble bath.
It's not go have a drink. It's not, you know, eat food,
right? Like that's, that's survival
stuff like you should be cleaning yourself.
You should be eating right. If you're able to listen to this
podcast, you should be able to do the bare minimum for
survival. So I, I'm not going to give you
no kudos and a pat on the back because you take care of
yourself at minimum of what you need to be doing for yourself to
nurture your nature. Unfortunately, is something that
really we're away from. We're very far disconnected from
being able to. We don't even recognize who we
are because there are so many things that pull our awareness
away from the nervous system of being able to pick up on those
early signals that something in our lives needs to change.
Whether that be the environments that we're in, whether it be the
people we're around, whether it be the career field that we're
in. So all of these different
aspects of engagement can really influence and encourage,
discourage what it is, is happening with our nervous
system, which is constantly telling us, hey, this is the
direction that we want to go. So when our nervous system is
not in alignment or if something's not in alignment
with our behaviours, then the nervous system's going to speak.
And a lot of times we'll, we'll shove that down.
But like, I don't have time to deal with that right now.
And we got to not do that. We got to bring that awareness
into the body. I have an exercise I'm not
thinking giving away these exercises, but when we get so in
our heads and in our minds about our herpes diagnosis, something
as simple as observing your hand and looking at your hand and
noticing how many fingers you have.
Notice the movement, notice the coloration, notice the length of
your nails, the coloration of your nails, those little lines
that that spiral your fingerprints, right?
Notice how many lines you have in your hand.
Can you count them? What do your knuckles feel like?
What does your hand feel like? And in that time, you've been
able to disidentify away from what is happening in your
thoughts between past and future and you're able to ground in
your your body and look at what's happening in the present
moment. So I'm giving away all this free
game. So nothing else.
It should encourage you to A, attend an event.
B attend the support group. C Sign up for one of the support
calls to be able to take this where it can go for you if you
are somebody who is in fact looking for and seeking support.
So the exercise of nurturing my nature means looking at those
intangible aspects of yourself and recognizing those as your
nature outside of your body, outside of the things that you
do, looking at what it means to be who you are, right.
So take that and do what you will with it and just remember
that at any given moment you can check in with yourself and be
where you are and in this moment and away from the thoughts that
send you in every kind of chaotic, different direction.
That's where anxiety is. That's where jealousy is.
That's where the lack of self worth.
That's where this sense of incompleteness is.
Because realistically, a lot of us when we get our diagnosis, we
haven't really had experiences to measure up against the
beliefs that we've adopted about ourselves now that we have this
diagnosis. We haven't, we haven't.
There are people I talked to were diagnosed a week ago.
I'm like, well, what, what's how's herpes impacted you?
And then it's like, well, now that I have this, it's like,
well, you probably had it longer than since you found out,
realistically. So what's the difference between
when you might have been exposed up to the point where you
thought that you had herpes? Like what's changed about you
since then? And that's what I mean with the
curiosity. I just, I just ask people, I ask
people questions, I challenge their belief systems because
that's all we have. You'll sit here and, and have
10s of thousands of thoughts that if you just take an action
can nullify those, you know, and, and my hands right here.
If I sit here and I tell myself I can never close my fist, I
will never be able to close my fist.
My hands just open. It's always open.
The more I'm saying that, the less any action is being taken.
Nothing's happening. My hands just here open because
that's what I'm thinking. That's what I'm saying and
that's what I'm doing. But at any given, oh, look what
just happened, Any given moment you can just close your fist,
right? Take the action.
That action is going to deter the beliefs.
It's going to disrupt the thoughts.
Now, I can open my hand when I want to.
I can close it. But if I sit here and I just
tell myself I'll never be able to do this, I'll never be able
to take that action. The thoughts have to stop
because this disrupts them. The same thing goes for living
with a herpes diagnosis, right? To say I can't do this, it's
like, no, you're, you're actually doing it.
Like, I don't want to be here anymore.
Well, you're, you're here. Like, let's, let's talk about
that. Like why?
What's so out of alignment for you that you don't want to
experience the the full spectrum of this body of your ability to
engage with the world, the other 359 aspects of engagement,
right. Sex is one way of engaging with
this big beautiful life. If sex is all you got going for
you, I'm sorry. I'm, I'm so sorry to hear that.
If sex is the only thing that you have going for you, I, I am
sorry and I also need to challenge that.
I also need to challenge that because that's not the case,
right? If we look at our roles in life,
like there's identities that we have, maybe some of us are
parents or siblings. We're children of someone,
grandchildren of someone. We got ancestors, right?
We're descendants of someone. There's the work, rest and play.
So we rest who we are and play who we are.
Maybe you identify as a dancer or a singer or performer artist.
Maybe you are someone who's a worker, an entrepreneur, you're
an employee, you're a Co worker, right That that's.
Probably a dozen things right there that I just spit out
randomly. So for you to no longer want to
be here because of this one degree of your life not even
being taken away from you, it just has to look different.
It just looks like now. OK, now that we know about our
herpes status, let's look at the things that are coming up
alongside this. Because for many of us, it's not
just the physical symptoms. It's not just the physical pain.
Take the medication and you know, we move on.
Because realistically, we only need to think about this on 2
occasions. 1 if we have physical symptoms, 2 if we need to tell
someone new. So why is this dictating our
behaviors? Why is this making us decide
that we don't want to be here anymore?
Why is it making us, you know, take these steps, take these
actions? And I'll be the first to tell
you that herpes does serve as a catalyst for ending a world.
So yes, your world is over. This is the end of your world as
it is. And, you know, if you decide
that you don't want to change anything, then more power to
you. You got you got good things
going for you. But that kind of person will
never hear this podcast. If you genuinely, you know,
don't desire to take anything from your herpes diagnosis,
learn from it, integrate it into how you move moving forward,
that person will never hear this.
But if you are sitting here, you listening to it, you're looking
for something. And I ain't going to say I'm
going to be the one to help you find it, but I can perhaps point
you in the direction that will support you in that I can't do
it for you. And I, I've, I've really fucked
up in life a lot of times thinking that I can do things
for people and you can, I can be the signpost like I will do
every fucking thing in my power to help you help you.
If you're somebody who doesn't want to help themselves, there
is nothing I can do for you. If you come to me and you just
say, hey, I don't want to be here.
I just want to vent. I want to get this off my chest.
There's nothing I can do for you.
If you are looking for hope, if you are looking for actionable
steps, if you are looking to get into a relationship or date, if
you are looking to learn from your experience, if you are
looking for community and you want to work through what it
means for you now to have herpes, I'm here.
I'm here for that because my world ended couple times.
Like I ain't gonna lie to you. My world ended several times
throughout my life. My world ended, you know, I can
think back to my first breakup in 7th grade.
Like I, I, I'm not gonna say we're still in touch, but I've,
you know, connected with her recently and that was heart
shattering. My world changed.
Going to high school, losing all my middle school friends that I
had grown so attached to, world ending, getting to that point in
college where I thought that I knew what the rest of my life
was going to look like. I finished high school, I
applied for schools, and I thought I was going to get a
scholarship to this place. It was Northern Iowa, University
of Northern Iowa. I was too short.
They stopped calling. World ended.
And in each of these experiences, these were at the
time the worst thing that could ever happen to me.
Graduate college, get my first job.
A year into my first job, finding out that I got herpes.
Worst thing that ever happened to me again.
World ending. Getting into a relationship with
somebody I had no business being in a relationship with.
That relationship ending. World ending.
Getting my dream job at the time was my dream job, and then
knowing that I needed to leave before I got fired, leaving to
what became my ideal job, everything I wanted to do, I get
fired. World ending, that's eight.
That's like 8 endings right there that I just named moving
back home to Saint Louis starting this podcast 2017.
That's why I would say a new world for me was built.
All of the things that I made previously that my world ended
around those world ending life events that occurred, I'm still
here. I've taken something from each
of those endings like, and I've taken the raw material, the
essence of the lessons that I've gotten from those failed
experiences. And I took them and and turned
them into something and they made me who the fuck I am.
Every one of the world ending events that has happened
throughout your life has given you the raw material that makes
up the essence of who you are, that makes up your nature.
And for many of us, we don't take a moment to look at what
our nature is so that we can nurture that.
And the longer we go without nurturing our nature, we find
like an artificial substitute for that nurturing.
And maybe that does come out in sexual relationships.
Maybe it's drinking on weekends and kicking it with the with
with your friends and being away from yourself, creating noise,
scrolling social media, starting businesses and and activities
that just keep you busy and keep you running around and all over
the place. All of these world ending events
would not have made me into a person capable of doing this.
And I'll speak to, you know, there's been a couple other ones
that I've had, you know, it's been a little bit over a year
since the last relationship that I had ended.
And I feel like it, it's taken me until, yeah, just now, maybe
a few weeks ago, to actually comprehend the ending of the
relationship and the lessons from that.
And I've taken that raw material and compress that into who I am
so that now there can be even further of an expansion of who I
am and recognizing the importance of nurturing my own
nature and identifying what my nature is.
So each of these world ending events kind of ornato hit my
crib. You know how unlikely that is.
And while I wasn't there, yeah, I'm I'm, I've been susceptible
to stagnancy and I've been in this few situations where that
was happening. And it's taken some world ending
event to keep me from being stagnant.
If I was stagnant, we wouldn't. We wouldn't have something
positive for positive people. All of those world ending events
made me into who I am today. I might not look like what I've
been through, but I hold space like what I've been through.
All of these micro explosions of my world's ending have given me
this fucking capacity to be able to hold space.
So when people tell me this is the end of the world for me,
like I fucking empathize. I get it.
I know what it's like because it's happened to me dozens of
times in my life to where I can hold that space.
I can't hold that container for the grief, the anger, the rage,
the frustration, the not wanting to be here, the depression, the
helplessness, the hopelessness, the negativity.
Something positive for positive people wouldn't be what it is
without those world ending events.
It wouldn't be what it is without the people whose worlds
ended deciding to come here and giving hope to those who are
looking to transition into a newer world for themselves.
So herpes is the end of the world, and I ain't going to sit
up here and tell you it ain't. That's the reality.
What I will tell you is that that doesn't mean it's the end.
All of those failures, failed opportunities, all of those
failed jobs, those failed relationships, none of that was
failure. That was fuel.
All of those failures were fuel that further validated who I am
outside of what my body is or what my body can do.
It's my expression. It's how I'm experienced and I
just so happened to have this outlet for that and it just so
happens to be something that can help people.
It just so happens to be something that people are
looking for. And this way, this wasn't a, it
wasn't something that I planned. It wasn't something that I
thought out and was like, oh, you know what?
Here's how my life is going to look.
I'm going to get herpes. I'm going to talk about it and
I'm going to be successful and live happily ever after.
I was fucking forced pressured like I had my ass handed to me,
like my ass has been kicked over the years.
At the time, herpes wasn't the worst thing that ever happened
to me. But since getting herpes, it's
been a few things that had I not been prepared based on what I've
been through prior to my diagnosis and after, I wouldn't
be where I'm at going to be able to hold this space.
I'd have fucked this up a long time ago.
And Carl Givens, I shout out to Carl Givens only given 100 Dear
friend of mine, man, he always says like you ain't, you can't.
If I got this earlier, I'd have fucked it up a long time ago.
So right now, where I'm at, where you're at, think about it
like this. If it hadn't happened to you
now, maybe you'd have fucked up in a whole different way.
And I don't even like to say fucked up in the sense of like a
herpes diagnosis. But what I mean for myself is
had I not been through what I experienced, I wouldn't be able
to hold this, this, this massive thing that people gravitate
towards with reverence, with grace, with empathy, with ethics
and values. I would have fucked this up a
long time ago because it took for my failures and what I've
been through in order to nurture the nature that I had.
If I was immature, I don't. I'd probably mess this up.
So my final bit that I want to leave y'all with here is yes
herpes is the end of the world, but what kind of world do you
want to create from the raw material that the old one left
behind? I'm going to wrap this up here,
it's March 11th. On March 21st in New York City,
oh actually Brooklyn, NY, we have an in person herpes support
day. It's the Herpes Stigma Expo.
It will start at 11 AM with a support group in person for
about two hours and then we'll shift into the No Shameless game
documentary showing. We'll have AQ and a afterwards
with some of the participants that were in the documentary.
This is about herpes stigma. We'll have about a 2 hour lunch
break if people want to stay on site.
We'll have a couple of like foods there if people want to
participate in the communication simulation that we're going to
be putting together for people to just watch and see if it's
something that maybe they want to participate in.
Getting the practice of telling someone that you have herpes.
After that, Lauren Keene, who is a, it's a one woman show called
Deal Breaker. She's going to be presenting
that for us. It's about an hour and then
we'll do AQ and a afterwards and then to close out, I'll be
facilitating about a 2 hour long workshop giving people the
practice, dating and disclosure and you'll have like your own
little outline of what it looks like for you.
So we're going to go over our own styles of doing it, how we
would do it. We're going to put together
scripts and you'll be able to take that home with you and
it'll just be kind of like a skeleton for you to feel
confident and practicing bringing your own personality to
it. So that's March 21st.
If you go to spfpp.org/expo Expo then you will be able to see the
details of the event, sign up for it.
And I want to be able to get more people to these things.
So when y'all hear this podcast, I sign up for the newsletter.
I send maybe 1 1/2 emails per month from the newsletter, which
is typically just all of the updates for something positive.
But people want to do it in person stuff.
They ask about it and then the people who ask about it don't
subscribe to the marketing so I never hear from them again.
Whenever I'm like, hey, I'm going to be in this place and
there's like all these people who were there that maybe we can
get together and socialize. But yeah, I guess y'all think I
send a lot of emails. I don't know, but I usually just
send one a month and if there's an event you might get 2.
So yeah, that's it y'all, thank you for listening.
I hope this didn't sound like a diary entry and that it was
something useful. I threw some yoga therapy
exercises in there for y'all to hopefully be able to find
valuable and implement. And hopefully this encourages
you to sign up for a support call, try and join a support
group or maybe even work with me for yoga therapy or just attend
an event, whatever it is that you need for yourself.
All right, until next time, stay present.
Notice I've been saying that a lot more lately instead of sex
positive or saying positive because I don't want y'all to.
You know, when you're positive, you also draw in and attract the
negative by default. But when you are neutral or if
you're present, then you can hold space for both or neither
for whatever it is that you subscribe to.
All right, till next time.