Diversity Rules Magazine

3 Diversity Rules Magazine October 2015 David-Elijah Nah- mod is a film crit- ic and reporter in San Francisco. His articles ap- pear regularly in The Bay Area Reporter and SF Weekly. You can also find him on Facebook and Twitter. David developed Post Traumatic Syndrome Disor- der (PTSD) after surviving gay conversion therapy as a child and has found that many in the LGBT community suffer from severe, often untreated emotional disorders due to the extreme anti-gay traumas they endured. This column chronicles his journey. So I'm back in therapy. I was inspired to do so when I realized that a recurrence of my PTSD symptoms was creating problems between me and a close friend. When I felt triggered, I would become somewhat manic. I would start talking and be unable to stop, going on and on about all the terrible things that had happened to me. is is not uncommon with people who have PTSD. Our condition is caused by experiencing severe trauma- -reliving that trauma is often our primary symptom. e friendship in question was particularly valuable to me. After years of meeting gay men who could only be described as embittered, bitchy queens, I had finally met an intelligent, educated gay man who was a genu- inely nice guy. He cared about other people. I didn't want to lose this friendship. He had been supportive above and beyond the call of duty, but at one point our conversations had become all about me and my sad little life. e support had stopped going both ways. No matter what we've been through, no matter how much pain we're in, we mustn't forget that other peo- ple also have needs. No man is an island, as the old saying goes. And so I started meeting with Jim, a gay therapist who specializes in working with LGBTQ trauma survivors. e gay conversion therapy I lived through as a child, and the more recent attempts by gay bloggers to in- flame anti-gay and anti-Semitic hate against me for nothing more than a cheap laugh (which I've written about in various publications) certainly qualified me as a trauma survivor. ough writing about these inci- dents was cathartic, I hadn't, in recent years, been tak- ing care of myself. It was time to do some real healing work and get myself back on track. Jim and I are now going into the second month of our client/therapist re- lationship. Our first few sessions made me realize how damaged I now am: there were many topics I needed to talk about: anti-gay religious abuse, growing up in a home with abusive parents who wouldn't accept me for who I was, being bullied in the neighborhood for being gay, getting caught up in the gay-on-gay bully- ing that a traumatized LGBT community now inflicts on itself--where to begin? For our first few sessions I ranted, jumping around from topic to topic. But it felt great to get it out. It's a beginning. Christopher Pennock is an actor with a long list of credits on TV, in theater and in film. He's best known for his runs on the daytime dramas Dark Shadows and Gen- eral Hospital. Chris and I are Facebook friends. At about the time I was beginning my own work with Jim, Chris, who Nahmod - Con't on page 6 If You Could Read My Mind A PTSD Memoir: Therapy Works By David-Elijah Nahmod

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