← Something Positive for Positive People
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Courtney Bryan
Welcome to Something Positive for Positive People. I'm Courtney Bryan. Something Positive for Positive People is a 501c3 nonprofit organization that supports people who are navigating herpes stigma. Today, what I want to talk to you about is the power of telling a friend about your status. I don't mean, you know, disclosing to them because not in the same way that you would to a partner. Right. I just mean exercising the practice of talking about a thing that you know is affecting you outside the scope of just your sex life because you think that your sex life alone is what having herpes impacts. But as we always say, sexual health is mental health. And the way that you feel about yourself sexually is very much going to impact how you move behaviorally, which comes from your beliefs about yourself, it comes from the feelings that you have about yourself and it comes from the thoughts that you have, those collective thoughts that just run rampant. Rampant, Is that the word, rampant? Yeah, I think so. In your mind is. It's earlier than 5am I woke up and I. It's like I needed to say the things that I'm saying in regards to this before I lose it. And something else comes up because many of the conversations that I have been having with people, I don't know if y'all know this, but I do offer just peer support. One on one calls at a donation base, you give whatever and we just talk for 30 minutes. Whether that be you venting or if you have a specific question that you want more of a personalized approach to whatever, however you want to move forward with it. Like that's something that I offer. I know something positive for positive people. Website as well. But the power of disclosing to a friend. I am low risk. What do I mean by that when I say I'm low risk? I mean I'm a stranger. I'm a stranger to you, you're a stranger to me. And as strangers, what happens is you might feel much more. It's easier for you to find me someone who has herpes and then to say the things to me about your experience. Experience about how much it sucks, how much you wish you had some support around you, you know, and, and it goes to my dms, like I was supposed to be off of social media for October, but I, I didn't. So I just, I had too many things that I agreed to that needed to be promoted, that needed to be shared and talked about. So that wasn't really good timing for me to do my social media break. But in the time I was off. And we'll talk about that later. There were a lot of good things. But you DM me and you say all of the things that you need. You're expressing your needs to a complete stranger, right? Maybe you feel like you know me, you listen to the podcast, you follow me on social media, and then what happens is there's this limbo, this limbo between I got the message and then am I going to respond to it? Will I respond to it? Will I even see it? Right? Because people, when I do reply, that's one of the first things. Oh my God, I didn't expect you to answer. So what did you expect? And I asked that because I think almost everyone has responded with that. So you reach out, you share that you have needs, you share that you're struggling with something. Why is it so much easier to be vulnerable with a stranger than it is your friend? I think I have the answer to that, but I want to let you sit with it for a second. If you had an answer for that question, what would it, why is it so much easier to disclose to a stranger than it is to a friend? So you send the message. I get the message in my inbox, my request, let's use Instagram, for example. It's in my requested, you know, items folder, right? And I'm not, you know, active. I'm not really in my messages because I, I'm doing other things, right. And then I finally get to it, you know, like three days later. What's happening in those three days? I always wonder. But in that time, just I think about when we disclose to someone, someone we like, someone that we're much more invested in, and how that there's that wait period of you have a desired outcome if you're disclosing to someone that you have sexual interest in. That weight period is so hard, right? You waiting on them to respond. If you sent a text or before a date, you don't know what they're going to say. You don't know what kind of research you're going to do. You don't know if they're interested, but. Right, so that person is more high risk. Now I give you that because you have your, you're directly hoping for a particular outcome with said person, whether that be another date, whether that be to have sex, whether that be for an ongoing long term relationship. There's a need that's attached to this, this ask, right? And even with that, I think that people are, because it's so high risk, much more strategic about how they Go about disclosing how they go about asking for what it is that they need, you know, and our friends, our friends should never. I want you to really sit with this. Our friends should never be high risk to where we have to try and like, sell them on being our friend the same way that we would someone that we're dating or want to date. Have to sell ourselves in order to be in a relationship with them. And going back to the high risk, low risk thing, if I don't respond to you, you might make an excuse for it. You might go, oh, well, he's busy. Or oh, maybe he didn't see it. So I kind of get that, that grace. But also I get the most of you in the sense that you might tell me about the darkest struggles that you've had with your herpes diagnosis, mentally, you may tell me how it's affecting your behavior, you may tell me that you, you struggle with dating and that that's really getting to you. There's all these aspects of your, your sharing with me about your status, this low risk person, because, you know, I have herpes, you know I'm open about it, you know that this is my line of work. So it probably just feels much safer to do. Safer meaning low risk. That I'm probably not going to say anything that's going to make you feel sad or bad, and I welcome it because it's great practice. But I gotta tell y'all, there's nothing that I can do for you that you should not be able to get from your friendships. What my goal is for supporting people through stigma, part of it looks like getting you to a place where you can confidently be vulnerable with the people around you being real. You know, I used to believe prior to going into this podcast in 2017, that suicide and suicide ideation was about sadness. Come 2020, 2021, I learned from a grief counselor that it was more about loss of control. And here we are, you know, all these years later, that never really sat right with me either. And in 2024, coming to the end of it, I know that it's really about identity and validation. So if identity validation is associated with withdrawal from life, identity validation must be the deposit for life. And I was trying to be cool with that, but just meaning more life. When you are seen, when you are experienced, when people connect with you, when you feel connected to people, when you feel connected to community, when you feel like you are able to be who you are, that is validating to your identity. This is how we fight the suicides this is how we fight the depressions. So many of us are invalidating our own identity. And even with that not putting the same amount of weight onto, you know, the people that we feel like we can't tell things, maybe because we don't so much value their opinion, but that's really the only difference that I can see between, like, me and a friend. Like, you very much value the identity that you've established with those people. And it's easier to, you know, know, start from scratch and do nothing or work from, you know, an unknown. I don't even want to say that, because some people really have a fear of the unknown. Some people are definitely afraid to reach out and ask for help or share any vulnerability. And by the time they do, it's oftentimes happening because of a very difficult experience occurred. And you might be seeking. You might be seeking some form of help, some form of support because damage was done. And I don't think that anyone should really should have to wait so long a before they get the help they need or seek out the help that they think they need. But what kind of friendships do y'all got where you worried about losing your friend because you're dealing with something that is challenging? And the reason that I'm bringing this up, I did this podcast episode way earlier talking about my own experience with disclosing to a friend, and I actually interviewed her, too. But the reason I keep bringing this up is because it's been coming up to me. And, yeah, I try and encourage people to lean into their friendships, lean into your support system. Because one thing about having herpes is, of course, the stigma associated with it. And I think when people just say stigma, they don't really know what that means. Oh, because of the stigma. Okay. What is the stigma doing to you? Because I. I'm experiencing herpes stigma. But the direct way that I experience it is my own interpretation of what people believe about me and my relationship with herpes and what that looks like. Like, do you know how many times I hear things like, Courtney, you might. Courtney has, like, a harem women, because he's attractive and he talks about having herpes, and all women have herpes, and he's got all these women that follow him. That's annoying because it's not the kind of business I'm running. And, you know, ain't nobody talking about, you know, that side of stigma. Yeah, a great problem for Courtney to have. But, like, has it occurred to anyone that maybe that's a little bit of a frustration or A little disrespectful to the fact that I'm in the relationship for someone else. Stigma looks like they go home and they are doing okay. They're doing well. They've accepted their diagnosis. You know, they. They go through the dating and disclosing process. Some people are okay with it, some people aren't. And then they turn on the nighttime TV or something on Netflix. And then there's a herpes joke. Now this person is cutting themselves. There's someone who's in a relationship, loving relationship, been together for eight years only with each other. Go to the doctor for their annual checkup. Dr. Just casually mentions, oh, hey, you know, you. I noticed you haven't been tested for sci. You want to do a full panel? Yeah, okay. Yeah, text me for everything. Dr. Test them. They come back positive for herpes. They go home. They are deathly afraid of telling the person that they're in a relationship with because they think that even though they've been together with this person for eight years, they believe that the other person's gonna not believe that they've been faithful in their relationship. Or let's say that they do tell them. And then the other person, like, well, I get cold sores. I don't get anything down there. Oh, have you been cheating? Or. I don't know. I need to really think about this relationship now. Right. Like, so much of living with herpes is just waking up to the reality that we need to wake up to reality. Herpes, for me, has really been a gateway into healing, and it's been through being willing to examine stigma for what it is and have that curiosity that. That I've been interrogating herpes stigma for almost eight years now. And eight years in stigma for me looks significantly different than stigma for you. Looks significantly different for. Than stigma for my girlfriend. It looks significantly different for someone who, because my girlfriend, doesn't have herpes. So stigma looks different even for people who don't have it, who are in a relationship with people who do. So in disclosing to a friend what's happening when. And I guess I can, like, kind of. I don't like that. I don't like to tell people what to do, but I can absolutely tell you when what I know has worked. And the reason I don't like telling people what to do is because I think we all have different desired outcomes. So you might be wanting to tell a friend and. Or in wanting to tell a friend, you are expecting. You expect the worst. Right? Like, we try to prepare for the worst. And this is really some misfortunate conditioning because that's not how we're supposed to be, especially with our friends. Why are we expecting the worst of our friends? Why do we expect for them to tell other people our business? Why do we expect to not be supported or challenged or celebrated? Because that's what friends do. Friends support us, they challenge us, they celebrate us when, you know, we want to be supported, challenges, celebrated, and, and the best part is they know us. So when we do come to them with this vulnerable thing, like we are the pioneers of vulnerability because we are initiating a first time conversation with people that they often have never had to have. Not just with our friends, but even with potential partners. Right when we open up and tell someone that we are living with herpes, this is really about vulnerability. It's an extension, an invitation for emotional connection. Because we often do. Like, it's a hard thing. A lot of people, they don't know that they would be able to tell someone if they had herpes themselves. They, they don't know if they'd be able to. They don't think they got it in them. And we really don't know until we try. Like I, I can scroll through your Instagram, your social media, but most people like make a fake one because they don't want to be associated with the herpes organization. Regardless of, you know, my work being with men's emotional wellness and then yoga therapy and yeah, I happen to podcast and do advocacy, but I also teach medical students how to give genital exams. Like that is a part of the work that I do. I'm teaching people how to communicate about their sexual health and in relationships and for whatever reason, like that small aspect of ourselves, herpes and herpes stigma gets just completely blown up into becoming more than just you being a person. Like you being a whole ass person with a whole ass life story, a whole ass identity, family, your relationships around you, your community, your, your work, career path, all of these things become just null and void just because you get herpes. And that ain't, that ain't how this supposed to work, y'all. We now have not just a pathway to connecting with someone, not just something to put out there to quickly rule out if you're dating who's not your person, but we also have this pathway to healing. I don't mean healing herpes, I don't mean healing, you know, just looking at one aspect of yourself, because herpes does activate several other things. And I don't even want to say it activates, but it just more so like, there's patterns, there's behaviors, there's beliefs, there's emotions that drive who we are. And when we have herpes, we have to take a look at that. Because now that. That. That shame piece comes in, and the shame is a lot more difficult to deal with on your own than it is to deal with in community or with other people. But we don't really feel that way. Like, we. We power through it and stay to ourselves. We don't want people to know that we have this shameful thing. We don't want people to. That we don't have to tell to know this about us. And that's because we give it too much power. We really do. And, yeah, I can't do anything for you that your friends aren't capable of doing. And my work is to get you to that place where you can take the power back from it and. And into your entirety of being and see yourself outside of just being what your herpes diagnosis tells you that you are or what you tell yourself your herpes diagnosis tells you you are. Because I. I so regret not saying anything to my friends sooner. I don't know what my life trajectory would have been. I probably wouldn't be doing this podcast because I wouldn't have needed to create a thing encouraging people to tell their friends, because I would have told my friends and it would have just been, I. I wouldn't have seen the suffering. I wouldn't have seen the people who. The 36% of people who have suicide ideation after because of the herpes diagnosis. I probably would also make a lot more money because I would be. I'd be working. I probably wouldn't have felt that call to some greater purpose. But I'm happy. I'm happy with where I'm at. I'm happy with who I am. I'm happy with what I'm doing. Yeah, I got a lot of jobs and, you know, some pay more than others, but I'm where I'm supposed to be, and that's hopefully supporting people to the point where they feel empowered to do more than just throw a message to a stranger. Like, I want y'all to engage with each other. I want y'all to experience community in the same way that I have in small doses. Right? Because this is really. This is healing. This is powerful. But I need y'all to know that. I need y'all to believe that. And there's a ton of resources out here. There's all these different podcasts. There's a lot of different books and social media, herpes education advocates. You know, I think that all of the efforts are leading towards an outcome where stigma is just irrelevant, you know, and that's why I, I push for this. Sexual health is mental health stigma minimization. Right. I try and throw to the walls and see what sticks. And I'm even at a place where I'm getting, you know, people outside the herpes community involved. Because we're talking about herpes disclosure, not discussion. Discussion, damn it. We're talking about sexual health communication. We're talking about getting people to identify what their pleasure and safety needs are and then give them practice communicating that with a partner. And that's what's become the Safe Sex Expo, which I want to shout out the little nest find for supporting us. We got a grant that allows for us to run. I don't know how many I can squeeze out of this thing. But the previous Safe Sex Expo, the cost was $5,000. It was around $5,000. My goal was to stay under that. Between presenters, the venue, the snacks, the food, and the marketing for everything that went into it, it was about $5,000. So, yeah, we got at least three expos in us for 2025. And the reason we're doing them in 2025 is because I gotta get some. I gotta close out some things for 2024 before moving on to something new. Like I need to just go through and clean up some things and decide how I'm gonna run to something positive. Podcast moving forward, what I'm gonna do for self, which I am getting the opportunity to live out my dream and make a presentation slash workshop on the high value man is the emotionally intelligent one. And this is with Shag. It's a sex toy shop in. In New York. I think they're. I don't know how many locations they have, but I know that they're in Brooklyn and I know that the workshop is going to be live at the Moxie Hotel in Williamsburg. So, yeah, if you are interested, I'm going to be talking about vulnerability through the examples we have in anime characters. So, yeah, I'm hyped and this will be recorded. So if you know somebody who might be interested in that, I want to make it a discussion. I want it to be engaging. And yeah, the purpose is to really look at emotional vulnerability and intelligence through the lens of some popular anime characters. Some of my favorite anime characters. So I'm in the process of promoting it now and that's going to be on Sunday. November 17th. So, yeah, that's. That's it. And I'll link that in here. Of course. This cat wants to play right now while I'm recording a podcast at 5am this is amazing. Okay, so if you hear some rumbling in the background, cat's playing. Yeah, I closing this out, like, I want to just make sure, even if I emphasize it, I want to be sure that the point is made that we gotta get to a place where we can at least make that choice on whether or not to tell friends and challenge ourselves on why we wouldn't. Why wouldn't you tell someone close to you that you're struggling with something and you would like their support on it? Maybe you'd like their advice. Like, if you think you have judgmental friends, I imagine that you are a lot more judgmental on yourself. And what better way to test a friendship than with something that the way that they respond to it is going to tell you whether or not this is a person that should even stay in your life? If you worried about you, tell a friend, oh, yeah, you know, I got herpes. There's something I've been dealing with for a while. And they laugh at you. First off, I don't think we got those kinds of friends. I don't think that people, you know, welcome in those types of friendships anymore to themselves, especially if you listen to this podcast. So your friends shouldn't laugh at you, your friends shouldn't say mean things, your friends shouldn't ghost you. And if they do, these ain't your friends. These people that you should have lost acquaintanceship with forever ago. You just didn't have a reason to look at the friendship. So this is a reason to start interrogating everything with curiosity. So even as we look at herpes stigma, we begin to check our emotions surrounding that. Like, this is a great place to start. You listening to the podcast, that's dope. But y'all, I say the same thing 400 something times. You come here and, you know, we have a conversation with someone, or maybe there's a episode. Oh, excuse me. Maybe there's an episode where I happen to have something, you know, at a different angle to talk about. But all in all, y'all, like, we gotta be able to tell our friends because that's who's gonna be able to. To validate our identity. That's who knows us. When you. You tell a friend, yeah, I got herpes, and they cut you off and they go, man, what they gotta do in anything? So what, Whatever, like, am I supposed to treat you different, you know, And I've gotten some of the best and most unexpected responses from people around me who I've told. And I am absolutely grateful for the kind of support that I've gotten, especially for deciding to be open about it. You know, even family and friends just being like, you sure you want to do that? I don't think I gave them the chance to ask me that. I just did it. And this happened to work out for me. So what's your. What's your. Something positive for positive people? You know, what's. What's on the other side of this herpes diagnosis for you? Is it a family? Is it a connected relationship? And maybe let's go beyond that. Let's not just look at, oh, you know, I want to get laid consistently, or I want to have a relationship, I want to have a family. What does that look like? What does that mean to you? Instead of getting laid, like, why don't we. Why don't we focus on having the kind of sex that we want to be having? What does that look like? Because what happened is we'll attach, you know, this idea of I want to get laid to just the outcome of getting laid. We ain't talking about whether or not it's good. We talking about whether or not it's consensual. We ain't talking about whether or not it's something that is going to be healthy, you know, and I know how that sounds, but we need to be more specific. We need to be willing to sit with and identify, you know, what is great sex, what is good sex? I want to have great sex. I don't want to just have sex. I had sex. And in that, there's been bad sex, there's been okay sex, but the good sex, that only comes when you're willing and able to interrogate your relationship to sex with curiosity. Relationships, you shouldn't just want a relationship, because people just get into a relationship just to say they in a relationship, be with somebody who has no desire to be in a relationship. Maybe you are the person that don't want to be in a relationship, but what does the relationship look like? What does a healthy and fun and, you know, inspirational and cohesive relationship look like where you're compatible with somebody? These. I ain't just. I ain't just talking, y'all. Write this. Write this down and ask yourself these questions and see what answers you get. Find out what comes up for you. What is there to learn? Right? Like herpes and herpes stigma has brought Us here to be able to go where we want to go. Like you ain't want, ain't nobody want to be here. I ain't want to be here. But this is where I'm at, right? And I'll meet y'all where y'all at so that y'all can go by a choice in the direction which you would like to go. So I, I don't have like the answer for how everyone needs to tell their friends or you know, what the motivations are like, that's something that you got to reflect on and if you need help with that, I'm happy to offer. These are peer one on one support calls. And I keep telling you this, but I'm a yoga therapist and training. We just finished the longest module, y'all, and I'm so happy. We did the Pan Care Aware course which is so different than being trauma informed, but it's inclusive to that. I think that trauma informed is very much avoidant of activating or triggering a particular group of people, which leads to the generalization of these groups of people and just this fear of engagement. Whereas Pain Care Aware is very much more engaging. It gives you language and understanding of how to be able to engage people on the topic of something that is, is too arguably stigmatized, which is pain, chronic pain, knee pain, back pain, whatever kind of pain there is. So we just finished that and I'm be done with the foundations in December this year. I got two clients for my case study. I do need one more. So if you're hearing this and you're somebody who has a time commitment to really like go into this and you know, take the approach of identifying your own imbalances, especially with herpes stigma. Because I want, this is where I'm going to be applying it. And I'm in pursuit of grants that will allow for me to maybe see 10 clients a month for yoga therapy. So yeah, I'm, I'm working, I'm working on this. I'm in the program. It's even though I'm finishing the foundations course, like I'm gonna have to get a total of 500 more hours. So the next next two years gonna be looking a little, A little busy. A little busy for your boy. But I kept my part time job teaching genital exams. I'm running something positive. I'm running self, which I'm gonna be much more strategic about in terms of how much time I commit to putting in that. But that's something I care about. The Emotional Wellness Symposium, the Black Men's Emotional wellness symposium is November 30th, which is a Saturday. And we're gonna go from 10am to 3pm Eastern time and start a little bit earlier. I'll be leading a yoga class if anyone wants to join and see what that's about. But tell people like if you are connected to any mental health organizations, if you know men, you know black men especially who can benefit from some conversations deconstructing the High Value Man. We're going to be talking about spirituality, we're going to talk about fitness, we're going to talk about integrity, leadership and we're also going to talk about vulnerability and emotional. Yeah, emotional vulnerability. I'm going to have a conversation in relation to that whole anime thing that I'm going to be doing a presentation on. This is just going to be a conversation. So the self Black Men's Emotional Wellness Symposium is just, it's a day of conversations related to the topics, the sub categories of deconstructing the High Value Man. All right, so tell y'all friends. All right, tell your friends I'm dealing with this. Here's what I need from you, but do so after you've identified what it is that you need and if you need help with that, again, one on one support calls, make a donation when scheduled, a call, we talk for 30 minutes, whatever you need. Like we, we got you. So there's an intake form. You talk to me directly and then yeah, Yoga therapy, if you're wanting like some type of action, the thing you can listen to the yoga therapy episode. But essentially what we do is identify your mental, physical, spiritual, emotional baseline and then restore whatever imbalances there are from that and work towards whatever the goal is. The two clients I'm seeing now, a lot of it is going to be talking for them, a lot of it listening for me, and then creating and incorporating movement, breathing and more. You know, just creating the space for what needs to be communicated to be communicated. So. And I ain't gonna put their business out there. So yeah, if you're curious about yoga therapy, check out the yoga therapy tab on the website. Reach out to me. I'm. I am taking one more serious client so that I can fulfill the needs for my case study. So yeah, if you go to the yoga therapy tab, you read it, you listen to the video or watch the video and if it feels like something that is calling to you, please, I encourage you to reach out. All right, so go disclose to your friends, tell them what's up and I wish you all the best till next time.