For many of us, the coming of a new year is an opportunity to take inventory of our lives—where we have been in the past year or years, and where we would like to go in the year ahead. It is a chance for existential introspection and self-reflection.
"Omar," "Kelli" and "Brent" are pseudonyms for three psychotherapy clients in my clinical practice who are making resolutions to lead healthier and happier lives. Although some factual information about their life situations has been altered to protect their privacy, the essence of their issues remains the same.
Omar is a twentysomething male who is questioning his sexual identity. In large part because of his cultural background, the value of meeting parental and societal expectations over fulfilling personal needs is something that has been instilled upon him at a very early age. The psychological impact that this value has had on him has been to give greater priority to who he should be rather than who he is.
Having come to the recognition that he is paying a price for pleasing others at the expense of living his own life, he is now arriving at a juncture where he may need to disappoint others so as to not deny himself. Scared as he is, he also knows that enough is enough and he can no longer continue to fulfill others' dreams of him. In line with his New Year's resolution "to be more open and honest with myself," he is more willing, though reluctantly, to explore his sexual as well as other areas of his identity in his quest to become more genuine and authentic.
Kelli is a fiftysomething bisexual female who has become extremely successful in her professional life. She is an administrator for a large company and earns a six-figure income. She has worked extremely hard to get to where she is—at the expense of cultivating a personal life. One day, while doing work out of her home on a Sunday afternoon after already spending endless hours in her work office, she admitted to herself that she was feeling unfulfilled.
Because she was so driven to be stellar and look good in the eyes of others, she had forgotten about herself and made very little room for herself. It was at this moment that she knew that she needed to make significant changes to address the imbalance in her life. With the help of her life partner, who reportedly has a parallel struggle with work addiction, she resolves to make some much-needed drastic changes in her life. She recognizes that it will be an uphill battle for her, as much of her feeling of self-worth is inextricably tied to her ability to perform at the workplace, but she is committed to her New Year's and lifelong resolution.
Brent is a thirtysomething gay male who first came into treatment after being newly diagnosed with HIV. He was anxious about starting or holding off on antiretroviral medications. During the course of psychotherapy, he came to the awareness that his seroconversion was one of the multiple expressions of self-neglect arising from neglect in his childhood due to parental alcoholism. Already in recovery first from alcohol, then crystal meth, and most recently sexual addiction, his acquiring HIV had become his latest most significant life event.
Becoming HIV-positive has also become his most transformative life experience. He slowly began to relate to other gay men not as sexual objects but as human beings. He acknowledges that all of his behaviors were motivated by self-centeredness with little or no regard for others. More recently, he has come to the realization that he has been treating other gay men in the same vilified way that others have treated him for being gay. Upon gaining this insight, he is making the resolution to be kinder and gentler to his fellow gay men. He is going to make a deeply concerted effort to not be selective in a discriminatory way with whom he socializes. He resolves to make a genuine effort to not perpetuate the hateful way that members of the LGBT community can be toward one another and to instead reach out to the community in healthier ways.
Although Omar, Kelli and Brent are looking at the new year as a starting point, they are realistically aware that their commitment to their resolutions is a lifelong one. For the most part, they are aware that progress is a very gradual one, and that it is extremely easy to slip back into the familiar, though unhealthy, patterns. They are sufficiently fueled by their current state of unhappiness, however, which is a good enough starting point.
What are your New Year's resolutions, both to yourself and to your community?
Dr. Edward Fajardo is a licensed clinical psychologist in independent private practice specializing in gay-affirmative psychotherapy. He can be contacted at EJFajardo@aol.com or 312-623-0502.
