In an earlier post, I discussed the importance of self-compassion, and as I progress further in my work, I become more and more certain that it is the cultivation of compassion, rather than the absence of painful emotions and anxiety, that is the hallmark of mental health. I want to expand a bit more on that here, as one integral aspect of compassion towards oneself is self-acceptance. In fact, I’m describing a self-acceptance so complete and pervasive that I call it a radical self-acceptance. What do I mean by this, and what does this have to do with sexuality?

In brief, let me first state before diving deeper, that our culture, at least when it comes to sexuality (and I would extend it further than that) is a shame-based culture. I have much more to say about that in my upcoming book (be sure to subscribe below to the blog or in the sidebar to the newsletter to stay updated on its release), but for now, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that a country has a sexually shame-based culture when same sex marriage was only nationally legalized a few months ago and people still have their children taken away in custody proceedings due to the nature of their sexuality. My colleague, Joe Kort, has written about the institutional trauma of growing up gay in this country; I would also add that there is an institutional trauma of growing up anything beyond normative and “vanilla.”

Unfortunately, the mental health field, while providing support and relief for millions of people, has also carried within its […]