The Flame of Love

The Flame of Love

By

Payam Ghassemlou Ph.D.

On a daily basis, many of us spend a lot of time thinking about our life challenges. We think about all sorts of difficult situations, like financial problems, and make ourselves believe we can’t handle them. Catastrophic thinking about our lives bombards us with anxiety and contributes to our feeling of insecurity.

Many of us tend to project our past disappointments and failures into the future and make ourselves believe they are going to happen again. Consequently, we are going to feel paralyzed and unable to come up with creative solutions for our life problems. It is very difficult to feel confident, creative, and brave while we are intensely anxious. Obsessing on our life problems will not solve anything especially if we approach them with the same thinking pattern that created them. Thinking alone is not enough to cope with life issues.

As a psychotherapist, when I listen to people’s life struggles, I notice how much of their life suffering has to do with their habitual negative thinking. A common-sense approach might be to recommend positive thinking and offer people tools to challenge their pessimistic attitude. There is nothing wrong with that except we are being lead back to our thinking and having to deal with more thoughts in our heads. The never-ending battle between positive and negative thinking, which keep us in our heads, is not the only option.

We can learn from different spiritual teachings including Sufism on experiencing life through our hearts and less through our limited thoughts. These teachings can allow us to be in our hearts and not in a battle with our thoughts. Our thoughts need to be experienced in the field of the heart. In other words, thoughts must obey the heart because whenever the heart rules fear disappears.

One way to enter the realm of our heart is by activating our capacity to feel love. We can do this by remembering something or someone we care about. By using our imagination we can remember and picture anything that we love and open up our heart. We can meditate on that love in our heart and stay away from conflicting thoughts in our head. Each time we notice any of our thoughts we can embrace it with the love we feel in our heart. The flame of this love will burn our fearful thoughts and transform our anxious state of mind to a peaceful and loving state.

The goal is not to stop thinking, but to let ourselves feel more love in our heart. A good example of this is my patient Chad, a 34-year-old man who used to worry a lot. Every time he stayed with his thoughts about his stressful career or his relationship problems, he felt worse. He often anticipated and believed his painful past experiences are going to be repeated. After encouraging him to share about his life concerns and providing empathic listening, I encouraged him to try something different. I asked him to remember any loving situations and feel that love in his heart. He imagined and felt his love for his pet, and that love became the key to his heart. After entering his heart, I encouraged him to stay in that loving place. Any thoughts could be experienced in his heart. By practicing this simple meditation, he was able to let go of his worries. Throughout the day when he found himself lost in his catastrophic thoughts, he would remind himself that the place to be is “in my heart and not my head.”*

Chad was able to heal his anxiety provoking thoughts through meditating on the love in his heart. He realized the content of his mind can be experienced and filtered through his heart.

This type of healing can happen on a collective level as well. Not only can we make personal changes by coming from the heart but also collective changes. The mind has not been able to solve issues like war, disease, poverty, racism, homophobia, or violence against women and children. In fact, these issues have to do with destructive thoughts patterns and behaviors. As we learn to open our hearts and let the love flow in our hearts, we can pour that love into the universe and let it be used for the good of all people.

It is easier to trust what happens in our heart than in our busy mind. By being in the service of the heart, we have a better chance to resolve our personal and global problems. By letting our hearts work with our minds, we can change ourselves and the world.

© Payam Ghassemlou, MFT, Ph.D., SEP, is a psychotherapist (www.DrPayam.com), Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (www.SomaticAliveness.com), writer (https://www.drpayam.com/articles_and_book) ,and artist

(https://SomaticAlivenessArt.etsy.com).

 
Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist online anywhere in CA & Florida.

*Names and other details have been changed in respect for privacy and confidentiality.

Transforming Loneliness into Golden Solitude

Transforming Loneliness into Golden Solitude

By Payam Ghassemlou MFT, Ph.D.

www.drPayam.com

Loneliness has the potential to be transformed into meaningful solitude. When lonely, you might experience yourself as empty and void of vitality. You might long for someone to come into your life and save you from the isolation that people often feel with loneliness. This is why many people get into unhealthy relationships as a desperate way to not feel alone. The pain of being alone can cause you to have superficial ties to others and can put you at risk of becoming needy and clinging. You might also try to get rid of your lonely feeling with activities like excessive drinking, drug use, overeating, and overspending. Even though our extroverted culture encourages you to get rid of your lonely feeling with superficial activities, you can pay attention to your experience of loneliness with the intention of growing from it.

When you feel lonely, it’s important not to judge or compare yourself to others who seem happier. How you define your experience of being by yourself can impact how you feel about it. For example, if you think being alone means you are not a lovable person then loneliness can feel like a humiliating experience. Having shame for being alone can only make you feel worse. It is important to embrace loneliness as part of life and not personalize it as a shaming experience. Having compassion and empathy for our life’s challenges is an important step toward understanding them and eventually transforming loneliness to solitude.

To do this, it helps to get support from a friend or guide who is mature and experienced in mining the gold found in solitude. Sometimes loneliness can feel like being lost, and having a guide to help you start the journey towards solitude is important. This journey can include working with your inner child, journaling, dream work, and active imagination. It can also involve spiritual practices such as mediation.

Loneliness can be difficult to tolerate when you don’t have a conscious relationship with yourself. Sometimes loneliness can feel as though a small child is crying within you and in need of holding. If you have not cultivated self-compassion, you can’t take care of your lonely inner child, the child you once were which continues to live in your adult body. You might have felt lonely and abandoned growing up. Consciously connecting with these childhood experiences of loneliness and abandonment, and making emotional discoveries about them, are part of the healing process. Your inner child can be helped to feel safe. The key is consistency; you need to take time and reach out to your inner child. You can do this by meditating on the image of holding and loving the child you once were. This loving image can have a profound healing effect on your experience of loneliness and can strengthen your capacity to experience solitude. It can also help you to cultivate self-compassion. Getting in touch with painful, repressed feelings is a very intense process and should be done with the help of a psychotherapist or other knowledgeable guide.

You can examine your loneliness through journal writing. By writing about loneliness while you are experiencing it in the moment, you can bring consciousness to it. Writing in a journal can help you organize the contents of your mind and avoid keeping things inside. You can put your lonely experience in perspective and gain more clarity when you write about it. The writing needs to be done with an attitude of caring and compassion. Blaming and criticizing yourself or others for being alone is not going to help you to grow from the writing experience. With patience, the light of consciousness during the writing process eventually transforms your loneliness to a more meaningful experience.

Psychological inner work such as dream work can help you to open yourself up to messages from the unconscious. Through writing your dreams in a dream journal and making efforts to understand them, you can have a profound experience honoring your unconscious. Dream work can deepen your relationship with yourself. Knowing yourself can help you to become your own caring friend, which reduces loneliness. One of the Sufi poets who have inspired me to pay attention to my dreams is Rumi. In his poems on dreams, Rumi encourages us to pay attention to wonders that manifest in sleep.

Working with the power of the active imagination can transform loneliness. This technique can help you imagine and explore your inner world. You can dialogue with different parts of yourself including your lonely self. Showing curiosity toward this lonely self, and having a dialogue with it through active imagination, are important steps to reduce the feeling of isolation and create solitude. To learn more about active imagination, I recommend a wonderful book, “Inner Work,” by Robert A. Johnson.

Adding a spiritual perspective can move you to a new and higher level. It is like climbing a hill and being able to see the whole countryside. Each of us can find a spiritual path and spiritual practices that feel right.

One of the spiritual practices that I am familiar with is meditation. Meditation can change your loneliness and become a doorway to a sacred place in your heart. In this sacred place is a window that opens up to a field with light and intoxicating fragrance. This intoxication is a divine experience that words often cannot describe it.

During meditation you can be aware of your breath. Each breath can connect you more deeply to your higher Self. You have the potential to be a spiritual purifier by the quality of your breath. Through this practice, your loving thoughts, feelings, imagination, and actions can impact the universe.

The psychological and spiritual work you do can help you grow bigger than the painful experiences of loneliness. Working on yourself can help you enter a vast space of solitude where you can be part of the community of people who are consciously alone for the purpose of enlightenment. Spiritual practice such as meditation can add sweet fragrance to your experience of solitude.

Just like an alchemist, you can turn something like loneliness to something more like solitude. Psychological work and spiritual practice are the fire needed to transform the lead of painful loneliness to golden solitude. What deep and lasting contentment you can find in your life as you enter nourishing solitude.

© Payam Ghassemlou, MFT, Ph.D., SEP, is a psychotherapist (www.DrPayam.com), Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (www.SomaticAliveness.com), writer (https://www.drpayam.com/articles_and_book) ,and artist

(https://SomaticAlivenessArt.etsy.com).

 
Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist online anywhere in CA & Florida.

Sharing and Listening

By Payam Ghassemlou MFT, Ph.D.

Have you ever had the experience of sharing your life challenges or problems with an empathic listener who gave you his or her undivided attention? A kind of listener who did not judge you and really cared about what you had to say. Someone who was not quick to give you advice and solutions but was interested to hear how you felt about your life challenges. When I recall my experiences of feeling heard and deeply understood by someone I know how much the experience helped me to cope with whatever I was dealing with at the time. Caring people who I have turned to in difficult times helped me the most by listening and asking about my feelings. By encouraging me to talk about my feelings they gave me opportunity to put words into how I was feeling. Each time I named how I felt inside in relation to what was going on in my life I felt more in control.

During one of my volunteer works at a local HIV and Cancer clinic I found the helpfulness of empathic listening. As a volunteer I was providing emotional support to people with health related problems. Empathic listening really made a difference on how patients felt about their health problems. By sharing about their pain and suffering and my willingness to listen they felt less alone. Feeling alone and facing difficult life challenges can be very painful. Having a witness to life sufferings in the form of an empathic listener can make it less painful. For example, patients who could identify their feelings of fear and vulnerability in relation to their health problems and communicate those feelings began to feel less dominated by fear and vulnerability. By becoming aware of their feelings they felt more mastery over their feelings.

We can make life easier for each other by becoming a better listener and encourage each other to share about our feelings. We can become a better listener by avoid giving advice and trying to problem solve unless we are asked to do so. Pressuring others to solve their life problems "our ways" is not helpful. Most people intuitively know how to solve their own problems. A good listener can help them to access that knowing place that has all the answers. As a listener it’s important to be patient and not interrupt the speaker. Let him or her say what they need to say. Ask helpful questions which help your listener expand on what they need to talk about. Let them know its ok to talk about their feelings and support them in feeling their feelings.

When one does not share nor reach out for support He or she can remain a lonely mystery. Life can feel lonely when one keeps everything inside. Feeling alone with life problems can feel worse than the problem itself. When we let a caring person to listen to our life struggle we no longer feel alone with our struggle. Don’t be afraid asking your loved ones to take time and hear you out. Sometimes you have to ask for it. People cannot read your mind. Confiding in others can have a positive effect on our mood.

Make a conscious decision to inquire about your friends or loved ones on what’s going on in their lives. By showing interest in the life of people you care about you can strengthening your friendships. It’s very simple and yet it can make a big difference in the way you relate to each other.

  

© Payam Ghassemlou, MFT, Ph.D., SEP, is a psychotherapist (www.DrPayam.com), Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (www.SomaticAliveness.com), writer (https://www.drpayam.com/articles_and_book) ,and artist

(https://SomaticAlivenessArt.etsy.com).

 
Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist online anywhere in CA & Florida.

He is the author of Fruit Basket: A Gay Man’s Journey. In his book, Dr. Payam Ghassemlou writes about the psycho-spiritual journey of a gay man named Javid, in which he struggles with homophobia and having a life purpose. Available on Amazon

Coming Out for Gay and Lesbian Iranians

Coming Out for Gay and Lesbian Iranians

By 

Payam Ghassemlou MFT, Ph.D.

As a gay Iranian living in Los Angeles, I would like to do my part in bringing attention to the fear, shame and isolation that many gay Iranians (LGBT community) experience living in Iran and overseas. Per my dialogue with other gay Iranians, who are still living in Iran or have recently escaped the country, and as noted in several news articles, countless number of gays have been tortured and persecuted by the Iranian government. It has been reported that undercover Iranian law enforcement has entrapment operations that arrest and execute suspected gay people in secret prisons. Despite extreme violence against gay people in Iran, many still risk their lives by trying to exercise their basic human needs to connect and build loving relationships. They are brave people for jeopardizing their lives this way.

The world knows that not only the gay population but Iran itself is a victim of oppression. With worldwide recognition, the 2009 uprising in Iran has gained respect internationally at the cost of many sacrificing their lives just to be differentiated from the regime of the current dictator, Khamenei.  More international efforts are being called to help Iran.

Gay Iranians who live abroad are dealing with other sets of challenges, including the struggle to come out and live an authentic life. They may not deal with Iran’s oppressive government, but they still find themselves oppressed by both intrinsic and extrinsic homophobia. Growing up in a homophobic and heterosexist society contributes to the angst of shame and rejection that most gay Iranians experience. Heterosexism dictates only one kind of existence and it is being married to the opposite sex and raising children. Any deviation from such a traditional lifestyle is denounced by individuals and religious groups that patronize heterosexism. One can only imagine how it feels like for LGBT people to grow up in such societies.

Extrinsic homophobia that many gay people experience includes being bullied and called derogatory names, not having freedom to marry, getting fired from their job, being blamed for AIDS, and becoming victim of gay bashing. As long as gay people are subject to homophobic mistreatment, the fight to challenge homophobia needs to continue.

The remedy for the negative impact of homophobia and heterosexism is self acceptance. Learning to take pride in one’s gay identity is an important step toward healing. Pride and self-acceptance requires work and dedication which involves participation in gay-affirming counseling sessions, attending coming out groups, volunteering for gay pride events, reading self affirming books, and building friendships with other gay people.

Gay Iranians often deal with lack of family acceptance and support. Many Iranian families who migrated to the United States live in close knit communities. Most of which live in Southern California and are most commonly referred to as Persians. For the most part, the Persian community does not embrace gayness. Lack of acceptance by the community and by their family members make it very difficult for some gay Persians to come out. As an immigrant myself, I understand that having a strong relationship with one’s family and one’s community are vital in order to survive in a foreign country. Many gay Iranians live a double life as a way to avoid jeopardizing such vital support. Staying “in the closet” helps many gay Iranians avoid rejection from their family and their community, but it comes with a high price. Many closeted gay people resort to lying and hiding their true identity which later on can lead to negative feelings like dishonesty and disingenuous.  Gay individuals need to obtain support in order to avoid remaining a victim of homophobia and live a double life.

Coming out involves a degree of differentiation and establishment of a personal identity outside one’s family. Another reason gay Iranians might have a harder time coming out is due to difficulty in having a different identity than what is expected from their own family. A traditional Iranian family is patriarchal, and the father is the undisputed head of the family. The mother tends to encourage her children to respect their father’s authority and seek his approval.  For the most part, no one dares to question this system, sacrificing one’s needs to gain parental approval. In many Iranian family systems, there is no room to express one’s gay identity. In most Iranian families coming out is viewed as “bringing shame to their family.”  It is not uncommon for Iranian parents suppress their gay children by using guilt factors like accusing them of being “namak nashnas” (Persian for ungrateful).

Even though Persians  who migrated to the United States are very educated people, still many of them believe that being gay is a choice and one can always change. I disagree on the other hand.  It has never been a matter of choice for me and my intention of coming out to my family during my early twenties is to have a real relationship with them and stop pretending.

Sadly, for some repercussions of “coming out” can entails family violence, homelessness or extreme financial burden. The decision to come “out of the closet” is a continuous process that requires support from other individuals who have relevant experiences. Each individual has to assess his or her personal safety before deciding to move forward and come out. No one should be pressured or forced to come out.

Iranian families, who are dealing with their children coming out, also go through a painful journey. Many parents raise their children hoping they would grow up “normal” as affirmed by the conservative society. They look forward to having grand children as a result of their children’s heterosexual union. “Coming out” can shatter such dreams for many parents. Support groups are encouraged to assist these parents who mourn the loss of their children’s perceived heterosexual identity. Parents would often blame themselves, and they find difficulty understanding that it is not merely a choice. We are born this way.  The best thing Iranian families can do for their gay children is accepting and loving them with no judgment. There is no valid reason for families to fall apart.

Being gay is more about loving another human being and should never be judged as unnatural. PFLAG, Parents, Friends and Families of Lesbians and Gays, is a national non-profit organization that aims to provide families with moral support and counseling to address their issues.

Despite all the suffering that gay people worldwide, Iranians as well, have endured due to homophobia, many have overcome these challenges and live happy lives. “It does get better,” as the saying goes.

No one should be made to feel bad about his or her identity. Iranian people have a rich culture of poetry and mysticism that is filled with homoerotic stories and poems. We can look into our own rich literature for validation of gay love. We can stand together and help to liberate one another from the bondage of homophobia hoping someday none of us has to suffer for love.

© Payam Ghassemlou, MFT, Ph.D., SEP, is a psychotherapist (www.DrPayam.com), Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (www.SomaticAliveness.com), writer (https://www.drpayam.com/articles_and_book) ,and artist

(https://SomaticAlivenessArt.etsy.com).

 
Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist online anywhere in CA & Florida.

He is the author of Fruit Basket: A Gay Man’s Journey. In his book, Dr. Payam Ghassemlou writes about the psycho-spiritual journey of a gay man named Javid, in which he struggles with homophobia and having a life purpose. Available on Amazon

The Balancing Act of Sexual Desire

The Balancing Act of Sexual Desire

By

Payam Ghassemlou Ph.D.

Given many gay men have received negative messages about their sexual desire growing up, addressing the issue of sexual compulsion needs to be done delicately and carefully without reinforcing shame or internalized homophobia. There is a developing need to address the issue of sexual compulsion, and helping people to fulfil their sexual desire in concert with consciousness and balance. Denying and repressing sexual desire is not a helpful way to cope with any sexually related issue. The balancing act of sexual desire involves expressing your sexuality in a way that does not leave you feeling empty and destitute.

When sexual gratification becomes your exaggerated area of focus, you can become a slave of sexual desire. When your relationship to sex is dominated by an endless desire for hooking up without any regard for how it can affect you and others, you are not in control. Such loss of control can have damaging life consequences which include contracting a sexually transmitted illness, damaging one’s relationships, jeopardizing one’s career, legal problems, and loss of self-respect. Being in denial about your relationship to sex can make it difficult to seek help. Bringing consciousness to your choices about sex can lead to healthy sexuality.

An important step toward liberating yourself from the bondage of any damaging behaviors is by focusing on growing bigger than the problem. As Carl Jung stated, “We don’t solve our problems, we outgrow them.”  You can do this by focusing on personal growth and expanding your consciousness. There are many paths you can take to evolve beyond your problems and psychotherapy is one of them. Psychotherapy might be what you need to bring a balancing act in your relationship to your sexual expression. It takes courage to face life challenges including addictive behaviors of any sort and cultivate new coping skills. In addition to counseling, there are many community based groups including SCA (Sexually Compulsive Anonymous) that can support you on your journey toward recovering from sexual choices that make you feel bad about yourself.

Sex fulfills different functions for different people. You might turn to sex to numb yourself from painful emotions. Substituting sex for dealing with life problems is not going to make those problems go away. No one said life was going to be easy and free from difficulties. You can learn to face life and expand your “window of tolerance” when it comes to feeling your feelings. The life damaging consequences of any addiction is far more painful than embracing your uncomfortable emotions. It takes psychological and spiritual labor to develop a conscious relationship to your erotic desires and how to go about expressing them.

When you prioritize sex as your most important need and pursue it in an excessive amount, it can indicate that you don’t have something more purposeful in life to focus on. When you began to give up your pathological relationship to sex, you need something better in its place to enrich your life. Giving up anything life damaging and time consuming provides you with free time to pursue something worthier. By embracing your feeling of curiosity, you can explore new activities and life purpose and add more meaning to your life. With the support of counseling, community based support groups, and your own will power, you can focus on something bigger and more meaningful in life than being preoccupied with sex.

For more articles by Dr. Payam, please click on the following link:  https://drpayam.com/articles_and_book

© Payam Ghassemlou, MFT, Ph.D., SEP, is a psychotherapist (www.DrPayam.com), Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (www.SomaticAliveness.com), writer (https://www.drpayam.com/articles_and_book) ,and artist

(https://SomaticAlivenessArt.etsy.com).

 
Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist online anywhere in CA & Florida.