Dallas Bragg explains how shame works as a biological response to fear of rejection, especially for gay men whose desire was rejected in childhood. This early trauma creates an internal split where part of yourself becomes a monitor policing your thoughts and behavior, making you betray your own truth.
Shame is a biological response that kicks in when we fear social consequences like rejection, abandonment, punishment for being our true selves. For gay men, this architecture often begins very, very early. So think about it. As young boys, many of us learned that our natural expressions of desire, affection, or even our way of moving through the world could result in rejection, From the very people we needed most, those closest to us. So we created an internal split. We rejected the part of ourselves that we were told as bad, which became a part of ourselves that then polices our thoughts, our words, and our behavior. So we've betrayed our truth for so long, and we've lived in this way with this part so long, it's become our norm. So I want you to recognize shame. The Body Keeps the Score, one of those books that I really recommend you reading. I can't remember the author right now, but The Body Keeps the Score, read it.
