Reparative Therapy - Part one.

Reparative Therapy, Sometimes known as Conversion therapy. Call it what you want, it causes psychological harm and feelings of failure.

Reparative Therapy

Sometimes known as Conversion therapy.

Two terms people use interchangeably, although practitioners say they are different.

I’m not presenting research here. I speak from my own experience in therapy, and from 40 to 50 conversations with others. That’s not enough for science. Personally, I feel it is enough to describe a pattern.

There’s a book on this topic that I won’t name because naming it feels like legitimizing it. If you’re curious, you can DM me.

On its website the founder of “reparative therapy” describes his approach like this:

It’s not conversion therapy.

It doesn’t shame clients.

It doesn’t coerce anyone.

It’s meant only for people who don’t identify with their same-sex attraction. (AKA SSA)

Then he lists the causes.

This is where it gets pseudoscientific.

According to him, “SSA” comes from childhood dynamics:

A “smothering” mother, to involved in your life.

A distant father.

An innately sensitive boy who longed for male closeness and grew up “romanticizing the maleness he craved.”

That’s the framework.

For what it’s worth, I only use “SSA” to describe people who genuinely feel pulled in both directions — what most would term ‘bisexuality’. Greater use of it is probably using it in as a stigmatizing psychological or a social manner, when the need doesn’t exist.

Organizations have crossed into outright conversion therapy — the stuff with physical coercion, aversive techniques (Negative associations), the things everyone agrees should never be done to a minor. I am grateful these were banned, rightly so. And to my fellow conservatives, we should wonder how we ever justified doing that to teenagers.

But even less extreme measures still left damage. Imagine sitting in a therapist’s office, for years trying to be honest about who you are. Continuously being told your attraction means you’re broken. And the reason you continue being gay is because you aren’t trying hard enough [in therapy] to change. This is my experience and sadly of many others. Given false hope that if just dug deeper, processed the “root cause,” you would end up a straight man.

I think it would make a good quote – Reparative therapy giving false hope [and promise] to being straight. Where one’s failure to change is due to their own fault and not putting in enough work.

I know this was true for me for many years. All I considered were the results of no longer being gay. I didn’t matter if I ended up with more confidence in myself. Being a kinder more considerate person and many other aspects that therapy can have someone grow.

I’ve spoken to too many people who walked into reparative therapy hoping to fix themselves and walked out feeling shattered.

Imagine the human cost of sitting in a room where the premise is:

There’s something wrong with you for being who you are. Now imagine how many people, quietly, privately, are still trying to live with the aftermath of that.

So much more to add, I think this is a good for a part one

I still want to delve into the daily pain. The Shame. The frum world being totally ok with gay jokes. And that surprisingly that conversion therapy is anti-Yiddishkeit. Why speaking or listening to Loshon Hora is worse than being gay.