182. Releasing Gay Trauma and Shame Through Somatic Therapy (with Sean Hershey)

Guest Opener (0:00)

Sean Hershey

That was mostly about experiencing pleasure in the body, which is like, Oh, how positive. Today I'm here to, like, bring the shadow side. Like, today we're talking about the pain you.

Episode Introduction (0:30)

Rob Loveless

Hello, my LGBTQuties, and welcome back to another episode of A Jaded Gay. I'm Rob Loveless, and today I am a non-jaded gay because the end is finally in sight.

I am just wrapping up the spring semester, which has probably been one of the hardest for me yet, and then I have a little break until July.

Like in May and June, I have a few classes sprinkled in here and there to prepare for a study abroad trip in late June. And then my actual summer classes don't start until a few weeks later.

So it'll be nice to have some downtime, because I've been feeling really burnt out lately, and so I've been trying to be better at giving myself some downtime to relax.

Somatic Therapy (1:03)

Rob Loveless

And speaking of listening to our bodies and giving it what it needs. Today, we have a very special guest joining us to talk about somatic therapy.

Now, last summer, we had a conversation with Court Vox about somatic therapy as it relates to pleasure, but today, we're shifting to focus on leveraging somatic therapy to address chronic stress and pain.

So we'll be getting into that shortly. But before we do, you know the drill. Let's play our tarot card.

Tarot (1:29)

Rob Loveless

So today we drew the Seven of Wands in reverse. Now this is a Minor Arcana card, so it's indicating small things to implement in our day-to-day lives. Wands is tied to the element of fire.

It's masculine energy, so it's very action oriented. And Wands is tied to passion, creativity, and sometimes sexuality. It's number seven in the suit and in numerology, seven represents transformation.

And when we draw this card in reverse, it's telling us that we might be feeling overwhelmed at the moment.

Maybe we've taken on too much, or there are too many responsibilities being placed upon us, and we're really feeling it now.

So because of this, we might be feeling vulnerable. So we need to actively rebuild our confidence and self-esteem so we can place trust in ourselves to achieve what we set out to do.

Guest Introduction (2:04)

Rob Loveless

And with that in mind, I am very excited to welcome our next guest. He is a licensed psychotherapist and somatic practitioner. Please welcome Sean Hershey. Hi, Sean, how are you today?

Sean Hershey

I'm good. How are you? Thanks for having me.

Rob Loveless

Of course, thanks for coming on today. Very excited to go over this topic about somatic therapy. We did have Court Vox on last year to go over it, and that was the first time I'd heard of somatic therapy.

So I've been really interested in learning more. And when you reached out, it seemed like a perfect opportunity to collaborate. So I'm getting ahead of myself, though.

Before we get into everything, can you introduce yourself to all the listeners? Tell them about how you identify, your career, background, pronouns, all that fun stuff?

Sean Hershey

Yes. Yes, yes. Glad to be here and glad to talk about somatic therapy with you and with your audience. So my name is Sean.

I am a therapist, an LCSW, and I have been a psychotherapist for 12 years. I use he/him pronouns, gay man.

I think I mean what we'll talk about today is mind-body work, the mind-body connection, and my specialty now is helping clients heal from chronic pain using emotional and psychological modalities, which what I always say is, most people don't even know that's possible, but it is.

I didn't know that was possible until about three years ago, well, three and a half years ago, when I discovered this kind of stuff for myself.

And I've had, like, a terrible personal journey with IBS, irritable bowel syndrome, that has, like, truly, cleared up, like I do not have chronic irritable bowel syndrome anymore.

I've had a bunch of different what would be called, in the chronic pain world, symptom imperatives, so different, like physical issues throughout my body, all of which have improved significantly or gone away completely, and I don't have the chronic issue anymore.

It's kind of magical how well this stuff works. And so, yeah, this is the kind of therapy that I practice now. So yeah, happy to happy to be here and happy to talk about it.

Rob Loveless

And I like to ask all my guests today, are you a jaded or non-jaded gay and why?

Sean Hershey

I knew you would ask that because I listened to the podcast. Am I?

You know, I'm pretty non-jaded today, and I guess maybe a good, very topical reason for, you know, bringing this up today is so many people in the world suffer from chronic pain and chronic symptoms with no solution.

Like, go to the doctor, try this, try that, go to an acupuncturist, try this, try that. And sometimes that stuff works. Awesome. Many times it doesn't.

And then people are left, like not knowing what to do with themselves, not believing there's any solution, and they're stuck, just as a person who has a bad back or has a bad knee, or, um, has migraines half the days of the month.

And I will say it is very non, I'm very non-jaded in the sense of, like, now I know that people don't have to live that way, and there is a solution for so many more conditions that people are dealing with than people realize.

In some ways I am jaded, though, so I guess I'm kind of both, like, I feel like you can't live in this world and not be a little jaded. So I maybe the fair answer is both.

Rob Loveless

I think that's fair. I think it's a balance. And I think especially in this day and age, it's pretty easy to just be jaded by default, because you turn on the TV and there's a whole lot of not great things going on.

So I think it's important to kind of try to find those moments of non-jadedness to balance each other out.

Sean Hershey

1,000%. 1,000%. I will say I'm not jaded about the topic at hand, but I am jaded. So both.

What Is Somatic Therapy? (5:48)

Rob Loveless

Fair enough. Well, like we had talked about at the top, somatic therapy.

We've covered this a little bit in the past episode, but for any listeners who may not be familiar with it, how would you explain what somatic therapy is and how it works differently from traditional talk therapy when it comes to addressing stress, trauma, and physical symptoms in the body?

Sean Hershey

I listened to the last episode you did about somatic therapy, which was awesome.

I mean, it's, it's funny thinking about that, because that was mostly about like, pleasure and experiencing pleasure in the body, which is like, Oh, how positive.

Today, we're talking about, like, I'm here to, like, bring the shadow side. Like, today we're talking about the pain, you know.

And while that may seem sort of like negative to be talking about pain, I think it's very important, because so many people, that's their life, or it's part of their life. I mean, so many people, especially a lot of queer people, struggle with chronic pain and chronic symptoms.

It's so common. Okay, so somatic therapy. What is it? I mean, there's many different sort of definitions of somatic therapy.

Somatic means, even though there's different definitions of it's the kind of word that it's like, you know, if you search on Instagram somatic work, you're gonna find it's very popular right now. You know it's trending.

Somatic can mean just of the body. Somatic. There's also a definition by one of the like father, grandfathers of the field.

His name is Thomas Hanna, he would describe somatic as meaning the body as experienced from within. And I really like that definition of somatic, the body as experienced from within. What is somatic therapy?

Okay, great question. Somatic therapy is different from most kinds of like regular therapy, because in most kinds of therapy, what the therapist and the client are doing is working mostly with the conscious brain.

So working with like the front of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, and, you know, talking through problems, talking through issues, coming up with solutions to problems, coming up with solutions to issues, figuring out, like, if you feel depressed, why do you feel depressed?

And can we solve the problem underneath the depression? If you're anxious, why do you feel anxious? And can we solve the problem underneath the anxiety? All, I mean, all of that is great work.

You know, I don't mean to say anything negative about any other kind of therapy, because all of that is great work.

Somatic therapy is for when that kind of stuff is not going to work, because there are some, if not many, problems in the world and in people's lives that there is no, like, there are no solutions to and there's no way to fix it.

And somatic therapy is about going below the prefrontal cortex and going into, like, the deeper parts of the brain and the deeper parts of and getting into the body.

And that stuff usually, I mean, you know, it lives below the level of consciousness. And so as a somatic therapist, I'm looking for and listening for, like, the deeper drives, the deeper conflicts, the stuff that's underneath, you know, someone's like, I have my anxiety is so bad.

Help me solve my anxiety, for example. Cognitive behavioral therapist who's working more from a prefrontal-cortex, conscious-thoughts place, they'd be like, Okay, let's let's figure out how to calm. how can we calm down your anxiety? What are you anxious about?

A somatic therapist is going to be the work. One thing I will say is that the work will go deeper. That's that's for sure, the work will go deeper, and it will be much more about like, if you're feeling anxious, we don't want to just shut shut that off. Like, we don't want to just turn that down, like you're not crazy.

And crazy isn't even really the right word. It's like you're not making it up. You're not ridiculous for feeling the way you feel. Like you are a person with a body that's responding to something, and if you feel anxious, there's a reason for that.

And so it's our goal to, like, trust what you're feeling, and get to know what you're feeling and take it seriously. And in doing so, we stop fighting with like, I feel anxious, but I don't want to, Oh, stop.

You know, there's so much internal tension. Like, I hate my feelings. I hate, I hate what I feel. We try to, like, really move past that in somatic therapy and just allow what you feel so you're not fighting with it anymore and allowing what you feel, and letting yourself feel it, and then figuring out, like, what does that mean about you?

And what does that mean about what you really need and who you really are? That, it helps people on a very profound level, and it certainly has helped me on a very profound level.

So, yeah, it's about going deeper. Somatic therapy is about going deeper than than the top level of the brain. Like I said, there's nothing wrong with top level of the brain therapy.

If that works for you, awesome. Great. You know, if it doesn't, this is a good place to seek some help then.

How Chronic Stress Shows Up in the Body (10:55)

Rob Loveless

And I love that answer, because I think for so many people, it's easy to think I don't want to feel anxiety or anger or depression, because we label those as negative emotions.

But it's impossible to just avoid them completely, and it's important to be able to dig into them, to understand the root causes of it.

Because especially anxiety and stress, can, like you said, result in physical symptoms on the body.

And I think for so many gay men, we kind of have anxiety as a base level, just because of growing up feeling the need to kind of suss out if, you know, environments are safe, if people are safe.

Hiding, you know, a core identity of who ourselves are, there's a lot of anxiety there. So I think this could be a greatly beneficial tool for gay men.

So with that in mind, you know, many people think of stress as something happening only in the mind, but somatic therapy, like you said, suggests the body plays a major role in that.

So how does chronic stress usually show up physically in the body?

Sean Hershey

I mean, there's, um, they're the things that most people would totally recognize as stress in the body, like, heart racing, heart pounding, sweaty palms, feeling hot.

You know, they're the things that are very, like we all kind of culturally know, like, Oh, those physical sensations mean anxiety or stress.

What a lot of people don't know is that, and I know for a long time, until until a couple years ago, is that a lot of chronic pain and chronic symptoms, that people believe that pain and symptoms in the body, the only possible reason you would ever have pain or symptoms in your body is because there's something structurally wrong with the body or some kind of disease at the site of the pain.

Obviously, that is sometimes the case. You know, if you you know, someone slaps you in the face like your face is gonna hurt. If you break your leg, your leg is gonna hurt.

If you like, I mean, you know, obviously it is very much true that if you have some kind of disease, like, for example, I get strep throat a lot. Yeah, my throat hurts when I get strep throat. Like, like, that kind of those pains and symptoms.

That is one thing that pain and symptoms could mean, is that there's something wrong with the body at the site of the pain. But it's not the only thing. And a lot of symptoms, especially a lot of chronic symptoms, are actually about emotional and psychological issues, not about something being wrong with your body at the site of the pain. I actually brought with me a little list of classic manifestations of mind-body pain.

So let me just read this off so that people understand, like what you know, so people can sort of count themselves in and understand what I'm talking about, what I'm talking about.

Maybe some people are familiar. It's the work of Dr John Sarno, who wrote a book called Healing Back Pain in 1991 that has, you know, it's all about like, you think your back pain means, like you need back surgery, but really it's like your emotional life. So, like, that's, that's how you heal, is by healing emotionally.

There's a kind of therapy. It's called pain reprocessing therapy, PRT. It's, um, it's kind of new. So maybe not a lot of people have heard of it, but maybe some people... the reason I'm saying this, I'm sure some of your listeners have probably heard of Dr. John Sarno, or heard of pain reprocessing therapy.

If people have heard of that, yes, this is it. This, this is what I'm talking about. But the sort of classic conditions that this paradigm applies to would be most cases of chronic back pain, chronic neck pain, chronic hip pain, chronic shoulder pain, knee pain, elbow pain, pain from disc bulges, pain from disc degeneration, other musculoskeletal pain, sciatica, neuropathy, migraine, irritable bowel syndrome, pelvic pain, interstitial cystitis, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS), and there are more, but you know, for the sake of time, those are kind of like, kind of the heavy hitters.

So yeah, when people think like, oh, you know, anxiety must just be in my brain, or there's something wrong with my brain. Quote unquote something's wrong with my brain. There's not something wrong with your brain.

But people might also think like, oh, you know, my racing heart or my sweaty palms, whatever, that's anxiety. But I want to bring the message that many of these conditions that you would probably not really associate with your emotional life, might actually be about your emotional life.

Queer Identity, Stress, and Chronic Pain (15:25)

Rob Loveless

And gay men often grow up navigating societal pressures, rejection, or the need to hide parts of themselves.

So how can those experiences create long term stress patterns that eventually take a physical toll on the body?

Sean Hershey

That's a great question, and that's just totally my own personal experience for sure. You know like that is, and that's such a huge reason, I'm sure, why I have developed so many chronic pain conditions over the course of my life.

Because, yeah, I grew up in that exact kind of mindset of like, you're not allowed to be who you are. There's something wrong with you. Being gay is so bad, and me, like deeply fearing, like, Am I gay?

Oh, God, I hope not. And like, struggling to come out to myself, struggling to come out in general. And, yeah, most gay and queer people deal with that. But okay, what, what is it? How does that contribute to pain and symptoms and to, you know, this kind of stuff.

Most people with chronic pain and chronic symptoms are the kinds of people who, like we have learned somewhere over the course of our life, our lives, that it's not really safe to be who we are, and it's not really safe to feel the emotions that we feel. And it's not safe to like be in the body that we have.

That's a common experience that runs through basically all people who struggle with chronic pain that comes from an emotional or psychological place. The reason that translates into pain is because pain is a danger signal.

So in the same way, like I said, if somebody slaps you in the face, like your face is going to hurt because your face is in danger. You break your leg, your leg is going to hurt because your leg is in danger. You put your hand on a hot stove, your hand is going to hurt because your hand is in danger.

If you have learned throughout the course of your life that the person that you are, the body that you have, like the natural drives that you have, the things that you want, the way that you are in the world. If you've learned that, like, I think maybe I just said this, the emotions that you have.

If you've learned that you are not okay, you will be fighting an internal, often subconscious battle between, like, I don't want to be myself, but I we all are ourselves, like there's no way around that. Like we're all born as a human with a personality and with like, we all come into the world with something like, we are all a person.

And if you have this belief like, which we all come by totally honestly, like, no one wants to believe this. This is like cultural conditioning and family conditioning, community conditioning.

But if we've been conditioned to believe that there's something wrong with us, then we are going to feel in danger all the time, because every time that we are, like everywhere you go, there you are. So if you feel that you are, it is threatening to be you, there will be a sense of danger in your life all the time.

And since pain is a danger signal that can very easily boil over into causing pain and symptoms. So it's very, very, I wouldn't even say common. It's it's almost like 100%. I mean, I don't know, I don't know.

I don't know if I can say that, but most, it's probably almost 100% of people who struggle with chronic pain, and it's coming from an emotional place, have this issue where we feel that it's not okay to have the emotions we have, and we feel it's not okay to be the people we are.

The treatment for chronic pain, then, is like making friends with your emotions, and making friends with yourself and learning that it's like it's okay. Like you can be yourself, you can have the emotions you have, which is really empowering and also really hard when you've lived a whole life where you feel it's not okay.

But it's, but it's um, it's work that's good for you, not only because it'll resolve your pain and your symptoms, but because it's, I mean, it's just such a better life to just be yourself and be okay with yourself.

Internalized Shame and the Body (19:31)

Rob Loveless

Absolutely. And many queer people grow up internalizing messages about who they're supposed to be. So from a somatic perspective, how does internalized shame actually live or manifest in the body?

Sean Hershey

I mean, that is so true. It's, it's in, I would say again, like it manifests in ways that we're not fully aware of. Like we may, you know, it's not culturally understood that back pain might mean like you are feeling the effects of all the stifling, all the emotional stifling you've been through in your life.

All the trauma you've been through in your life that has made you so small, and you're now fighting this internal battle all the time. Like, can I Say this? Can I do this? I should just be quiet.

I don't deserve the things that I want. I don't deserve the things that I need. It's not really understood culturally that that that might be what your back pain is, that might be what your wrist pain is, that might be what your carpal tunnel is.

That might be why you have migraines many days a month. That might be why you have chronic irritable bowel syndrome. Might be why your hip hurts all the time.

So, I mean, if people who are listening are relating to this, I would really recommend they check out, like I said, Dr. John Sarno's book Healing Back Pain. He has multiple books, and I you know, there's The Divided Mind is a really good one.

The mind-body Prescription is a really good one. All of these books and resources kind of wake people up to the idea like, oh, wow, this might be what's going on for me and my the way that I've been treating my symptoms as something's wrong with my body and going to the doctor and considering surgery and physical therapy.

If that stuff hasn't helped you, it might be because this is what's going on. And you didn't realize, just like I didn't realize for years, that, like, what's going on in your body is a reaction to stress, it is a reaction to trauma, it is a reaction to self-stifling. It's, um, it's not that there's something, I mean, like, yeah, there's, we could say, like, you're not making the pain up.

Like, you know, it's, it's not like, it's not like there's nothing wrong with your body. Like your body's feeling something, that's for sure. But the crux of the issue is not what you thought it was. The crux of the issue is emotional and psychological, not that, like you have to structurally fix your body, you know what I mean?

Hypervigilance and the Nervous System (22:00)

Rob Loveless

Definitely. And like we talked about earlier, there's also hypervigilance, or that feeling of always being on guard as an LGBTQ+ person.

So what does that look like in the nervous system, and why can be difficult for people to fully relax, even when they're in safe environments?

Sean Hershey

I mean the brain gets, the brain gets stuck, and the body gets stuck, and we get used to not being safe. And so the clinical term that, like, you know, therapists, psychologists, mental health professionals, would use would be, it's called, it's like, it generalizes.

So if you feel, you know, if, like, for me, for example, I grew up in Catholic school, in an environment that was not blatantly terrible. Like it could have been a lot worse, but it was homophobic, and I was not allowed to be myself, and I was not celebrated for being me, and I was not celebrated for being like a feminine child and all of that.

And so I, you know, my brain learned like, you can't really be yourself around other people, and other people aren't really going to respect you, like you, unless you like, you know, sort of hide your true self and, you know, be quiet and just like go along.

And those kinds of messages, you know, especially when this kind of trauma happens early on, like early on in childhood, when it happens in families, you know, like a lot of people's, a lot of people's parents don't fully see them, fully attuned to them.

I mean, and you know, most parents want their kids to be a certain way, or they want their kids to be like them, or they want their kids to be easy and so it's completely understandable. But as such, many, many, many children don't get, like, fully attuned to and are, like, fully able to really be themselves and their families.

So I mean this, and those are two common examples, like family and community, where you might not be allowed to be yourself. But that could happen, I mean, that can happen anywhere. Those are just two common examples, but this becomes what would be called generalized.

So somebody who feels like, I'm not allowed to be myself doesn't have the insight as a child like, Oh, I'm not allowed to be myself around these people in this community, because you don't the brain doesn't have that contextual awareness, because you only know your family.

You only know your context. So moving, when you move forward into the rest of your life, you just go forward with again, usually not the prefrontal cortex, conscious belief that I'm not allowed to be myself, but a deeper, like a deeper sort of fear, body based knowing. I shouldn't say knowing, because it's not the truth. Belief, a deeper body based belief that you're not safe to be yourself and no one's going to understand you, and you better.

Be quiet or be a performer. You know people, there's so many different ways that one can manage this kind of stress and like strategies people can use to hide their true selves. But it becomes generalized very, very easily into like all relationships and all environments and all people you ever meet, and all places you ever go.

And that's why therapy is so helpful, because therapy can be a place to like, really work through that stuff and understand that that context was not safe, but other contexts are safe, and those People were did not let you be yourself, but you can be yourself.

And oftentimes, if, especially early, if in your early family or early life, you weren't allowed to be yourself, you don't even know who you are. You know like that, that's something that I feel most people are working through as adults, and certainly myself included.

Like I it's still hard for me. Sometimes I'm like, what do I really want? Like, I don't know. Like, it like, it's hard to know, especially when you've been trained to cut off what you really want and who you really are and your real, your real desire.

So yeah, it becomes generalized very easily. But that's not a permanent situation. You know, there's therapy, journaling, self-healing, you know, all it's, that stuff is workable. Like that, stuff can definitely change.

The Long-Term Effects of Hypervigilance (26:03)

Rob Loveless

And diving into that a little bit deeper, many queer people learn to scan their environment for safety, like reading the room, watching reactions, adjusting their behavior, which we kind of just talked about.

So how does that survival strategy affect the nervous system long term over time?

Sean Hershey

I mean, in many ways, first, it can cause chronic pain and symptoms, which I really want to drive home to your audience, because so many people don't include that in the list of like, how does stress affect the body? That is definitely a way that it could, that it can affect the body.

So first, chronic pain symptoms. Second, you know, chronic anxiety, feeling anxious all the time. Like you know, that's a huge issue for a lot of queer people, a lot of queer people.

And another way that this affects people that I think is less known and less talked about, is that you then, like, if you're constantly scanning your environment for like, like a queer person who's always just looking out for like, what do other people think?

How are other people receiving me? What do other people want me to say? What do people respond well to? What do people excuse me, not want me to say and what do people seem to not respond well to?

That person, which is so many of us like I've been there a thousand times, and I'm sure your listeners, many have too, that person who's constantly hyper vigilant and monitoring the environment.

That person is taking all their cues for who they are and who they should be from the external world, rather than tuning into themselves and actually asking the question like, who am I? And you just lose so much if you are always just trying to be what other people respond well to versus who you really are. You lose so much of yourself, obviously.

And you lose, you lose out on like, what, what your life should really be like, you know? Like, you lose out on like the person that you're actually, the person that you actually are that and it's just exhausting.

You lose a ton of energy. And I have been there, and that's that's a big part of why this connects to chronic pain and chronic symptoms, is because all that tension, all that internal fighting, you know, fighting against yourself, thinking that you are a threat to yourself.

You are dangerous. It's dangerous to be you. All that internal tension is so exhausting, like it's so exhausting to to not be yourself. It's so exhausting. So you lose a ton of energy.

How Somatic Therapy Can Help (28:31)

Rob Loveless

And with all that in mind, being like the energy strain, the anxiety, the chronic stress, how does somatic therapy help someone move out of those patterns of stress, hypervigilance, or shame and into a more grounded and regulated relationship with their body?

Sean Hershey

It is complex. I mean, the work that I do is specifically, it's like somatic therapy, specifically for people struggling with chronic pain. And I mean, I have a podcast of my own.

If people are interested, I can say it at the end, but if people are interested, it's called mind-body Medicine for Chronic Pain in that, I teach like, a ton of like, the basics of how the first five episodes are like, the basics of like, how to like, the paradigm of like, how to treat chronic pain from an emotional and psychological perspective.

So there's a lot, I mean, I couldn't possibly like, you know, say it all in a brief interview, but what I will say is this, the three main things that I do with people, one, two, and three.

First is, you know, we're helping people feel safe in their bodies, so that they do not have chronic pain and chronic symptoms anymore. Turn the nervous system threat response down.

So the first thing is helping people feel safe in the body and allowing themselves to have physical sensations and not seeing physical sensations as a threat, including pain and symptoms. Not seeing those things as a threat, but rather seeing them as a message.

You know, this is a message that, like something is off, and so we are going to work with it and figure it out, but we don't want to be afraid of it. So that's part one is teaching people not to be afraid of physical sensations.

Part two is teaching people not to be afraid of their emotions. And that's that's like a very fun, I find it fun, at least, even if it's like challenging. That's a fun thing because most people have so many more emotions than we like to have, and so many more emotions than we think we have.

And if you dig into the body in like, therapeutically, you'll find that you're feeling a lot of stuff. Like a lot of anger towards people who you love. A lot of, a lot more mixed emotions than you think you have, because the mixed emotions get repressed.

You know, it's like you'll feel the good side, but you repress the bad side. So you know, teaching your teaching you're teaching your brain and nervous system that emotions are safe, that's part two. And then part three is teaching your brain and your nervous system that like you are safe.

Like it's okay to be you, like tuning into yourself and allowing yourself to be yourself. It's a little nebulous, and there's so many different specific practices when within each of those three domains, you know, like, there's, I'm certainly not the only person who does this.

Like, people can research into this. People can, you know, take a look at my podcast if they're interested. Because there's so many different like, ways you can go about healing in this paradigm. But that, though, that's like, the basics, like, very high level, like those three things.

Emotional Healing and Physical Well-Being (31:35)

Rob Loveless

And once people begin exploring the emotional roots behind the physical symptoms, what kinds of changes do they often notice in their bodies or overall well being?

Sean Hershey

Some people get better really quickly. That's awesome. Some people get better slowly. That's, you know, okay. That is what it is. But people will notice that their pain and symptoms calm down.

People will also notice that they're more in tune with themselves. And so it's easier to, for example, make a decision. It's easier to know what you want to do versus what you don't want to do. It's easier to know who you really want in your life and who you really don't want in your life.

It's easier to set I wouldn't maybe say it's easier to set boundaries, but it's easier at least to know who you really want to set boundaries with. It's like it becomes much easier to basically know who you really are, and know who you really want and that, or know what you really want. So that is huge.

That is huge. Many people who do this kind of work, they and, you know, who like, do this kind of work as clients, and come out on the other side, they'll say, like, well, it's really amazing that I, like, you know, I don't have chronic whatever anymore.

Or like, my back, like, it used to hurt at a 10 all day, every day, and now it's gone down to, like, a two and sometimes a zero and like, like, you know, it's like, I'm physically I'm doing so much better, and that's so great.

And also, most people who do this kind of work and come on on the other side of you know, as a client, they'll be like, What I didn't know is that, like, I also needed so badly to, like, get in touch with my emotions and get in touch with who I really am, because, like, I didn't realize how cut off I was from all of that.

So people really will often feel that, you know, feel much more attuned to who they really are. A lot of people actually develop more of, like, an existential lens on life, like, wow, if I'm a real person. What?

That means, like, the whole universe is a little different than I thought it was. That's shocking. So it can be a pretty, pretty big change.

Connecting Emotional and Physical Healing (33:51)

Rob Loveless

Absolutely. And for listeners who may recognize themselves in this conversation, like feeling chronic tension pain or disconnected from their bodies, what would you want them to know about the connection between emotional healing and physical healing?

Sean Hershey

What I would encourage people to do is, first of all, if this speaks to you, great. Do some research into it, you know, like, check out my podcast.

Like I said, check out Dr John Sarno, his books. Do some research into it. And there's other people who do this stuff. You know, if you go down, you can go down in a rabbit hole and find all kinds of stuff. So do some research into Dr John Sarno and his work with chronic pain.

The other thing I would really recommend to people is like, I, I used to think that, like my anxiety and my, you know, the feelings that I have, and why am I in such a state of panic?

And I'm so, you know, all, whatever it may be for me, particularly anxiety. I used to think like, Oh, my anxiety is so annoying. How do I get it to, like, calm down, shut up, go away. You know, like, how do I, like, get the natural signals that are coming from my body to just turn off because I hate them.

They bother me. I'm sick of them. I don't like them, and I don't want to deal with them, and they're bad. And so how do I get them to go away? Many people come to therapy with that mindset or come to healing practices with that mindset, and I would really encourage people to shift the paradigm.

Rather than come to therapy and come to healing practices with the paradigm, like, how do I get my body to shut up, and how do I get my anxiety to turn off, and how do I just, like dampen the signals coming from me because I hate them?

Rather than think that, I'd really invite people into the paradigm of curiosity. Like, what is my body telling me? The paradigm of not just curiosity, but also trust. Like trusting that if you're feeling anxiety, there's a reason for that.

Trusting that if you're feeling so stressed and so tense and all of this emotional stuff that you don't want to feel, trusting that like there is a reason for that.

And so it's nice to get curious around that and trust yourself and trust your body, to the point where, rather than saying like, like, Please give me tactics and skills to like, shut my anxiety up, rather than going in with that to looking at like, um, help me figure this out. Help me figure out, what am I really feeling? Help me figure out why? Why am I feeling so anxious?

What do I need to do differently? Because clearly, like something's off, and we can trust that something's off, if you feel like something's off, so like, we need to figure out, like, um, what's happening. Why, and what can we do about it?

So, yeah, shifting, the shifting the paradigm, underneath the underneath the intention to help yourself, I would say.

Episode Closing (

Rob Loveless

And connecting it back to the tarot, the Seven of Wands in reverse. Again, this card is telling us that we're overwhelmed at the moment, and our bodies are feeling it.

So we need to look for ways to rebuild our confidence and trust that we can achieve what we set out to do. And as it relates to today's conversation, I think a lot of us can relate to that feeling of being overwhelmed, whether it's in our personal lives or professional lives.

And like we talked about as gay men, sometimes this pressure can be compounded by the need to feel safe in a world that can be very unsafe for the LGBTQ+ community.

So the result is that we might be feeling chronic stress or pain, and sometimes we may be guilty of just trying to push forward.

But instead, we really need to reconnect with our bodies, to understand what we're feeling and what we need to ease this anxiety.

And when we listen to ourselves and connect with our needs, we can feel like we're living more intentionally and moving us forward to goals that are more aligned with our authentic selves.

Connect with Sean (37:56)

Rob Loveless

Well, Sean, thank you so much for joining today. This was such a great episode, and I think very helpful for so many listeners out there.

So as we're wrapping up, can you tell everyone where they can connect with you personally, your practice, the podcast. Plug all the things.

Sean Hershey

Absolutely, yeah. I'm chomping at the bit. I'm like, I've already plugged some stuff. But yes, people, can I have a podcast called mind-body Medicine for Chronic Pain, which I've we just hit one year on the podcast. So that's cool.

There's like 60 something episodes now, lots of really cool stuff on there. If this is interesting to people. People can find me, I mean, certainly I have two openings right now, but that fluctuates. If, I mean, if anybody wants a therapist, I am a therapist, and I can't promise that I will have openings, but people can always get in touch with me.

I do have openings right now. So if people get this right now, cool, my website is seanhershey. com. Sean Hershey, or mindbodymedicineforchronicpain. com. They both go to the same place.

So podcast, which you can find anywhere, Apple Podcast, Spotify, wherever you get podcasts, mind-body Medicine for Chronic Pain, and then the website, seanhershey or mindbodymedicineforchronicpain. com.

I'm also on Instagram, which I kind of hate, but if people like Instagram, I'm there @mygaytherapist, which I think is kind of a genius handle, but I'm like, rarely on there, so you're not gonna get that much content. But if you want my gay therapist, you can hang out with me there.

Rob Loveless

And all of that information will be in the show notes, so once you're done listening, be sure to connect with Sean.

Connect with A Jaded Gay (39:32)

Rob Loveless

And you know the drill, if you have any questions or feedback, you can reach out to me rob@ajadedgay. com. And let's keep the conversation going. Head on, over to our official Discord server, The LGBTQuties Lounge, to connect with myself and other listeners.

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