Divorcing Family in January

Tom Moon 2018

Kirk has fallen into the depression he regularly feels at the end of the year. He tries to explain it all as Seasonal Affective Disorder, but it doesn’t take us long to find a deeper cause. In late December he will be going “home for the holidays.” Every year for a week he leaves his…

AIDS Survivor Syndrome

Tom Moon 2017

When Tez Anderson learned he was HIV-positive in 1986, the doctor told him that he could expect to live for about two more years. He lost any sense of a future orientation and fell into a deep depression. He continued to survive beyond his predicted deadline, but in the absence of any effective treatments that…

Standing in Love

Tom Moon 2017

“In this world there are only two tragedies; one is not getting what one wants, the other is getting it.” This line from Oscar Wilde reminds me of the two most common questions I hear from gay men. The first is ‘How can I find a boyfriend?’ The second, once he shows up, is all-too-often…

Pride and Resistance 2017

Tom Moon 2017

Pride? Who told you that you had anything to be proud about? You were the wretched of the Earth, the lowest of the low – the despised, the misfits, the outsiders, the outcasts, the freaks, the queers, the perverts, the deviants – the ones who had no right to self-respect. You were the marginalized; the…

Twelve Habits of Happy People

Tom Moon 2017

Research shows that 50 percent of a person’s happiness level is genetically determined, 10 percent is affected by life circumstances and situation, and a remaining 40 percent is determined by our own behavior. Positive psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky has made a career of studying the causes of happiness, and in her bestselling book, The How of…

Vertrumpt!

Tom Moon 2017

Because this is a mental health column, I usually avoid political commentary, and I’ll try not to do too much now. But this week the subject is how we’re responding psychologically to Donald Trump, and here politics and mental health overlap. My personal view of Trump’s character was best summed-up by the incomparable Charles Blow,…

Dysfunctional Family Roles 4. The Mascot

Tom Moon 2017

As I wrote in the first column in this series, dysfunctional families are characterized by abuse coupled with denial that any abuse is going on; by disrespect and violations of members’ boundaries; by shaming and lack of empathy; and usually by a fair amount of chaos, often due to alcoholism or drug abuse. Children in…

Dysfunctional Family Roles 3. The Lost Child

Tom Moon 2017

All children in dysfunctional families suffer some degree of neglect, and are also acutely aware of how much chaos, conflict, and pain there is in the family. In their efforts to respond to these difficult situations, they very often adopt one of four stereotypical roles: the hero, the scapegoat, the lost child, and the mascot….

Dysfunctional Family Roles 2. The Scapegoat

Tom Moon 2017

In the previous column, I described dysfunctional families as “characterized by abuse coupled with denial that any abuse is going on; by disrespect and violations of members’ boundaries; by shaming and lack of empathy; and usually by a fair amount of chaos, often due to alcoholism or drug abuse,” and I noted that children in…

Dysfunctional Family Roles 1. The Hero

Tom Moon 2017

The phrase “dysfunctional family” may have become a cliché, but it does describe something real and all-too-common. Dysfunctional families are characterized by abuse coupled with denial that any abuse is going on; by disrespect and violations of members’ boundaries; by shaming and lack of empathy; and usually by a fair amount of chaos, often due…