I just found out that a sociological study I co-authored with Janja Lalich, Ph.D. (see her books here) has been accepted for publication by a peer-reviewed journal. Yow! It’s so exciting!
It’s a study of the lives of gay, lesbian, and questioning ex-Jehovah’s Witnesses. When Janja first told me about the study, I laughed and thought, “Why not do a study on green-eyed male writers from the north-side of Chicago who don’t drink coffee?” The group seemed ludicrously specific, and I wondered what I could ever learn from studying them.
But as I delved into the life stories of these people, and coded and re-read their stories (nearly 700 times before I was finished), I realized that this group presented a pitch-perfect example of triple stigma — which is something that the great sociologist Erving Goffman had not completely considered in his classic 1963 book Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity.
Okay, so my husband Tino and I are living in what I call “unintentional community,” or a condo complex. It’s a nice place near his new job, it’s month-to-month so we can look for a home, and it’s got trees and lovely plantings everywhere, so I’m not complaining.
However, we’re right on top of people, so we hear the goings on, especially with a neighbor family whose kids play outside. The parents are cool and friendly people in their 30s, and they’ve got two boys. The older boy is five, and the baby is just under two. The boys have very different temperaments. The baby is very adventurous and giggly, and the five year old is more careful, a little bit delicate, and he cries loudly when he’s scared or his feelings are hurt. A sensitive guy.
When the dad comes home from work, he and the boys play outside for about an hour, and over the weeks we’ve been here, a change is occurring. The older boy was the main play pal for his dad, but now the baby is walking and running, and it seems that dad is bonding a little bit better with the baby. He and the baby will be crawling around in the ivy and laughing while the five-year-old stays separate and gets dramatic about falling or tripping or something. You can see the dad’s frustration at being called back constantly to attend to the older boy’s difficulties, and you can see that the older boy is trying to get his father back on his side, but he’s going about it all wrong.
Emotional hygiene is a phrase I coined about seven years ago when I was dealing with depression and a close friend of mine was dealing with anxiety. As it turns out, the two states aren’t very compatible!
My friend and I had been very close and emotionally in sync for many years, and we were very used to sharing emotions with each other. It’s nice, and I’d say you can’t have working relationships without the ability to share emotions. However, I became aware that it wasn’t healthy to share my depressed mood with my friend, because it resulted in too much anxiety.
Ooh, I just witnessed a beautiful example of emotion work and how it can surprise us!
I’m standing in line at the Target, and I’m three people back from the checker. Everyone is standing around trying not to look bored. I’m studying people like I always do.
The checker is a man in his 50s, slender but rather disheveled, with hair that needs cutting and a bit of a five o-clock shadow starting. I notice …
