My name is Christopher Doyle. I'm a psychotherapist in International Treatment Fundand I am a former homosexual.

I grew up in a very loving family. My parents did not abuse me, they fully supported and accepted me. However, as a child, I could not establish a real connection with my father. There were just things we couldn’t agree on — I was very sensitive, artistic, creative; his father was a repairman, a jack of all trades. And I remember how in the beginning of my youth, I felt that I was not like him. As if we are different. And it was very difficult for me that I could not identify with the courage of my father, with his world. 

No accidents happened to me. I grew up loving my body, I had no problems with it. The only thing that happened to me when I was 8 years old was that for about a year I was corrupted by an older relative. It was very difficult for me to survive this, because I did not feel that I could talk about it with my family. I felt a great sense of shame for what had happened, and this also created a lot of confusion in me: sexual feelings for both girls and boys. After all, I was very young - I was then 8 or 9 years old. I have not even started puberty. Thus, my sexuality was awakened very early. 

My sexual experiments with girls began when I was 9 – 10 years old, and my parents, having learned about my activities, very much shamed me. And I think that from that moment on I emotionally fenced off women, because I began to think that having such sexual feelings was bad, wrong. And I felt a great sense of shame for my heterosexual ambitions, being so small. It was unacceptable that at this age I had sexual feelings, or sex, or something like that. And I think it affected me so that I disconnected from my heterosexuality and switched to homosexuality. 

The fact that I could not talk to my father and the fact that my father was not able to contact me and help me with this problem was very detrimental to me as a boy. I felt shame and lack of connection with my father, and to top it all off - I was always too attached to my mother. I was more like her: we were both very sensitive. We had a very strong emotional connection, maybe even too emotional. So from a very young age I was too attached to my mother and somewhat alienated from my father. And this led me to various conflicting feelings, especially after sexual abuse. 

In 11 – 13 years, I started experimenting with boys of my age. At that time, I was able to hide it, it was a secret. But it meant a lot to me - I got a great sense of affirmation from it. The fact that other boys wanted me sexually really increased my self-esteem. But now, looking back, I understand that I was not myself. This did not help me feel good, but only filled a hole that was formed due to unmet emotional needs with my father and other men from my environment. It was much easier for me to have sex with guys and peers than to be heterosexual and courageous. It was a terrible life - I lived a double life, filling my unsatisfied emotional needs through sex with other guys. But deep down, what I really wanted was to be perceived by them not in a sexual sense. So that they just love me and be friends with me. I always felt like an outside observer. I never felt that I was on equal terms with them, or as good as they are. I felt estranged from the world of men. I felt that I was different from them, as if something was wrong with me, and I felt that I was not able to communicate with other guys on a deeper, emotional level. 

My brother was a football and baseball star, and although I was quite athletic, I was far from his level. He was older than me, years on 5 – 6, so my parents praised him in sports. Like, Chris may not be bad, but he will never be like Bill. Chris is more sensitive and creative, he is good at music - this is in his part. So I was never encouraged to do men's work, as my brother encouraged. I was more directed towards women's affairs, to something that was slightly gender-atypical for who I was. So the promotion of masculinity in my family was not so significant in my case. 

Then I went to college and continued to live with these feelings, having sex with men and being unable to establish healthy relationships with either men or women. And I got to the point that I started to get very depressed because of my same-sex attraction, and I was very tired of dealing with it. I was then 21 – 22. After graduating from college, I realized that my life was unbalanced, that I was not sincere with anyone in my life, and that I needed to find men who would accept me as I am. In the end, I found them in the church - in the parish for young people, to which I joined. They loved and accepted me as I was. 

And so, what was the turning point in my process of change: as soon as I was able to develop relationships with men - that is, with a group of men who loved and accepted me as I was, and with whom I felt that I could be authentic and honest about his feelings - same-sex attraction simply disappeared. And I remember how one day I woke up, realizing that I no longer experience same-sex attraction. This, of course, did not happen as if by magic. The change was slow, but true, until one day I noticed that for me it was no longer a question. For me personally, it was a matter of three to six months. 

Now, having my own knowledge, and being a psychotherapist who works with clients with the same sex drive, I know that very often, men struggling with their homosexual feelings have a lack of intimacy with men of their age. In a sense, some of us, including myself, are stuck in the early stages of psychosexual development. And for me personally, in order for the same-sex attraction to go, I had to go through the phase in which rapprochement with men takes place. This is what helped me to break the deadlock and return to my path, on which, in my understanding, I can be a real man. 

Before that, my connections were mostly homosexual. I tried to establish heterosexual relationships, but nothing worked for me. Most of them were not even sexy. I had sexual relations with women, but they did not succeed, and not because I was not attracted to them sexually, but because I had a deep sense of inferiority and immaturity, as I had unhealed wounds and unmet need for love from the side of your gender. Until we feel loved and accepted by men of our age, and we’re not close to them, and we will not feel equal with them, it will be very difficult to build a healthy relationship with a woman. This requires a certain degree of intimacy with men - this is what I needed, and it really helped me in my change. 

I do not know if I ever believed that I was born with same-sex attraction. I was confused sexually, and I was very ashamed of these feelings. I can confidently say that I did not want to be like that, and I definitely did not choose these feelings. They told me that I was born that way, and probably I thought so for a while. But definitely, there were no sources that would tell me that I did not have to be that way. There was no one to tell me this.

8 years have passed since I had a homosexual feeling or desire. I do not feel more same-sex attraction. Generally. And I want to tell all my brothers and sisters who are gay and lesbian that I love and respect you, and that I don’t condemn you with my history, my experience. I respect your story and your experience, and I do not share it in order to threaten you, or to make you feel that you are worse than me. I just want you to know that same-sex attraction is not innate. This is not what you are born with; it is what develops. And if you want, you can change.

I have been working as a therapist for about three years. Over three years of work, I accepted and helped about one hundred men in individual and group practice. Most of them are young people of adolescence and 20 years of age. I use a number of techniques, and all of them are mainstream psychological techniques, not some kind of extravagant techniques or something like that. Most therapists dealing with this issue - all use conventional psychological techniques. We help customers understand the wounds of the past. We help them connect with their true feelings. For our clients, homosexual feelings are not related to homosexuality or sexual feelings. This is a cover for unmet emotional needs and wounds of the past. And we help clients understand why they have homosexual feelings. We reveal the underlying causes and then help them meet their needs in healthy ways. We also heal the mental wounds that make them sexualize their need for men. 

The first stage is grounding and behavioral therapy. We help clients stop sexual behavior, help them find a support network. It is extremely important for the client that in the healing process he should have many men who assist in his promotion: senior mentors, peers and other men who, like themselves, are in the process of overcoming - all those from whom they can receive support and a sense of responsibility . A support network helps them understand what feelings are hidden under their same-sex attraction. It helps to learn the technique of journaling, sort out your feelings and really get to the very roots, bypassing the surface. The surface is a same-sex attraction, and depression, anxiety, inferiority, hopelessness, and mainly self-hatred are often at the root. 

First of all, you need to understand the root cause of your same-sex attraction, and we help clients identify it. Then we help them end their sexual behavior and reveal their real feelings. As I said before, same-sex attraction often hides anxiety, depression, feelings of inferiority, hopelessness and the feeling that they do not meet the requirements. Very often, these feelings are accompanied by a colossal feeling of grief and strong emotions. Experiencing these strong emotions in the session and processing them, clients begin to feel that they are now able to assert themselves with men in a healthy relationship. It is very useful for them to connect to the masculinity to which they are often not able to connect. 

In the second stage, we are engaged in cognitive therapy. One of the books I'm working on is called "10 days to self-assessment". I am trying to help clients understand their irrational thought processes. We also engage in assertiveness training and working with the “inner child”. “Inner child” is another word for “unconscious”. And we help them understand what exactly causes them homosexual behavior, what exactly causes them homosexual feelings. We help them understand that often their need for love is the need of a child. The goal of working with the “inner child” is to help their “child” understand what emotional needs were not met in childhood and how they can satisfy them today.

At the stages 3 and 4, deep psychodynamic work is carried out. The third stage usually focuses on healing the paternal and male wounds, and the fourth stage focuses on healing the maternal and female wounds. Upon reaching the fourth stage, the client will significantly, if not completely, reduce his same-sex attraction, and will begin to develop heterosexual attraction. And here we also conduct psycho-education, especially for clients who want to date girls and get married. Along with psycho-education, we teach relationships and understanding the opposite sex: how to relate to women, how to date with them, what to look for on a date, to realize who they are, how they look, what they like about themselves, and also what they want from partner or wife. 

Most of our attraction is unconscious. We are attracted to people without realizing it. Therefore, in the fourth stage we are trying to bring those clients who meet with women and may even be going to get married to a conscious understanding of what they are and what kind of woman they want to be with. Relationship training is very important. We provide relationship training throughout the treatment. It starts with building relationships with other men, because many of my clients who have an undesirable same-sex attraction, in fact, have never had a good relationship with men. They always felt inferior and alienated. We teach them how to set healthy boundaries. We teach how to relate to other men, how to maintain healthy communication, good and bad expectations from friendship, and their needs, their true needs for friendship. This is about relationships with men. 

Relations with women are very similar. As soon as clients learn to have close relationships with men, they will be ready to move on to relationships with women. But until this healthy relationship with men is established, they will not know how to really relate to a woman. They do not treat women properly. This is a more friendly relationship, instead of the relationship that should be to your potential wife. So first, they must get closer to men before they can get closer to women. 

And religion is not a prerequisite for change.

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Extra charges: a detailed description of the process of change by a former homosexual (in English)