Sibelio, I haven’t told anybody like that about my condition, only friends and family, but amongst them the reactions have been extremely varied. A few have been very supportive, and God bless them, but I would say the most common reaction is initially expressing sympathy and then slowly, quietly distancing themselves. Then there’s one particular friend who seems to have gone into denial about it, everytime I bring it up he sort of rolls his eyes, half-listening, until I’m done talking, then lets me know, in so many words, he thinks I’m making it up, I’m delusional, an easy card to play since I have a history of poor mental health.
The funny thing is with many of these friends and family I could never have guessed in advance they would react the ways they have. Perhaps this comes from a lack of awareness on my part; still, what a poster said above rings true for me, it takes something like this to show you who your real friends are. Ironically, it’s the two people I considered my closest friends before who have reacted the most negatively. One is the person I mentioned above, the other seems to be going through what I would call a disgust-reaction, she’s put up a wall that doesn’t look to be coming down anytime soon.
And then there’s my parents. They’ve been combative. I can understand this more easily, because I’ve been expressing a lot of anger towards them since I realised that Isotretinoin is the cause of my sexual problems and possibly many of my mental problems all these years. Long story short, I went on the drug as a 14 year old, and I blame them for making that decision for me. Even though impotence was not on the listed side effects back then, the drug was still known to be very dangerous, strongly associated with suicide, depression and a host of chronic physical conditions, in light of which I think it was incredibly reckless of them to administer it to their physically healthy young child.
In the first few conversations, my dad expressed almost no sympathy, in fact he would get angry at me for being sad. He seemed to have this unshakeable faith in a medical solution, there “must” be one, in his words, and this apparently meant that I shouldn’t feel sad even for a second, I should “look forward”. Illustrative example: one night I was so overcome with rage that I started punching the pillow, my dad heard this (I was sleeping in my parents’ living room) and asked me what was going on, apparently non-plussed; I told him I was angry at the doctors (actually I used a different word but it’s not fit to type) who made me impotent and he immediately exclaimed, “you’re going to get over that!”
With my mum, it’s a bit different. She said she was sorry from the first conversation, but she would scream it at me so that it sounded more like “shut up”.
Conversations with both parents have tended to turn into shouting matches fairly rapidly.
Fortunately, things are shifting in our relationships, albeit slowly. We are in family counselling and that is helping us to work things through. My dad finally showed some sympathy towards me in the last session, it ended with him giving me a big hug. His manner was totally different from the moment he walked in the room, he was uncharacteristically quiet and sad, it seemed to be finally dawning on him. He talked about how he had read an article on BBC news about other people who claim to have been affected by Isotretinoin like I have; funny that it took him reading about a stranger’s suffering to finally begin noticing his own son has been suffering right in front of his eyes this whole time, but hey, I’ll take it.
Anyway, to finally bring this back around to your question, Sibelio, my experiences make me wonder whether, paradoxically, it’s the people closest to us who are likely to have the most violently negative reactions to our disclosures. With somebody who is a professional colleague there may be feelings of trust, affection, comradeship, but there is unlikely to be that same emotional entanglement, and so perhaps he/she will be able to take onboard what you say more dispassionately. Of course, there is still an element of unpredictability involved, as he/she might have all sorts of his/her own issues that rear up when you disclose and get in the way of him/her truly receiving. But as I said, most people I’ve told who aren’t super duper close with me, even if they haven’t had much of a capacity or desire for prolonged contact with me afterwards, have at least believed me and expressed sympathy.
