ABSTRACT
Group therapy serves as a tool for gay men to learn from and help one another through their needs, boundaries, roles and deprogram themselves from abusive and harmful beliefs about who they are, both as individual men and in relationship to each other. Shame and guilt have played strong roles in programming poor self-image and self-love for many gay men, often leading to extreme difficulty with intimacy and healthy boundaries, both with inner personal relationships and their own bodies. Despite social changes in attitude, negative sentiment toward gay men remains ever present, even from childhood with the inability of parents to relate to gay children. Although discrimination, prejudice abuse, and bullying are present for most gay men, this is not actually the core problem. This remains their greatest source of pain and best place to start to self-empower in group therapy. Group therapy empowers gay men to have healthy intimate relationships as self-defined whole men, as sexual beings.
