Navigating Healing Journeys: Understanding the Non-linear Path of Stigma and Herpes
Whether on Instagram, in-person, or on Zoom, you’ve probably heard many mental health professionals repeat the phrase, “healing isn’t linear.” With good reason.
This experience is not THE experience, but it is an experience that I think many folks with herpes can relate to. This graphic is further applicable to other stigmatized conditions, too.
After a diagnosis and what appears to be acceptance, there are often triggers or stumbling blocks along the way. Here, we see a steep decline when the person receives their diagnosis. A bit of up and down when researching what it means. And then we have some empowerment—taking that knowledge combined with personal experience and sharing it. After sharing with a friend, this individual feels compelled to share with a prospective partner. After receiving a rejection (a stigma trigger of wrote), they’re thrown back to similar feelings from their diagnosis, which I label here as sitting in stigma.
Of course, there will always be outliers. There are those that may struggle to tell a friend, or who might not feel such deep feelings related to a partner’s rejection.
This is a common experience, often because of stigma, but it isn’t the only one. And many will continue to find additional triggers and sensitive subjects along the way—that is life.
What I hope you gather from this experience is that whether you are someone with herpes, a partner of someone with herpes, or someone with another mental health condition—stigma stems beyond the self, beyond STIs, beyond mental health. It is relatable on a human level, no matter how distant someone’s diagnosis may be. We live individualized cycles, patterns, and non-linear journeys of our healing selves.