LBGT Counselling Service??

AdoptedDub22

Hi all,

I'm a 22 year old lad from the country and I recently am after coming out to my family and friends (last week only). It has been a long hard struggle to come to terms with and I have had more bad days than good.
While my experience of telling people has been good so far, I am still finding it very hard to accept and embrace who I really am and this is having a serious impact on how I live my life day to day. For the most part, I am lonely and seriously question my self worth on a daily basis (i.e. what is the point of living and going on! This is seriously hampered by the fact that I have no gay friends or anyone to talk about or look to support for when thinking about normal things like dating, going out to clubs, etc. While I have been on Grindr and messaged random people for a chat, looking to meet new possible friends, it always ends the same way with them only interested in NSA! NSA is not something I am looking for right now...so i find the whole process quite frustrating. There seems to be no other way to meet people (I am no longer in college & I was too in the closet not to make friends in the LGBT society when i was there)
Basically I am just wondering would anyone recommend any counselling services where I could go and talk about my issues and concerns among like minded people. I am living in Dublin, and would sooner meet people than speak over the phone. Sorry for the long speel. It's just that I am at my wits end and could really do with hearing the experiences of others on this forum. Thanks

Doug89

Hey AD22,

First congrats on doing a bit of coming out, it's a hard thing to do, so well done. I don't know of any specific services off the top of my head, but check out http://lgbt.ie/ - and hopefully someone else on here might know better than I!

Sorry that your college LGBT didn't work out for you, there's plenty of groups in Dublin (gay capital of the world ya know!) that might be of interest to you, if you're into sport there's a whole pile of sports clubs full of guys that are looking for mates and not just hookups - http://prismsports.ie/, there does also be a meetup for pints organised on here every so often, but being female I don't tend to head along...

Best of luck OP!

Daith

First of all congrats for coming out. Really well done

I'm not sure about counselling services but I would suggest the following

1) BelongTo (http://www.belongto.org/about.aspx?contentid=104) for people in your age range.

2) Gay Switchboard Ireland (http://gayswitchboard.ie/drop-in/) have a drop in service every Saturday. This is generally one to one chats and they could advise you on other services.

I would suggest some of the groups on the resource pages here and any Boards LGBT meetup for just meeting people though.

floggg

AdoptedDub22 wrote: »

Hi all,

I'm a 22 year old lad from the country and I recently am after coming out to my family and friends (last week only). It has been a long hard struggle to come to terms with and I have had more bad days than good.
While my experience of telling people has been good so far, I am still finding it very hard to accept and embrace who I really am and this is having a serious impact on how I live my life day to day. For the most part, I am lonely and seriously question my self worth on a daily basis (i.e. what is the point of living and going on! This is seriously hampered by the fact that I have no gay friends or anyone to talk about or look to support for when thinking about normal things like dating, going out to clubs, etc. While I have been on Grindr and messaged random people for a chat, looking to meet new possible friends, it always ends the same way with them only interested in NSA! NSA is not something I am looking for right now...so i find the whole process quite frustrating. There seems to be no other way to meet people (I am no longer in college & I was too in the closet not to make friends in the LGBT society when i was there)
Basically I am just wondering would anyone recommend any counselling services where I could go and talk about my issues and concerns among like minded people. I am living in Dublin, and would sooner meet people than speak over the phone. Sorry for the long speel. It's just that I am at my wits end and could really do with hearing the experiences of others on this forum. Thanks

Others can advice on the counselling services, but maybe what you need is to get out and meet some gay people and socialise with them a bit, and that might help you come to terms with your sexuality a bit better and stop seeing it as such a bug negative thing.

If you are into sports there are gay soccer, running, rclub, tennis, squash and out door activity clout which are all worth a try.

All very welcoming and always looking for new members.

Even if you aren't into the sort of thing there are gay choirs, film clubs etc so there are plenty of options.

Might do your self confidence a world of good.