A. The DP is a person who experiences a continuous state of internal emotional emptiness, aloneness, isolation, un-aliveness. He does not feel alive inside. There is a missing sense of contentment, peace, fulfillment and comfort with one's inner self ( Private Self). Depression may also be a part of this inner experience but depression is only a part of the more global feeling of devitalization or of emptiness.

He feels untouched personally. There is a wall around his Private emotional self. He feels that he can't touch others intimately or feel intimacy with himself, to some extent with his environment or even with God. This is especially true with regard to the same-gender. He feels un-alive! This inner wall always makes him feel somewhat un-real; as if he is never fully being real and present.

Here's another way of describing DP. Picture yourself drawing a circle with a pencil on a blank piece of paper. The circular line of the circle is the circumference; the outer, peripheral part of the circle. The area within the circular line is the substance. Shade in this area lightly. This is the shaded, substantial area.

The DP is like this circle. He lives on the circumference of life. The circumference is the outer, insubstantial, fleeting pleasures and pastimes of life. But his inner substantial, spiritual and psychological-emotional center is somewhat empty (the shaded area). It is not completely empty (for then it would be unshaded).

Since his center or substance is somewhat empty, he finds little there to sustain him or to turn to, when he looks within. He probably and often is emotionally rich and very emotionally intense and sensitive but this is walled off.

He feels without joy, happiness, and satisfaction, and so, he may live on the circumference of quick-lived, gratifying, passing sensations. The problem is his need to develop more depth or substance in his center or open up to what is already there.

Q What are the characteristics of DP's?

A. DP's have a number of characteristic ways of thinking, feeling and behaving. Together, these form a lifestyle; a mode of living which is restricting, detached, disengaged, guarded, and unfulfilling. Because DP is a lifestyle, it is not a matter of changing a particular behavior but a whole way of orienting to life, others, oneself and God which needs changing in order to effect change in the homosexual or addictive conditions.

DP's share most but not all these characteristics which represent a mode of orienting to themselves, others, their environment and God.

l. They are more intellectual, cognitive, and "heady", rather than intimate, emotional and feeling. They lead from their heads!

2. They tend to be verbal or non-verbal in their engagement of their world rather than physical and tactile.

3. They are often too calculating, planful, plodding, controlled, and cautious rather than spontaneous, free, unrestricted.

4. They tend toward closing themselves within introverted self-contained boundaries and space and are not interactive and openly engaged with others enough; making it difficult to be touched by others.

5. Likewise they are often unreceptive; they don't allow themselves to receive nurturing from others.

6. Their interactions tend toward the impersonal rather than the real sharing of their personal, private, inner selves.

7. They are not very openly appreciative of others and tend toward taking others for granted.

8. They are not affirming enough of others; giving compliments or showing recognition that others are worthwhile in themselves. People are often seen as objects which either suit them and fit into their lives or don't, rather then individuals of worth in their own right.

9. They carry a basic underlying distrust or fear of people and their motives and reactions. They are therefore un-trusting and cautious, suspecting that people will disappoint them and be unreliable.

l0. They do not express love effectively, allow love to resonate deeply within them, or use the word "love" easily.

ll. They do not nurture themselves well. They don't know how to authentically care for and respect themselves in satisfying ways.

l2. They often live in the urgency and busyness of the foreground of life's responsibilities without keeping that balanced with the background of the meaning, beauty and enjoyment of the ordinary, the common, the natural environment.

l3. They engage in a certain degree of self-deception, secrecy, hiddenness, and dishonesty with themselves and others. They reserve a reservoir of fabrications, myths, fairy tales, exaggerations, cover-ups about themselves. They have a difficult time really letting their faults, failures, and weaknesses show to anyone. They are troubled by and sometimes filled with shame. Sex is a private world to which they can escape and from which they can feel alive for a moment.

14. Their relationship to God is sometimes contaminated by many of the above characteristics, so that their prayer life may not feel authentic and from the heart but rather superficial or artificial, legalistic, and from a sense of obligation. This in turn causes them to feel that God is unreal, displeased with them and remote, especially since they feel ashamed and guilty for having failed God.

l5. They are up and down, inconsistent, and often unmoved in their approach to God's Word or give up searching His Word altogether, instead of simply being open to God's Spirit speaking to them heart-to-heart as they receive and personalize His Word.

1. List (by number) the characterics which seem most true about yourself.
2. Select (by number) from 5 to 10 of the characteristics of the DP above which you recognize to be most true for yourself. Write out a description of each of these as they play out in your own personal life.