Merle James Yost, LMFT
April 2019
Having completed a 2.5 year sabbatical with the publication of Facing the Truth of Your Life, I am living just outside of Santa Barbara, CA and launching new projects including workshops and classes. The book is a summary of what I have learned over the past 35 years both as a client and as a psychotherapist.
The current workshop is Unspoken Boundaries. You can learn more about it at unspokenboundaries.com
This is an interview I had on Relatable:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rp5CJVrmk0
I also do Intensives, 10 hours over five consecutive days, where we focus on resolving or at least, impacting a problem in your life.
Merle
Sept 2014
Born in MO, moved to AZ when I was 13, AZ is where I think of home. High School in Tucson, an undergraduate degree in AZ and a Master’s in CA.
(This is a modified excerpt from a biography that I wrote for my 2011 HS Reunion.)
My close friend, Bruce Hyland, and I enjoyed collaborating and we both had a management background. After I finished grad school, we decided to write a book that would tell new managers the basics of how to manage people. We wrote a book proposal and sent it to 40 publishers. We received 39 rejections and one yes, from McGraw Hill. The first book, Reflections for Managers, was very successful and started a whole series of books from McGraw Hill. We wrote the next two, More Reflections for Managers, and Reflections for the Workplace, a few years later.
After completing 3000+ hours of counseling experience and passing written and oral exams, I was licensed as a Marriage and Family Therapist in 1995. Professionally, I have been a successful full-time psychotherapist for many years. It is a passion and something into which I bring all of myself. In 2007 I had the privilege of spending a month in Germany working with veterans and families of soldiers returning from Afghanistan. I have also worked with veterans in my private practice. It has been an honor to assist these men in their healing.
My fourth book was an anthology I edited. When Love Lasts Forever is about 14 long-term male couples who have been together for 10-45 years. Each couple wrote its own story. Given my own experience in a long-term male couple, I wanted to bring light to this invisible part of the gay community. Pilgrim Press, which is the publishing arm of the United Church of Christ, published the book in 1999. I supported the book with a national book tour. I called it a tour of closing bookstores.
My last book, Demystifying Gynecomastia, was self-published in 2006. When I created a website for my psychotherapy practice around 1995, I included a section on gynecomastia. I had my first breast reduction surgery in 1993. There was very little information available on the web, and I wanted to let others know that they were not alone.
The gynecomastia section of my website was a huge hit and got so much traffic that I created a separate website just for that topic. After my relationship ended, I decided the gynecomastia website should pay for itself, so I monetized the site. It was very profitable, as well as rising to #1 on Google. I sold it October 2010.
I have been in many newspaper and magazine articles and radio interviews on gynecomastia. I have been in two major documentaries, one by Channel 4 in London, and the other by the BBC in Great Britain. In 2006 I was approached by an Australian TV show that was looking to do a show on someone with gynecomastia. I happened to have contracted to do my second breast reduction to correct the problems with the first surgery and the partial return of the gynecomastia.
So, I was briefly a reality TV show person. They interviewed me and followed me around for a few days, then came back for the surgery and then again about two months post surgery. The largest newspaper chain in the Bay Area also covered it. When I went for surgery, I had a film crew, a newspaper reporter, and a photographer all in the operating room with me. YouTube has a video of my segment on the TV show. Much of the gynecomastia press and the video are posted on my website at myost.com. The most amusing press was when I made the cover of a British tabloid.
I often get told that I am really brave to have been so public with my gynecomastia. I can appreciate that perspective, but from mine, I was sexually abused and caught up in the fantasies of a severely mentally ill mother, so the gynecomastia was way down on the list of issues in my life. Compared to others whose gynecomastia is the main issue in their life, it was not even in the top three for me.
Probably the most important thing I should note was my entering psychotherapy as a client. My first therapist in Tucson began the work of digging into the layers of my psyche and beginning the process of healing. It would be a long road of 17 years and three therapists. Each therapist played a key role in pushing through my denial and helping me to see that the craziness of my childhood was not my fault and I could recover.
I bring to my clients, the knowing that it is possible to recover from really horrible things happening in childhood. It is possible to leave the pain and the fear behind and embrace and enjoy life.
I specialize in working with men in general. Specifically, I am known locally for working with men that were sexually abused as children and with bi and gay heterosexually married men. Internationally, I am better known for my expertise on gynecomastia. I give a canned talk called: ‘Shedding Light on the Sexual Abuse of Boys and the Men they Become’ to therapists and the public. Assisting in the healing of these men and supporting them in reclaiming their lives is humbling and awe-inspiring. I have learned we are truly capable of healing from almost anything.
I hope it gives some idea of my journey. I am happy. I can honestly say that each decade has gotten better and I am happier. For play, I spend time with friends and traveling to places I have not been, attend live theatre and explore the San Francisco Bay Area, near and far. I have great friends and a wonderful home on an island in the San Francisco Bay. I can honestly say, I enjoy each day and I look forward to tomorrow.
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