By
Payam Ghassemlou MFT, Ph.D.
As a mental health counselor for the
past twenty years, I have listened to many painful stories from some of my
lesbian and gay clients regarding their upbringing in a homophobic and
heterosexist world. Many of my gay and lesbian clients, including a number of
bisexual and transgender individuals, have shared with me that as young as age
five, they felt different. They were unable to articulate why they felt different,
and, at the same time, they were too afraid to talk about it. Many reported
that they knew this feeling of being different was related to something
forbidden. “It felt like keeping a tormenting secret that I could not even
understand,” described one of my gay clients. Others shared with me that this
feeling of difference revealed itself in the form of gender nonconformity,
which could not be kept secret. Therefore, it made them more vulnerable to
homophobic and transphobic mistreatment at school and often at home. They had
to cope with a daily assault of shame and humiliation without any support.
The experience of carrying a sense of
differentness, because it related to some of the most taboo and despised images
in our culture, can leave traumatic scars on one’s psyche. Most school-age
children organize their school experience around the notion of not coming
across as queer. Any school-age child’s worst nightmare is being called faggot
or dyke, which is commonly experienced by many children who do not flow with
the mainstream. One gay high school student disclosed to me that, on average,
he hears more than twenty homophobic remarks a day. Schools can feel like a
scary place for LGBT children, or any child who gets scapegoated as queer. For
the most part, LGBT kids do not get any protection from school officials. This
is a form of child abuse on a collective level. Mistreatment of LGBT youth and
a lack of protection are contributing factors to the issue of LGBT teen
suicide.
The feeling of differentness as it relates to
being gay or lesbian is too complex for any child to process and make sense of,
especially when coupled with external attacks in the form of homophobic,
derogatory name calling. Unlike a black child whose parents are typically also
black, or a Jewish child with Jewish parents and relatives, the LGBT youth
typically does not have gay or lesbian parents or anyone who could mirror his
or her experience. In fact, many families tend to blame the mistreated LGBT
youngster for not being like everyone else, making the child feel like he or
she deserves this mistreatment.
When parents are either unable or
unwilling to “feel and see” the world through the eyes of their child and do
not provide a reflection that makes the child feel valued, that child can not
develop a strong sense of self. Faced with isolation, confusion, humiliation,
physical violence, not being valued in the eyes of their parents, and carrying
a secret that the youngster connects with something terrible and unthinkable is
too stressful for any child to endure – especially when there is no empathic
other to help him or her to sort it out. The youngster suffers in silence and
might use dissociation to cope. In a worst-case scenario, he or she could
commit suicide.
Many LGBT youth who found the courage
to open up about their identity issues have experienced rejection from their
families and peers. Some families treat such disclosures as bringing shame on the family. They may throw their kid out of the house, which forces the
youngster to join the growing population of homeless kids on the street.
The stress of trying to come to terms
with a complex matter such as same sex attraction, one’s family’s rejection as
a result of finding out about same sex attraction, and becoming victimized
through verbal and physical abuse by peers due to being different are
contributing factors to the trauma of growing up gay or lesbian. Such traumatic
experiences can explain why lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning
youth are up to four times more likely to attempt suicide than their
heterosexual peers. Suicide attempts by LGBT youth are their desperate attempts
to escape the traumatic process of growing up queer.
Those of us who survived the trauma
of growing up queer without adequate support and managed to reach adulthood can
benefit by becoming conscious of our internalized homophobia. When a gay or
lesbian youngster experiences humiliation every school day for being different
and has no one to protect them, that child can develop internalized homophobia.
Internalized homophobia is internalization of shame and hatred that gay and
lesbian people were forced to experience. The seed of internalized homophobia
is planted at an early age. Having one’s psyche contaminated by the shadow of
internalized homophobia can result in low self-esteem and other problems later
in life. Bisexual and transgender youngsters can also internalize the hatred
they had to endure growing up, and may develop self-hatred.
To not deal with internalized
homophobia is to ignore the wreckage of the past. Psychological injuries that
were inflicted on LGBT people as result of growing up in a homophobic and
heterosexist world need to be addressed. Each time a LGBT youngster was
insulted or attacked for being different, such attacks left scars on his or her
soul. Such violent mistreatment caused many to develop feelings of inferiority.
Life
after the closet needs to include coming out of toxic shame, which means
becoming aware of repressed or disassociated memories and feelings around
homophobic mistreatment that was experienced growing up. All the rejection and
derogatory name-calling one suffered growing up queer can be stored in the
psyche in the form of implicit memory: a type of memory that impacts one’s life
without one noticing it or consciously knowing its origin. Coming out of toxic
shame involves recalling and sharing what it felt like growing up in a world
that did not respect one’s identity, fully feeling the injustice of it.
Providing empathy and unconditional positive regard for the fact that one has
endured many years of confusion, shame, fear, and homophobic mistreatment can
give birth to new feelings of pride and honor about one’s LGBT identity. This
is an alchemical process that involves transforming painful emotions through
love and empathy.
As a community,
learning to know ourselves can add vitality to our struggle for freedom. The
LGBT liberation movement should not only include fighting for our equal rights,
but also working through the injuries that were inflicted on us while growing
up queer in a heterosexist world. External changes such as marriage equality or
the repeal of the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy alone cannot heal us from
homophobic mistreatment and rejection we received growing up gay or lesbian.
We need to open a new psychological frontier and take our struggle for freedom to a new level. The gay civil rights movement is like a bird that needs two wings to fly, not just one. So far, the political wing has been the main carrier of this movement. By adding psychological healing work as the other wing, the bird of gay liberty can reach even greater heights.
We need to open a new psychological frontier and take our struggle for freedom to a new level. The gay civil rights movement is like a bird that needs two wings to fly, not just one. So far, the political wing has been the main carrier of this movement. By adding psychological healing work as the other wing, the bird of gay liberty can reach even greater heights.
For more
articles by Dr. Payam, please click on the following link: https://drpayam.com/articles_and_book
© Dr. Payam Ghassemlou MFT, Ph.D. is a Licensed Marriage and
Family Therapist (Psychotherapist), in private practice in West Hollywood,
California. www.DrPayam.com