A Prideful Perspective on Growing Up Queer By Payam Ghassemlou MFT, Ph.D., SEP

 

Taking pride in our journeys of growing up and discovering our queer essence involves honoring the full diversity of our community. As a member of the LGBTQIA+ family, I cherish this diversity and hold space for those who may not claim the word queer as their own. As a cisgender gay man, I have spent more than three decades gathering the stories of other cisgender gay and queer men—stories woven with sorrow, defiance, tenderness, and fierce love. Through them, I’ve learned that we are a people of resilience, fearless hearts, and boundless compassion. It’s from this well of shared experience that I write. And still, no matter how you name your beautiful essence, may these words remind you to honor the quiet, unyielding courage it took to carry your spirit through the fires of becoming.

In previous articles, I’ve written in depth about the trauma of growing up in a homophobic and transphobic world—a world that often failed to honor our true essence—and the profound impact that has on our lives. By reflecting on the overwhelming experience of identity formation for LGBTQ+ youth who lacked support and faced mistreatment, I invited readers with similar histories to meet their own suffering with greater empathy. One path toward healing from trauma begins by cultivating compassion for the pain we’ve endured.

In this article, I invite readers to reflect not only on the courage it took to survive the challenges of growing up queer but also on the resources that helped them navigate those experiences. One meaningful way to engage with the experience of growing up in a homophobic and transphobic world is by identifying the tools, relationships, and inner strengths that carried us through. This strengths-based approach can help reduce the risk of re-traumatization when dealing with past trauma experiences.

One goal of processing difficult past experiences—often held in the body, including within the autonomic nervous system—is to gently release their hold on us. As we begin the work of letting go of embodied trauma, it's essential to stay grounded in the safety of the present moment. One way to do this is by welcoming the positive emotions that arise from acknowledging our journey toward self-acceptance and equality. By dropping into bodily sensations associated with such acknowledgement, we can create a more compassionate and gentler path toward healing. This isn’t to minimize the reality of today’s anti-LGBTQ+ climate—there is still much work to be done. But recognizing how far we've come and celebrating our progress can be both empowering and a source of hope as we continue on our personal healing journey and strive for greater justice and equality.

Not everyone who grew up queer experienced trauma or mistreatment, and it's important to recognize that. However, for those LGBTQ+ individuals with more positive upbringings, it’s worth exploring how witnessing the mistreatment of other queer youth—whether directly or indirectly, through media, community, or shared stories—might have affected them. Additionally, being raised by loving, supportive parents who assumed their child was straight can create a subtle but meaningful disconnect. Even in caring households, that underlying assumption may feel at odds with a person’s authentic sense of self. Many LGBTQ+ individuals have found it helpful to process these experiences with a trained professional—especially one who is also a member of the community and has done their own personal work around similar dynamics.

When it comes to healing from trauma, it's important to recognize that trauma is both a biological and physiological response to overwhelming events—not just a psychological one. As Dr. Bessel van der Kolk explains in The Body Keeps the Score, “trauma lives in the body’s memory, not in the moment that caused it.” Similarly, Peter Levine notes, “Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.” In my training on the impact of trauma on the nervous system, I learned that many queer individuals with a history of trauma often experience a persistent sense of threat, even in the absence of actual danger. This ongoing state of perceived threat is a key component of anxiety. They may become stuck in a chronic fear response, which can manifest as a prolonged state of fight, flight, or freeze. Supporting the nervous system in completing the responses it couldn’t at the time of the trauma can help deactivate this stuck fear response and promote healing.

One gentle way to access trauma stored in the queer body is by cultivating a sense of safety. This can begin by identifying what was—and still is—supportive in relation to being queer. By recalling and tuning into the felt sense of moments when we experienced safety growing up, we can approach trauma with more care and compassion. For example, when I hear stories from gay or queer young people who have endured hateful acts, I often ask: What helped them cope with such overwhelming stress? How did they make it through? Who showed them kindness during that time? Naming what helped them survive not only honors their resilience but also supports the process of gently shifting out of a stuck threat response.

Queer people who grow up in challenging circumstances—especially experiences of homophobia or transphobia—require a safe therapeutic space. In that space, individuals can honor the deep courage it took to survive and begin to see themselves as the heroes of their own stories. Taking this a step further, we might become curious: How does the person’s body respond to being validated as the hero of their own story? What sensations arise as they recall the people, places, or moments that supported them during their upbringing? Do they feel warmth or openness in their chest? Do their shoulders feel lighter? Has their breathing shifted? Is there any change in their vision?

In a safe therapeutic setting, the person recovering from trauma can begin to gently orient to the safety of the present moment as they process and integrate early life experiences. Given my extensive training in the Somatic Experiencing approach to trauma healing, I have learned one way to do this is by pausing and noticing the environment through the senses. This simple act of orienting involves exploring your surroundings—letting your eyes move naturally, turning your head gently, and allowing your gaze to rest on an object for a few moments. When you're ready, you can continue scanning the environment in this mindful way. It can also be helpful to notice what feels pleasant in your surroundings and stay with that experience for as long as it feels supportive. For example, you might see a beautiful tree outside your window. If it feels pleasant, let yourself really notice it and track any corresponding sensations of ease or comfort in your body. Through this practice, the person on a healing journey may begin to cultivate a deeper sense of inner safety, grounding their reflections in the present as they explore and make meaning of the past.

In my work with queer people, I have learned that for some, there were no helpful resources available to cope adequately with the pain and suffering caused by homophobic and transphobic bullying. They cannot recall anyone who offered support or anything that lessened the humiliation they felt for being different. In such cases, the person can be invited to imagine the missing resources and notice what happens internally when they picture having those resources during that time. For example, Lee, a 25-year-old queer nonbinary person, grew up in a small religious community in the Midwest, without the privilege of a queer-friendly environment like Greenwich Village in New York or open-minded parents. They experienced homophobic mistreatment at home and bullying at school. When invited to recall any resources or situations that helped ease their suffering, they could not remember any. Processing their trauma while staying within the trauma vortex—where overwhelming emotions, memories, and sensations make it difficult to function—could have led to re-traumatization. Instead, Lee benefited from imagining the missing resources being available during their childhood. Through their imagination, they pictured RuPaul and an army of drag queens coming to their rescue, freeing them from bullying and humiliation. The bodily sensations that arose from this imaginal experience activated their ventral vagal pathway, creating a state of safety and relaxation. The experience felt profoundly real in their body. For the first time, they experienced the freedom to use imagination as a doorway to transform what they could not change as a child. They were not denying the overwhelming feelings they had growing up, but for the first time, began to experience pleasant sensations that contrasted with the trauma-related feelings. Repeatedly moving between the distress of their past and the safety created through imagination helped regulate their autonomic nervous system, preventing it from becoming stuck in hyperarousal (overwhelm and agitation). This process strengthened their emotional resilience and allowed them to integrate past experiences without re-traumatization.

Unlike Lee, many queer people found helpful resources while growing up, and they needed therapeutic support to tap into the healing power of recalling and embodying those resources. Even Lee needed help to discover how they managed to get through their painful experiences and still be here to talk about them. Later in their therapy, Lee discovered that rocking their body from side to side was a somatic resource that helped them self-soothe and manage anxiety during their childhood. This discovery happened during a session when they were unaware they were rocking as they reflected on their past. By being invited to pause and notice what their body was doing, Lee recognized that this movement had helped them through difficult moments. They took pride in the wisdom of their body for offering a resource when none was available from the outside.

Finally, we live in a world where most of us grew up surrounded by heterosexual indoctrination. For those of us with a queer soul, this often meant having to protect ourselves from its pervasive influence. We sought refuge in the resources available to us and can take pride in the survival skills we developed and the support systems we leaned on to get through. It’s important to recognize the bodily sensations connected to these resources, allowing them to serve as a foundation for whatever may emerge as we continue our healing journeys. Regardless of what caused our trauma, we all have a right to heal. Life is meant to be an opportunity to grow, to love, to experience joy—not a constant reliving of unhealed pain. That’s why somatic-focused trauma therapy is so necessary—not only for LGBTQ+ people, but for anyone living with trauma. It offers a path forward, a way to reconnect with ourselves, and a chance to fully thrive.

 

© Payam Ghassemlou, MFT, Ph.D., SEP, is a psychotherapist (www.DrPayam.com), Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (www.SomaticAliveness.com), writer (https://www.drpayam.com/articles_and_book) ,and artist (https://SomaticAlivenessArt.etsy.com)

Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist online anywhere in CA, OR & FL.

instagram.com/DrPayam4SomaticWork

 

A Somatic Perspective on the Trauma of Growing up Gay by Payam Ghassemlou MFT, Ph.D.

Listen to this article

For almost three decades, I have immersed myself in the life stories of many people of the LGBTQ community who had painful homophobic and transphobic upbringings. Many of the gay men’s personal narratives that I have heard are not very different from my own. Regardless of national origin, we are part of a tribe with similar stories of growing up in a homophobic and heterosexist world where our gayness was repeatedly assaulted. We are everywhere, and unfortunately so is homophobia.

Many gay men have shared with me that as long they could recall they always felt different. They were unable to articulate why they felt that way, and, at the same time, they did not feel safe to talk about it. Some knew this feeling of being different was related to something forbidden. “It felt like keeping an ugly secret that I could not even understand,” described one person. Other gay men have disclosed to me that this feeling revealed itself in the form of gender nonconformity, which could not be kept secret. Therefore, it made them more vulnerable to homophobic mistreatment at school and often at home. Gay men of color reported even worse experiences due to the additional stress of racism and racial bullying.

Many school-age children organize their school experiences around the notion of not coming across as different, in particular, queer. Any school-age child’s worst nightmare is being labeled faggot, which was commonly experienced by many gay individuals who did not flow with the mainstream. Educational institutions felt like a scary place for many of them who were scapegoated as queer growing up. Therefore, they had to cope with a daily assault of shame and humiliation without any support. This is a form of child abuse on a collective level, and it needs to stop.

So much has been written about the devastating impact of homophobia on gay people’s psychological functioning but not enough on the biological impact of it. It is important to understand how repeated hateful acts toward gay youngsters can impact the way their bodies and minds function, including the functioning of their nervous system. Unfortunately, this also applies to any child who is a target of hate and abuse. As Peter Levine, the founder of Somatic Experiencing, stated, “Trauma is not in the event, but in the nervous system.” Based on my personal and clinical work, I also concur that trauma becomes embodied during a person's life and can affect the working of the autonomic nervous system (“ANS”). Much of the healing from this trauma needs to happen through the body. In particular, the nervous system needs to be regulated.

The ANS is the part of the nervous system that governs the fight, flight, or freeze instinct and  is responsible for the unconscious bodily functions like breathing, digesting food, and regulating the heart rate. It also plays an important role of supplying information from our organs to our brain. The ANS can become dysregulated due to the thwarted responses of fight, flight, or freeze in the aftermath of trauma.

The ANS is central to our experience of safety, connection with others, and our ability to bounce back from life’s overwhelming experiences. This ability to recover defines resilience and requires the help of our ANS to keep us in our “window of tolerance”, which has been defined in the book Nurturing Resilience by trauma specialists Kathy Kain and Stephen Terrell “as the zone where we effectively process environmental signals without becoming too reactive or too withdrawn, given the circumstances.” The window of tolerance as a frame work is very helpful to understand where we feel safe, unsafe, and how to expand our optimal arousal zone.

Stephen Porges’, Bessel van der Kolk’s, and Peter Levine’s research and writings have significantly reworked my understanding of how the nervous system responds to threat and trauma. Drawing from their work and my decades of experience, it is my understanding the ongoing stress from homophobia can activate a youngster’s nervous system and “unresolved activation will be stored in the body as bound energy and manifest as trauma symptoms.” In other words, under a daily homophobic assault, a child’s sympathetic system (“stress response” or “fight or flight” response) gets overly activated. Often during such stressful situations, neither fighting nor fleeing can resolve the overwhelming situation, and the thwarted or incomplete fight and flight responses can become “trapped” within the body and dysregulate the nervous system. Such a dysregulated nervous system is more likely to get stuck on “high” or hyper-arousal. Anxiety, panic attacks, rage, hyperactivity, mania, hypervigilance, sleeplessness, exaggerated startle response, digestive problems, and many other symptoms are the result of a dysregulated nervous system that is stuck on “high” or hyper-arousal.

According to many studies, gay individuals who experienced homophobic related stress showed increased production of the stress hormone cortisol compared to peers in safer environments.  This experience of being stuck on “high” continuously activates a person’s stress response system, which leads to the release of stress hormones. Research in this area has shown overexposure to cortisol and other stress hormones leads to numerous health problem including headaches, oversensitivity to touch or sound, weight gain, heart disease, concentration impairment, and sleep disturbance.

On the other hand, there are gay men whose nervous systems are stuck on “low” or hypo-arousal, which can result from being terrorized growing up with no hope of protection. Faced with isolation, confusion, physical violence, not being valued, 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 sort it out. Such experience is often beyond the youngster’s “window of tolerance.”  This is when the dorsal vagus can shut down the entire system, and the mistreated youngster can go into freeze. In other words, the youngster suffers in silence with numbness or dissociation as his only available survival mechanism.

Stephen Porges, the founder of Polyvagal Theory, has expanded our view of the vagus nerve, one of the largest nerves in the body and a major part of the Parasympathetic system. The word “vagus” means wandering in Latin. The dorsal vagus is a branch of the vagus nerve which is a much older part of the nervous system. Dorsal vagus regulates organs below the diaphragm. Dorsal vagus is instrumental in activating the “shutdown” of the body as discussed in cases of overwhelming fear which can result from homophobic mistreatment. This automatic survival mechanism can become a long-standing pattern of how individuals might cope with fear and stress in life. For example, people whose nervous system is stuck on “low” or hypo-arousal when faced with life stresses can default to shutting down, disassociation, chronic isolation, detachment, numbness, and suicidal thoughts.

In my counseling work, I have noticed when the nervous system gets stuck on freeze, when numbness and detachment become a gay man’s dominant state, he is more likely to engage in risky behaviors as a temporary relief from inner deadness. Thrill seeking behaviors such as sexual acting out, excessive gambling, and crystal meth (crystal methamphetamine) use are ways some gay men escape the emotional flatness that results from experiencing the hypo-arousal state. The same behaviors can also be used to cope with ongoing activation of the fight or flight response. One person might turn to substance abuse to escape his inner deadness and another person might use it to dampen his anxiety that often results from being stuck in a state of hyper-arousal.

As Peter Levine stated, “Trauma is a fact of life. It does not, however, have to be a life sentence.”  For those of us who have had painful struggles with homophobia, life after the closet needs to include dealing with memories of homophobic mistreatment that can lie dormant in our body. Recovery from it needs to start with resourcing and then progressing to completing the thwarted responses of fight, flight, or freeze. Such healing can reset the nervous system and restore inner balance. In Body Keeps the Score, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk writes about a body-centered approach to healing which allows “the body to have experiences that deeply and viscerally contradict the helplessness, rage, or collapse that result from trauma.”

How far the LGBTQ community has come in our struggle for equal rights reflects how brave we are as a community. Our bravery can continue by facing traumas we experienced growing up in oppressive environments that did not nurture our true essence. Not every LGBTQ person felt traumatized growing up, but those who did can benefit from the vitality and the sense of liberation that comes with incorporating somatic work as part of the healing process.

The Somatic Experiencing Trauma Institute offers trainings and seminars on the biology of traumatic stress reactions including tools on how to bring the body-mind-spirit back into balance. Participating in their trainings has enhanced my ability to help others who are interested to tap into the wisdom of their bodies for healing and growth.  There are many other institutes that offer body-centered approaches toward healing which reflect the increased popularity of such work.

 

© Payam Ghassemlou, MFT, Ph.D., SEP, is a psychotherapist (www.DrPayam.com), Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (www.SomaticAliveness.com), writer (https://www.drpayam.com/articles_and_book) ,and artist

(https://SomaticAlivenessArt.etsy.com).

 
Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist online anywhere in CA & Florida.

For more articles by Dr. Payam, please click on the following link:  https://drpayam.com/articles_and_book

When the Need for Connection Trumps Authenticity

As a baby, you were an authentic being. Your laughter and tears were real. You were also helpless and depended on your caregivers for survival. Your caregivers had an important role in helping you feel securely connected to and loved by them. The depth and genuineness of your current connection with others stems from how successfully your caregivers managed their role as an attachment figure. This complex interplay between the quality of attachment formed between a child and a caregiver and one’s current ability to form significant connections with others has been discussed extensively by many experts in psychology, including Dr. Gabor Mate. In one of his talks, Mate has discussed how the need for attachment can trump authenticity. When as a small child, your survival depended on your caregivers, you were more likely to do whatever it took to stay connected to them even if it meant hiding your true feelings. For example, if your caregivers did not approve of your genuine expressions of anger or sadness, most likely you hid them in favor of pleasing or staying connected to your caregivers. In other words, for the sake of survival you had to choose attachment over authenticity.

The impasse of being real versus the need for survival continues into adolescence and creates a unique challenge for gay youth and others who did not flow with the mainstream. As a LGBTQ youngster, if you felt unsafe to express your real essence, you probably had to create a fake or “straight acting” identity to protect yourself from homophobic mistreatment. The need to hide contributed to the dilemma of choosing survival over authenticity. It is important to have empathy for your struggle of growing up in a heterosexist and homophobic environment that made it scary for you to express your true essence. It is important for many LGBTQ people to learn how to honor their true essence and work on healing years of oppressive homophobic mistreatment. The price of not individuating is summed up by a quote by Oscar Wilde, "Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."

Being real and authentic can be a struggle if you spent most of your childhood finding expression of authenticity as a threat to your survival. What helped you to survive as a child may not serve you today. Relying on the old survival mechanism of pleasing others has become a barrier to be fully present in your significant relationships with others. The process of letting go of such a survival mechanism in favor of honoring your true self involves psychological labor of reaching out to your younger self. The inner child is the part of you that was forced to hide and not show his or her genuine feelings. This part of you needs help to connect with others without the mask of pretending or people pleasing.

In summary, since your ability to be authentic with yourself and others has a lot to do with how you were treated growing up, it makes sense to examine how your past impacts your life today. Psychotherapy can help you not only to heal from childhood mistreatment that can hinder building healthy relationships with others, but also other major life events that contributes to such problems.

For more articles by Dr. Payam, please click on the following link:  https://drpayam.com/articles_and_book

 

 

© Payam Ghassemlou, MFT, Ph.D., SEP, is a psychotherapist (www.DrPayam.com), somatic experiencing practitioner (www.SomaticAliveness.com), and artist (https://somaticalivenessart.etsy.com).
 
Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist online anywhere in CA & Florida.

Fruit Basket: A Gay Man's Journey

Fruit Basket

by

Payam Ghassemlou Ph.D.

People don't need to travel to exotic places to begin a process of self-reflection. Personal growth is accessible to anyone who is willing to embrace curiosity and engage in self-discovery. In this book, Fruit Basket, I share the psycho-spiritual journey of a gay man named Javid, in which he struggles with homophobia and having a life purpose. When Javid has his last struggle with vanity and begins to dance to a more meaningful tune, his life grows in favor of depth. 

This book is available on Amazon and Smashwords:

Amazon

Createspace

Smashwords

I hope you enjoy reading it.

 

© Payam Ghassemlou, MFT, Ph.D., SEP, is a psychotherapist (www.DrPayam.com), Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (www.SomaticAliveness.com), writer (https://www.drpayam.com/articles_and_book) ,and artist

(https://SomaticAlivenessArt.etsy.com).

 
Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist online anywhere in CA & Florida.

Homophobia Enemy of Curiosity

Homophobia Enemy of Curiosity

By Payam Ghassemlou Ph.D.

The landscape of our life is as vast as the degree of our curiosity. This is an emotion that can be put in motion by a wondrous dance with creation. Curiosity motivates us to show interest in ourselves and the world around us. With curiosity, we can passionately explore the mystery of life. It also engages us with the content of our universe and helps us to come to life in a new way. When life comes to us through our curiosity, we become an active player in our life. We no longer sit passively and let life just happen.

Lack of curiosity keeps us prisoner in the small pond that we call our life. Without curiosity, we can never leave this small pond and merge with the ocean or never ride the inquisitive waves. When we don’t explore, notice, ask questions or embrace the wonder of life we are not living a full life. Without curiosity our life lacks meaning and vitality. This is why curiosity is so important in order to live a meaningful life.

Curiosity requires support and tolerance to leave our comfort zone and venture into the unknown. Curiosity starts early in life, and requires support from care givers in order to fully blossom. All small children need to learn about their emotions including curiosity and healthy parenting includes this task.

One of the barriers toward developing a strong sense of curiosity for gay and lesbian youth has to do with a homophobic upbringing. Homophobia prevents gay and lesbian kids from fully embracing their sense of curiosity. Many of my gay and lesbian patients, including a number of bisexual and transgender individuals, have shared with me that as young as age four 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. Many found it too threatening to show curiosity toward their feeling of differentness hence their sense of curiosity got discouraged from early age. Growing up in a homophobic atmosphere caused their sense of curiosity to be replaced with fear and shame.

When an adolescent’s curiosity about his or her same sex attraction gets fed with homophobic messages of disgust, he or she can develop self hate and be forced into a closet of shame. Homophobic messages and violent attacks can discourage his or her sense of curiosity, which can have negative consequences including lack of relationship to one’s inner life. It can prevent the youngster from learning to know himself or herself and develop a deeper emotional insight.

Depression is common among those gays and lesbians who suffered homophobic mistreatment growing up. Many of them who felt different and did not flow with mainstream reported suffering in silence without any support in understanding their feelings. Curiosity toward complex matters like feeling of differentness and same sex attraction requires support from caring adults. Many reported they did not have support to follow their natural sense of curiosity and explore their feeling of differentness. As a result their ability to be curious was hindered which caused a sense of deadness inside them and resulted in long term depression.

Thrill seeking behaviors such as drug abuse and risky sex are another example of consequences for underdeveloped curiosity. Some gay individuals use thrill seeking behaviors as compensation for their insufficient relationship to their sense of curiosity. Thrill seeking behaviors are ways they might try to cope with the void and emptiness that results from lack of access to their curiosity. Life can feel meaningless without freedom to be curious.

The journey toward healing from the impact of homophobia on one’s sense of curiosity requires support from caring counselors or psychotherapists who have experience treating such matters. Curiosity, like a muscle, needs plenty of exercise to stay fit. Your gym is the present moment where you can exercise your sense of curiosity. I have found mindfulness practices such as consciously choosing to adapt an attitude of curiosity toward our present moment is a simple and yet powerful step toward redeeming one’s sense of curiosity. For example, a simple walk from your car to the store can become an opportunity to awaken you feeling of curiosity. By curiously noticing the ground under your feet as you walk toward your destination or paying attention to the noise in your immediate area, you can be present and engaged with life. This form of active engagement with your present moment can enhance and improve your ability to be curious.

It is never too late to heal from the impact of homophobia on our ability to feel our curiosity. With curiosity, our life no longer lacks purpose, and we can passionately explore the mystery of our inner life and embrace our gayness.

For more articles by Dr. Payam, please click on the following link:  https://drpayam.com/articles_and_book

© Payam Ghassemlou, MFT, Ph.D., SEP, is a psychotherapist (www.DrPayam.com), Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (www.SomaticAliveness.com), writer (https://www.drpayam.com/articles_and_book) ,and artist

(https://SomaticAlivenessArt.etsy.com).

 
Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist online anywhere in CA & Florida.

He is the author of Fruit Basket: A Gay Man’s Journey. In his book, Dr. Payam Ghassemlou writes about the psycho-spiritual journey of a gay man named Javid, in which he struggles with homophobia and having a life purpose. Available on Amazon

LGBT Suicide and the Trauma of Growing Up Gay

By

Payam Ghassemlou MFT, Ph.D.

Listen to this article

        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.

© Payam Ghassemlou, MFT, Ph.D., SEP, is a psychotherapist (www.DrPayam.com), Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (www.SomaticAliveness.com), writer (https://www.drpayam.com/articles_and_book) ,and artist

(https://SomaticAlivenessArt.etsy.com).

 
Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist online anywhere in CA & Florida.