By
As a mental health counselor
for the past twenty years, I have listened to many painful stories from some of
my lesbian and gay patients regarding their upbringing in a homophobic and
heterosexist world. Many of my gay and lesbian patients, 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 patients. 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 LGBTQ children, or any child who gets scapegoated as
queer. For the most part, LGBTQ kids do not get any protection from school
officials. This is a form of child abuse on a collective level. Mistreatment of
LGBTQ youth and a lack of protection are contributing factors to the issue of
LGBTQ 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
LGBTQ 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 LGBTQ 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 LGBTQ 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 LGBTQ 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 LGBTQ people as result of growing up in a homophobic and
heterosexist world need to be addressed. Each time a LGBTQ 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 LGBTQ 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
LGBTQ 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.
© Dr. Payam Ghassemlou MFT, Ph.D. is a Licensed Marriage and
Family Therapist (Psychotherapist), in private practice in West Hollywood,
California. www.DrPayam.com
He is the author of Fruit Basket: A Gay Man’s Journey. Available on Amazon
