With the university year ending and many students returning home for the summer to see their families, catch up with old friends and live in cheaper (or even free) accommodation, this is a time of year that is both great and difficult for LGBT+ people. If you or your client are closeted or if your family is homophobic then returning home can be difficult and decreases your mental health. This isn’t good. Therefore, today’s psychology podcast episode focuses on how to navigate going home as an LGBT+ person, including why this is difficult and what to do about it. Whether you’re LGBT+ or not, this is still a useful episode you can learn from. If you enjoy learning about LGBT+ experiences, social psychology and mental health then this is a great episode for you.
Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Working With Children and Young People: A Guide To Clinical Psychology, Mental Health and Psychotherapy. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca.
Note: as always nothing on this podcast is any sort of official advice whatsoever.
Why Can Going Home Be Difficult For LGBT+ People?
Traditionally, the idea of going home and being surrounded by family after a term or academic year away is joyful, fun and it is the sign that you finished another great year at university. You’re one step closer to graduating and after all your hard work this year, you can now relax with your family and friends over the summer months.
However, whether it’s the end of an academic year, going home for the holiday season or even going home after spending a lovely day with an accepting friend, going home can always be difficult for LGBT+ individuals.
There’s a range of reasons why this could be the case. A lot of LGBT+ people have a complicated relationship with their family and parents and the same goes for hometowns to be honest. Since hometowns and the places we grew up in can represent the bullying, the homophobia and the abuse we faced in our younger years. A lot of young LGBT+ people experience trauma and oppression in their hometowns and at the hands of their families, so going back to them is always a difficult affair.
Another way to look at this is we consider how our own families or hometowns tend to be the places where young LGBT+ people are most othered and made to feel like strangers, weirdos and freaks. No one ever wants to return to places or people that make us better like these horrible things.
Personally, I’ve mentioned before how homophobic my upbringing was and how it led to trauma and child abuse and everything I’ve already explained on the podcast. And I’ve always classed myself as a survivor and I didn’t really have any other option but to stick with this undesirable outcome. It would have been nice not to have to live in this day in and day out but that was my life for over a decade, it seriously killed my mental health over time.
However, linking to this topic, when I was going through emotional dependency last August, I remember leaning on my super-accepting friend who was also gay, and I just cried. Because after spending such a lovely day with him, I did not want to return home, so it is really, really difficult to go home at times as an LGBT if you’re “social environment” does not like, respect or tolerate you. Thankfully, everything is a million times better now but still, in the past it was not.
In addition, these feelings of shame and other negative emotions and triggers can be brought to the forefront of our minds if we have to share a space or go to a physical location that we associated with abuse, hate or homophobia during the holiday season or summer months. For example, if we have to spend time with extremely homophobic people and we might be really anxious about how this will go and what abuse we will have to hear, and this is still bad for us to experience even if we’re closeted to these people. Sometimes for our own safety.
I remember having to go to a party at one of my brother’s friends’ houses and I was stuck listening to their homophobic “banter” for hours. It was hurtful, awful and I didn’t want to be listening to this utter rubbish about how disgusting and an abomination I was. Now none of this was directed at me personally but it was still directed at who I was and who I loved, so I hated my brother and his friends that night.
It was difficult to say the least and now I seriously put my foot down and I refuse to go to anything related to my brother’s friends. If my brother and his family want picking up, they can find their own way back. I am flat out not getting stuck at a party again waiting for my brother and his family to get ready for three hours.
Overall, home will always be complicated for LGBT+ individuals. Even more so when we consider that going home and returning to our hometown evokes a lot of emotions about our younger selves and how we never felt like we belonged growing up. This comes with a lot of fear, pain and depression and some people want to hide or run away.
Additionally, going off on a quick minor tangent here, this is what happens to me whenever my best friend talks about their past relationships and the one they’re currently in. I let them talk about it, because they’re my friend and we’re really close. But it always evokes pain, sadness and grief inside me because they’ve always been able to live a gay life that I was never allowed to live. A life that’s even harder to get now because of my sexual assault.
I understand that drive to hide because if you can’t be seen then you can’t be attacked or hurt or shouted at.
Nonetheless, there is one thing to remember here. There is an opportunity in going home and returning to your hometown because you can get through the summer and holiday season. Yet you can find healing too, and we can heal our younger selves as well. This can all be done by focusing on taking care of ourselves and our younger LGBT+ selves.
I know this sounds a little woo-woo at the moment but please, bear with me.
How Can Exploring Emotional Care Towards Our Younger Queer Selves Help Us Navigate Going Home?
Last year, I did one of my favourite podcast episodes about how LGBT+ individuals effectively have a second adolescence where they can reclaim and have the experiences they were robbed of during their first or “biological” adolescence. Like, a first date, kissing, relationships and so on. The reason why a second adolescence is needed in the first place is because the vast majority of LGBT+ people hold wounds within our younger selves and these wounds need to be addressed. Once these are addressed, we can begin healing, living and enjoying life, something that was effectively stolen from us as teenagers.
As a result, this second adolescence gives us an opportunity to explore what emotional needs our younger selves have when we return home to our families or our hometown. You might need to consider allowing yourself to grieve for the life and childhood that was stolen from your younger self as well as you might want to stand up for your younger self. For example, if you hear homophobia or if you see anyone who used to bully or abuse you, if you’re safe now then you might want to challenge them so you can stand up for your younger self.
In addition, you might need to tell your younger self that you’re safe now and you aren’t being abused, beaten or anything that your younger self went through or was scared to go through. As well as you might need to validate and empathise with your younger self. For instance, if your younger self would be scared to go back to a physical location or see certain people again then tell your younger self that that is okay and it’s normal to feel uncomfortable.
Ultimately, this is all about being kind to yourself when you return to family and hometowns during the summer, holiday season or anywhere else.
In my experience, I always have to allow my younger self to grieve as I mentioned earlier when my best friend talks about their relationships. Since that was a life that was just way too dangerous for me and it was awful and even though I am safe now and in a better position, having to unlearn all that abuse and anti-gay messaging is hard. As well as when I was in therapy last year for this abuse, my therapist wanted me to write a letter to my younger self to help him heal and everything so he would know I was safe now. It really did work and I do recommend that idea.
Just be kind to yourself, look after the emotional needs of your current self and your younger self, and respect your emotional needs.
Explore The Boundaries You Need
Moving onto our current selves, whenever we return home to our families or our hometown, we need to think about the emotional as well as physical boundaries we need to get in place so we feel safe, comfortable and like we have our own space. These boundaries can include attending certain events but not others, seeing certain people but not other people and deciding what we want to share about our lives and what we really don’t want to share.
Moreover, you can set boundaries on the amount of time you want to spend with certain people and at certain events. As well as you need to find ways to make sure these boundaries are respected by you and other people, even if our family or others don’t want us to respect our boundaries.
You have to give yourself permission to set these boundaries and protect yourself.
This is something I was extremely bad at because I just wanted to survive in my hometown, but there was one boundary I did set. I barely told my “social environment” anything about my life and anything gay-related that I was doing. For example, I remember going to Margate Pride in August 2023 with some friends but I didn’t tell other people about that, I said I was going to Broadstairs, a little seaside town instead. I also never told other people that I had gay friends and I never told them about the Mythbuster work I was doing with my university and so on.
I kept boundaries to protect myself and make my life so much easier.
You need to do the same.
Social Psychology Conclusion
Before I finish off this podcast episode focusing on LGBT+ listeners, I wanted to focus on everyone else including our aspiring or qualified clinical psychologists. I always hope these sort of podcast episodes are really useful, even if you’re not LGBT+ yourself. Since all of us need to learn, listen and respect the lived experiences of other people and chances are you will meet an LGBT+ client in the future, so having a basic understanding of the social and familial issues that LGBT+ clients go through will help to make you a better therapist than someone who has never learnt this stuff.
So thank you for listening and reading.
In addition, LGBT+ people will have complicated relationships with their families and hometowns because of homophobia, transphobia and all the anti-LGBT+ messaging that we face on a daily basis. If you have a great relationship with your family then more power to you, and I am really happy for you. Yet other people do not have that, so if you’re returning home to your family or hometown after another university year or during the holiday season. This can be hard, especially if you’ve been living a free and authentic life being your wonderfully queer self at university, to have to come home and closet yourself again. That is hard.
Therefore, you need to look after yourself, set and respect boundaries and look after the emotional health of your younger self too.
Ultimately, going home might seem hard and impossible, but it is more than possible to find a place where you and your younger self are safe, secure and comfortable during this summer or holiday season.
I really hope you enjoyed today’s social psychology podcast episode.
If you want to learn more, please check out:
Working With Children and Young People: A Guide To Clinical Psychology, Mental Health and Psychotherapy. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca.
Have a great day.
Social Psychology References and Further Reading
Donovan, C., Magić, J., & West, S. (2023). Family abuse targeting queer family members: An argument to address problems of visibility in local services and civic life. Journal of Family Violence, 1-13.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/second-adolescence/202312/navigating-holidays-and-hometowns-as-an-lgbtq-person
Jonas, L., Salazar de Pablo, G., Shum, M., Nosarti, C., Abbott, C., & Vaquerizo‐Serrano, J. (2022). A systematic review and meta‐analysis investigating the impact of childhood adversities on the mental health of LGBT+ youth. JCPP advances, 2(2), e12079.
Ryan, C., Russell, S. T., Huebner, D., Diaz, R., & Sanchez, J. (2010). Family acceptance in adolescence and the health of LGBT young adults. Journal of child and adolescent psychiatric nursing, 23(4), 205-213.
Strauss, P., Cook, A., Winter, S., Watson, V., Wright Toussaint, D., & Lin, A. (2020). Mental health issues and complex experiences of abuse among trans and gender diverse young people: Findings from Trans Pathways. LGBT health, 7(3), 128-136.
Westwood, S. (2019). Abuse and older lesbian, gay bisexual, and trans (LGBT) people: a commentary and research agenda. Journal of elder abuse & neglect, 31(2), 97-114.
Wilson, C., & Cariola, L. A. (2020). LGBTQI+ youth and mental health: A systematic review of qualitative research. Adolescent Research Review, 5(2), 187-211.
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