Why Is Grief Part of Queer Healing? A Social Psychology Podcast Episode.

Traditionally, whenever we think about grief, we tend to limit it to the loss of a loved one, a social or romantic relationship that we valued but it is now lost and we grieve when we go through traumatic events. Yet a lot of people traditionally don’t acknowledge that LGBT+ individuals grieve for the childhood, adolescence and life that was stolen from them because of the homophobic environment where they grew up, and how they needed to hide themselves for their own safety. This is what I talk about in my podcast episode that talks about the second adolescence that LGBT+ individuals experience after coming out and when they have more control over their lives. Therefore, in this social psychology podcast episode, you’ll learn why is grief part of queer healing, what is queer healing and how we can support and nurture queer people during their healing process. If you enjoy learning about trauma, discrimination and mental health then this will be a brilliant episode for you.

Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Social Psychology: A Guide To Social and Cultural Psychology. 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.

Why Is Grief Part of Queer Healing?

As I mentioned in the introduction, we tend to limit our understanding of grief to the loss of a loved one but in reality, we can experience grief over a lot of different experiences. Like the loss of friendship, rejection from a potential date, loss of a job and so on. Grief is a very painful experience that starts off as a pain response to the loss of something that we seriously value and the pain of longing for something that we simply cannot have. Then as we heal, we start to move on and experience less pain because of the loss, even if it is something that will always be with us.

This connects to LGBT+ individuals because a lot of us adults seriously wish that things had been different for us growing up. I’ve talked about before on the podcast and in my books that I had an awful childhood from an LGBT+ perspective. I lived in an intensely homophobic environment, I was in fear of my life every second or every day and I was constantly being told that “we needed to beat the gay out of people with a big stick”. My mental health was awful, I was self-harming and I was just struggling to survive because of the sheer intensity of the homophobia and how I truly believed if my social environment found out I was gay. I would be killed.

This isn’t an uncommon experience for a lot of LGBT+ adults.

The majority of LGBT+ adults developed a lot of internalised shame during their childhood and adolescence because they felt different from other people, and the world told them this was wrong. This led LGBT+ people to hide themselves, deny who they were and intentionally or unconsciously try to change who they were because of their difficult adolescence.

This is something I actually never thought I would ever admit in public or at all. No one knows this about me. Yet because I was so convinced I was going to die if my environment found out I was gay, I tried to “make myself straight” about three times as a teenager. I remember one of the times I tried to “go straight” by enjoying Hermine Granger and Draco Malfoy fanfiction, because I was really attracted to Tom Felton as a teenager. Of course, it didn’t work at all and it was awful and I never recommend that on anyone, but I wanted to try it just to survive and make sure I didn’t get killed.

Ultimately, this leads a lot of LGBT+ people to miss out on meaningful, lovely experiences that our cisgender, straight peers take for granted and always have access to. For example, the majority of my straight friends had their first relationship at 13 years old, they had sex at 16 years old (that’s the age of consent in the UK) and so on. I had my first relationship at 23 years old and I lost my virginity at 24.

This leads us onto the second adolescence that a lot of LGBT+ adults experience and I’ve already done a podcast episode on it so I won’t rehash it here. I will give a definition though from that episode. We can define the second adolescence as “the framework for healing and having the freedom to explore what being gay is to that person and they can understand what happened to them and how they can move on in adulthood.”

Actually, since I wrote the original podcast episode where I introduced and discussed our second adolescence, I have lived a little more and I have to admit that your second adolescence is amazing, positive and I will always wish I had these experiences in my “actual” adolescence. But they were just as sweet, heartwarming and lovely now at the age of 24. Getting into a relationship for the first time, holding my ex-partner’s hand and kissing them for the first time was so lovely, so wonderful and it was everything I had ever wanted.

Not only because of how beautiful my ex was, but also because I could be gay, I could be authentic and I could just experience gay stuff for the first time in my life. It was great to be able to live authentically for a change.

Nonetheless, one topic I didn’t mention or stress too much in that original post was the grief portion of the second adolescence. Since the second adolescence is all about healing and giving ourselves the freedom to move and heal beyond the trauma that our younger selves endured growing up in an anti-LGBT+ world and what we wish we could have done for our younger selves. Grieving for what we’ve lost, what other people took from us and for what other people did to us, that is all core to the second adolescence.

For example, to be able to heal and actually have a second adolescence, we need to grieve for the opportunities that we never had in our childhood and adolescence, and we need to grieve for the awful wounds that were inflicted upon us instead. I had to grieve for that I was never able or allowed to explore dating or sex in romantic relationships, I grieved how I was never able to ask anyone to Prom and I had to go to Prom with a straight female friend of mine and that was just awful. I hated that so much. I grieved for not being able to add to relationship and dating conversations with my friends, I grieved for never having a “meet the parents” situation and so on.

Instead I was abused, had awful mental health and I suffered from chronic shame and fear and it’s foul.

And as much as none of us really want to grieve because grief is painful and a lot of us are brilliant at pushing our emotions to one side just so we can survive. If we don’t allow ourselves to grieve then you will never be able to heal and if you leave your trauma unprocessed, then it can become toxic and really harm your mental health.

This is why it’s critical that we grieve with and for the younger versions of ourselves.

How Do We Grieve For and With Our Younger Selves?

After my breakdown in August 2023, I went to private counselling and she recommended that I do this idea of grieving for my younger self, and this is a weird idea to me. I have never heard of this in a clinical psychology lecture, this doesn’t sound empirical and this sounds a little woo-woo. To me, this was a good reminder that psychotherapy is a mixture of science and an art form because grieving for our young selves might make us feel embarrassed or odd but this can be a really powerful tool for processing a form of grief.

Reaching out to trained mental health professional is very important too.

I’ll talk more about my own experience of grieving for my younger self later on in this episode.

The first technique that people can use to grieve for their younger selves is to visualise an image of your younger self. You can bring to mind a particular version that you feel pulled too and it’s important that you really let yourself imagine them. Focus on what they’re wearing, how do they like to spend their time, what are they interested in, what kind of pain are they carrying and so on. After you’ve really imagined what they look and act like, sit with this image and notice what you feel as you see this younger version of yourself and hold onto this image of your younger self as if you are a living being.

Personally, when I was grieving for my younger self, I always imagined a terrified 16-year-old child who was crawled up on their bed in a dark room with the curtains closed so no one could see them, hurt them and beat them. They were terrified, alone and convinced they were going to die at any moment. Seeing that younger version of myself used to make me feel sad, terrible and I wanted nothing more than to hug them and talk to them.

That’s actually the next tip.

The second way how people can grieve for the younger version of themselves is to communicate with the younger self about the experience of growing up in an anti-LGBT+ world. I always did this as a letter so you can do this, or you can imagine they’re sitting in a chair opposite you and you can talk aloud to the younger self. Like the previous activity, make sure you’re holding an image of the younger self in your mind and really let yourself see them and feel their presence.

Afterwards, just start sharing with them what you know about their life. Tell them that you understand how scared or terrified or another emotion that they’re feeling, let them know you understand how scary the world seems and acknowledge all their hopes, desires, fears and pain.

Give yourself the validation that you were denied as a child.

The next step is to offer support and companionship that your younger self likely never received as a kid, so tell them that it isn’t okay that the world and people around them are making them feel this way. As well as mention how valuable and worthy the younger self is and counter some of the evil criticisms and sources of shame that they’re dealing with.

In addition, let your younger self know that you’re grieving too about how you wish you could have kissed X that night, you could have asked out Y and you could have held your best friend’s hand when they were scared but you were too scared about being seen as “gay” and so on. Allow yourself to share a lot with your younger self and be empathetic for everything that you were denied for no fault of your own.

Finally, for this technique, allow yourself to feel as you have this conversation with your younger self. Notice how you feel for them and what you’re feeling for them and let yourself imagine what it might be like for your younger self to hear what you’re saying to them. Then don’t forget the importance of endings and your parting words, thank your younger self for talking with you today, tell them how you’re trying to heal and live a life now that they could only dream of. Just tell your younger self what you think is important before you say goodbye for now.

Personally, this was a very valuable exercise for me that I did twice and it really helped me to incorporate that abandoned, terrified, traumatised part of my self back into myself so I could become whole again. I really recommend that you do this exercise.

A final technique how you can grieve for and with your younger self is to reflect on what it was like for you growing up in an anti-LGBT- world. You can do this through journaling or talking out loud. You can explore questions like the following:

·       What do you wish you didn’t have to endure?

·       What was life for your younger self like as an LGBT+ person?

·       How did your younger self feel about themselves?

·       Was your younger self aware of your LGBT+ identity or feeling that they were different?

·       And so on.

Social Psychology Conclusion

Healing as an LGBT+ person takes a lot of effort, energy and time. There were moments on my queer healing journey where I thought I would never heal, I would always be traumatised, terrified and alone in the world. Yet it does get better because I put in the effort, I sort out the right counsellor and I really did move heaven and earth to help myself move on. As well as I met some wonderful people along the way that helped me more than they will ever know. And yes, my child trauma because of the intense homophobia destroyed those relationships, but those relationships impacted and helped me more than those people will ever know and I love them for it. Even if they will probably avoid me like the plague if we ever meet again.

Healing is possible.

As a result, whether you go through the three techniques and exercises that I spoke about above or you do something similar, it’s important to find ways to be with, express and move through your queer grief. Since if you don’t go through your grief, you will never be able to heal from the impact of the anti-LGBT+ world we grew up in and are still currently living in.

As much as we all wish it wasn’t, healing is a gradual, slow process of unpacking what happened to us. It’s important that we start slow and small and we do it for your younger selves.

Let’s give our younger selves the love, justice and compassion that we were denied.

I really hope you enjoyed today’s social psychology podcast episode.

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Clinical Psychology References and Further Reading

Alexander, Q. D., & Carruthers, C. A. (2022). “How We Are with Each Other”: Conversations on Queer Healing and Black Liberation. QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, 9(3), 209-215.

Arani, A., & Winget, A. R. (2022). Introduction to “Queer healing and transformative justice”: A special issue of QED. QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, 9(3), 1-9.

Awadalla, A. (2022). The Magic of the Margins: Rethinking Healing from the Perspective of Queer Exile. QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, 9(3), 194-200.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/second-adolescence/202306/the-grief-in-queer-healing

Singh, A. A., Finan, R., & Estevez, R. (2023). Queer and trans resilience: Moving from affirmation to liberation in our collective healing. In Identity as resilience in minoritized communities: Strengths-based approaches to research and practice (pp. 1-22). Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland.

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