We cannot fully address the increase in anti-LGBTQ legislation, queerphobia, bullying, shame, and their effects without exploring trauma. When we think of trauma, most of us think of a rape, murder, death, catastrophic event, or natural disaster. And while these are unequivocally traumas, a trauma is also experienced as a daily microaggression, such as queerphobia, bullying, and time spent in the closet. Any child who has experienced the closet has known shame — and shame itself is trauma.
For years, while working at a gay bar and being a part of a culture where drugs and alcohol were intrinsically connected, I looked at high rates of drug and alcohol misuse in the LGBTQ community through the lens of shame. Having ten years of sobriety myself, I used to attribute my close and personal relationship with drugs and alcohol to shame. It wasn’t until a presentation I saw given by Jeremy Treat, LMFT, director of research and evaluation, and his team at Penny Lane, one of Los Angeles’ largest child welfare agencies, that I discovered how minority stress, daily microaggressions, and the implications for LGBTQ youth living in a heteronormative world are traumatic.
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Jeremy’s presentation completely changed my advocacy and propelled me down a path of learning more about trauma. I contacted him after the conference to see if I could review his research, and what I found was astonishing.
In order to understand how living in a heteronormative world, daily microaggressions, minority stress, and the closet can be traumatic for LGBTQ youth, we have to take a few steps back. Each of us, as children, develops physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and personally based on our unique backgrounds and experiences. In other words, what experts consider “identity formation.” The children in your life, right now, are establishing their own identity formation based on their individual experiences and will develop accordingly. For minorities and marginalized groups (in this case, LGBTQ youth), childhood development comes with what are considered to be “barriers to development”—things in the world that can complicate a child’s healthy identity formation.
According to Jeremy’s research, the top four common barriers to development for LGBTQ youth are:
Minority Stress.
Homonegativity.
Anomie (a sense of normlessness, lack of social control, and feeling alienated).
Internalized queerphobia.
While little t trauma, including bullying, heteronormativity, and queerphobia, may seem less threatening or significant than big T trauma, the symptoms LGBTQ youth experience are often the same as those of someone with post-traumatic stress disorder, including, hypervigilance, blunted awareness, poor concentration, depressed mood, worry or panic, illness, and physical pain.
In her book Trauma and Grace, Serene Jones writes, “Traumatic events are not necessarily limited to one-time occurrences of cataclysmic proportions; they can also be repeated events of the low-intensity variety, like the constant threat of violence in some forms of domestic abuse or hostile workplace environments. In such instances, the assault on the psyche is no less disabling than a frontal attack; but because it never reaches the explosive level of violence we associate with traumatic harm, its corrosive effects are more likely to go unnoticed—and uninterrupted—for years.”
Addiction rates are higher for LGBTQ people than the overall population. Compared to their straight peers, LGB youth are 90 percent more likely to use substances. The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study shows how exposure to emotional, physical, or sexual abuse and household dysfunction during childhood, compared to those who had experienced none, led to a four- to twelvefold increase of the risk of alcoholism, drug abuse, depression, and suicide attempts.
Sam Brinton, Head of Advocacy & Government Affairs for the Trevor Project, the world’s largest suicide-prevention and crisis-intervention organization for LGBTQ youth, released a statement in response to the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) report on the National Suicide Hotline Improvement Act. He said, “Today’s FCC report on the National Suicide Hotline Improvement Act recognizes young LGBTQ Americans as an acutely high-risk population for suicide attempts. The report also recognizes a need for specialized services for at-risk populations, specifically LGBTQ youth.”
What’s more, FCC chairman, Ajit Pai said, “There is a suicide epidemic in this country, and it is disproportionately affecting at-risk populations, including our Veterans and LGBTQ youth.”
Approximately 1.5 to 2 times the general population of youth I’ve worked with in the child welfare system identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or questioning. According to a study by the Administration for Children and Families, 39 percent of them were forced from their homes due to their sexual orientation or gender identity. Despite large numbers in need, many service professionals receive no training on how to support LGBTQ youth.
While there is a disproportionately low number of service professionals trained to work with LGBTQ youth, three important considerations for any professional to make when working with LGBTQ youth are:
Awareness of personal bias.
Internalized queerphobia, or shame, create a negative self-image and lack of self-worth.
Familial, cultural, or communal rejection is no different from grief from losing a loved one.
As I’m finishing this chapter, I can hear laughter from kids playing on the playground next door to my home. Children’s laughter is the sound of resilience and human dignity. Jeremy Treat’s final recommendation from his presentation “LGBTQ Youth and Trauma” is to use humor. He credits humor as an essential part of creating change. While trauma is a serious subject, and naming its effects is no easy feat, my ultimate hope is for LGBTQ youth to have fun while learning to be themselves. A world full of young people living authentically is a world full of laughter and a gift that keeps on giving.
Ultimately, each of us is responsible for treating all children with dignity if we want to help raise a resilient new generation without trauma.
We don’t have to believe in gravity for its effects to work. If we walk off of a bridge, we will fall. The beliefs we have about LGBTQ youth impact how they feel about themselves. As parents, teachers, and caregivers, we can proactively strengthen a young person’s self-esteem by affirming their identity.
Every parent is meant to bless their child. Building new playgrounds, together and connected versus divided and separate, will create a new world for future generations of LGTBQ youth.
Editor’s Note: If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org. The Trans Lifeline (1-877-565-8860) is staffed by trans people and will not contact law enforcement. The Trevor Project provides a safe, judgement-free place to talk for youth via chat, text (678-678), or phone (1-866-488-7386). Help is available at all three resources in English and Spanish.
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