Growing up as an LGBTQIA+ individual can mean many things: joy, self-discovery, struggle, and, possibly, deep sorrow. Often, the grief of an unhappy childhood is not fully recognized or realized until adulthood. While many people experience universal challenges in their formative years — personal insecurity, family conflict, school difficulties — LGBTQIA+ individuals often experience added layers of trauma.
As an adult, this childhood grief can surface in unexpected ways. In today’s article, we’ll explore how this grief can manifest itself and how to begin the healing process.
What Is Grief?
Many in the LGBTQIA+ community are familiar with what it’s like to feel as though you must hide yourself — to become someone else, even for the benefit of others. Accordingly, as you explore and embrace your identity or look back on your childhood, it’s only natural that you might feel grief. Experiences that may have once seemed impossible might now look more like lost opportunities — missed moments and connections, time wasted being someone other than yourself.
These feelings of grief may be like a chameleon, taking on many different forms. It’s not unusual to be angry at the people and institutions that pressured you to conform or fit in.
Healing From Grief
Rather than trying to suppress or disregard your feelings of grief, it’s important to process them and let them move through you. Coming to terms with those feelings is crucial in learning to love yourself the way you deserve. Whether you know it or not, those childhood wounds may be lingering in your day-to-day life as an adult. If you’re struggling with depression, anxiety, mood swings, or other issues — there’s a good chance that those are extensions of grief and trauma associated with an unhappy childhood. Those memories may have shaped your past — but that doesn’t mean they get to define your future. The first step in healing those wounds is allowing yourself to grieve.
Shared Pain
While our grief may seem like a burden, in some ways, it can also benefit us. An unhappy childhood is a burden that many of us in the LGBTQIA+ community bear. Accordingly, it is one that we can carry together. As an LGBTQIA+ adult, seeking out people who understand what you went through is one of the best ways to help yourself heal. Listening to their stories and sharing your own can be a way of seeing yourself reflected back at you. Often, when we see someone else who shares our feelings, who was hurt the way we were hurt, it becomes easier for us to have sympathy for ourselves — to see how worthy of love we truly are.
Therapy and Grief
Traumatic memories are slippery things. They’re stored differently than everyday memories, sometimes making them harder to remember. It’s not surprising to me when I work with a client whose memories of their childhood are fuzzy at best — lonely days, bullying, isolation, and fear. It’s a lot to live with, especially as a child. Additionally, many people carry the pain of caregivers and authority figures dismissing or shaming them. Those words can be sharp, and that edge can live inside us for a long time.
EMDR and CBT therapy are two different approaches to healing the grief that comes with an unhappy childhood. EMDR therapy helps heal traumatic memories, while CBT therapy teaches us to challenge negative or unhealthy thoughts and behaviors. Both methods can be crucial tools in helping us close the door to an unhappy past to create our best future.
Counseling
You aren’t alone. As a member of the queer community, I know what it’s like to feel trapped by the past. It doesn’t have to be that way. Schedule an appointment today for LGBTQIA+ therapy to begin the healing process and release the burden of an unhappy childhood.
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