The Silent Traumas Queer Youth Experience

Philosopher Hannah Arendt famously commented in 1961, when reporting on the war crimes trial of a Nazi bureaucrat responsible for the coordination of transporting Jews to concentration camps, that evil is banal.  By this she meant that evil could exist absent any dramatic or violent act, it can exist in normal and mundane environments, like an office transport administration team who give no thought to the impact of their actions. 

Let’s adapt this quote to the experience of LGBTQ+ (‘Queer’) youth and consider that for this population trauma is banal. 

By this I mean that, separate and apart from the appalling political intimidation, harassment, and violence that this population is still subjected to, Queer youth also experience a series of low-key traumas that arise just by living in a heteronormative world. These low-key experiences are so much a part of daily life that they often go unacknowledged, from the scarcity of role models & mentors, ticking boxes for male or female, being marginalized in sports & religions, continually facing whether to disclose their sexuality, these experiences collectively result in too many Queer youth experiencing the cumulative traumas of thousands of acts of marginalization. 

As therapists working with this population, part of our work is to keep an eye open for the impact of these silent traumas and to support our clients to process them. 

The Impact of Minority Stress

For all the progress we have made as a society around LGBTQ rights, the data around living as a Queer person in the US is disturbing. The 2023 Trevor Project national survey on the mental health of Queer youth found that over 60% reported that their home environment was not LGBTQ+ affirming, 67% had reported experiences of anxiety, and 54% reported experiences of depression, and 41% reported that they had contemplated suicide in the previous year (Trevor Project, 2023).

One reason behind these enhanced risk factors is the impact of minority stress, which is stress faced by a minority group caused by the stigma and discrimination imposed by the dominant population. Let’s consider minority stress to be the additional burden that Queer people face as they journey through life, when compared to the heteronormative population as a result of political oppression (e.g. don’t say gay laws), religious discrimination (e.g. socially acceptable hate speech against Queer people by ‘mainstream’ religious authorities), financial discrimination (statistically lower earning potential), cultural marginalization (e.g. from stigma around participating in professional sport to othering LGBTQ experiences, like “gay marriage” or “gay sex”).  Think of minority stress like an additional weight that Queer people carry around.

This weight impacts mental health in a variety of ways, including: 

• Increased risks of social isolation by being less likely to form emotional bonds with peers facing similar experiences, owing to experiences of shame around internalizing heteronormative standards and views. 

• Internalized homophobia/transphobia refers to the internalization of negative societal attitudes about one’s sexual orientation or gender identity. By age 12 most children have internalized the message that heterosexuality is both the normal and desirable state. 

• Experiences with stigma and minority stress also make us sensitive to rejection. This can create a tendency to anticipate rejection because of previous experiences with prejudice and discrimination that they have observed. 

• Experiences with sexual orientation-related stigma can lead sexual and gender minority individuals to engage in concealment behaviors, which refers to hiding their identity to avoid future victimization, which leads to increased risks of depression and anxiety in the long term.

• Finally, the biological consequences of stigma and minority stressors affect physical health. Research is continuing into the consequences of the continued overproduction of the stress hormone cortisol, which is associated with a host of negative health outcomes, including cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

How We Can Approach It in Therapy

Faced with the weight of these traumatic stressors, one of our objectives in therapy is to support a young Queer person to build the strength and resources to bear the additional weight of these stressors. While the needs of a youth who identifies as Queer are as varied and unique as any other population, the development of a healthy & cohesive sense of identity, the skills to recognize & assert their needs and negotiate to have their needs met, and to develop resilience in daily life, are all commonly present in the mix. Some themes I have observed in working with this population include: 

• Explore & challenge negative internalized messages. What unhealthy perceptions, judgments, thoughts have been internalized along the way regarding the client and the Queer population? 

• Help clients to recognize and process feelings of grief and loss. These can include early life losses due to familial and social rejection, or more abstract feelings, like the feeling of not belonging to any group, or of being a perennial outsider.

• Work around establishing and maintaining boundaries, including intimacy definitions and the healthy expression of needs in intimate relationships. For a young population, this includes exploring sexual health boundaries. 

• Identifying and building on the strengths that accompany surviving trauma. This includes enhanced resilience, insight & self-awareness, independence & healthy-self-reliance. Often humor is present as an excellent coping skill and can strongly support the work in therapy. 

• Exploring a healthy expression of sexual identity. This can include a client exploring whether and how to openly express sexual identity in different aspects of their life, developing community to give and receive support, and considering activism as a legitimate response to an onslaught of attacks,

Of course, every Queer person in therapy is unique, and no one is defined by their sexuality, so these suggestions serve as guideposts rather than a framework. Being aware of our own biases, and the limitations of our skills is also critical in this work. All that said, these low-key, banal traumas are so much a part of daily life that acknowledging them is a necessary first step in limiting their impact.