Many LGBTQ+ people grow up carrying shame long before they ever consciously come out.
In many ways, the very idea of “coming out” already tells us something psychologically important. Heterosexual people generally don’t have to announce who they are. They aren’t expected to sit family or friends down and reveal their identity like a confession. The fact LGBTQ+ people often feel they need to come out already suggests there was something we believed needed hiding. And hiding rarely develops in environments where people feel completely safe.
For many of us, LGBTQ+ shame begins quietly and early. It often isn’t one dramatic event. It’s the small comments, the loaded silences, the jokes, the tension in the room, the things that are mocked, avoided, or treated differently. Children absorb these messages long before they fully understand sexuality or gender.
I remember when a gay person would come on the television growing up and my mum would say, “He’s a homosexual.” The word itself wasn’t necessarily offensive, but the way she said homosexual made it sound shameful and wrong. I remember dreading scenes with two gay characters, Barry and Colin in EastEnders. The moment they appeared on screen, I wanted the sofa to swallow me up.
Looking back now, I can see that shame had already started forming years before I consciously came out. Part of me already understood that being associated with “gay” felt dangerous.
WHAT LGBTQ+ SHAME CAN LOOK LIKE
People often confuse shame with guilt, but psychologically they are very different experiences. Guilt says, “I’ve done something bad.” Shame says, “There’s something bad about me.” That distinction matters enormously.
Many LGBTQ+ people don’t simply fear rejection from others. We internalise the belief that rejection would make sense if people truly knew us. That creates a painful split inside ourselves. One part longs for connection, intimacy, and authenticity, while another part becomes focused on concealment and survival.
For many of us, childhood became less about self expression and more about self monitoring.
Am I sounding “too gay”? Am I walking differently? Did somebody notice how I looked at him? Do people suspect something? Am I giving myself away?
We become hyper aware of ourselves because visibility feels risky. Some people adapt by becoming perfectionists. Some become funny. Some overachieve academically or professionally. Some become people pleasers. Some emotionally shut down altogether. Some use alcohol, substances, sex, or work to numb what they’re carrying.
But underneath many of those coping strategies is often the same fear: “If people really knew me, would they still love me?”
GROWING UP LGBTQ+ IN A WORLD THAT DIDN’T FEEL SAFE
As a gay man growing up in the 1980s, I didn’t have language for minority stress, internalised homophobia, or shame. I just knew I felt different.
Section 28, the AIDS crisis, homophobic bullying and silence around LGBTQ+ lives formed the backdrop to childhood for many people of my generation. Being gay was often presented as something tragic, shameful, laughable, dangerous, or something to be whispered about.
I was bullied throughout school and called “Gay Gavin” long before I even fully understood what gay meant. Even writing those words now, I can still feel traces of the shame attached to them. Not because there was anything wrong with me, but because children quickly learn which differences are treated as unacceptable.
I desperately wanted dance lessons like my sister. The owner of the dance school wanted more boys and asked if I’d be interested. I wanted to say yes. I wanted to dance. I wanted to wear leg warmers like the characters in Fame and learn to tap dance. But it didn’t feel emotionally safe to admit that.
Somewhere inside me, it already felt like agreeing might somehow confirm something about me. As though wanting to dance meant people would think I was gay.
Looking back now, there’s sadness when I think about the younger version of myself who gave up something he genuinely wanted because authenticity didn’t feel safe.
I was also bullied at school, but I rarely talked about it at home. Part of the reason was that admitting I was being bullied would also mean admitting why. The shame already felt overwhelming. Even speaking about the bullying risked exposing something I was desperately trying to hide, not only from other people, but from myself. So instead, like many LGBTQ+ children, I learned to carry things quietly.
That’s one of the hidden tragedies of LGBTQ+ shame. It doesn’t just affect identity. It shapes development. It teaches children to organise their lives around avoiding exposure rather than discovering who they truly are.
HOW LGBTQ+ SHAME BECOMES INTERNALISED
One of the painful realities of growing up in a heteronormative society is that LGBTQ+ people can absorb negative societal beliefs about themselves. This is often referred to as internalised homophobia or internalised transphobia.
That can show up in many different ways: discomfort around visibility, fear of intimacy, shame around attraction, body image struggles, compulsive comparison, hypervigilance, distancing from other LGBTQ+ people, perfectionism, difficulty accepting love or compliments, and feeling “not enough”.
Many people unconsciously grow up believing, “I need to compensate for being LGBTQ+.”
So they strive harder. Work harder. Look better. Achieve more. Become more desirable. Become more successful. Become more perfect.
But perfectionism is often shame wearing a socially acceptable mask.
Underneath it is usually the hope that achievement might finally create enough worthiness to guarantee belonging and love. Many of us secretly grow up believing, “If I’m perfect at everything else, maybe people won’t reject me for my sexual or gender identity. Maybe I’ll finally be good enough.”
THE BODY REMEMBERS LGBTQ+ SHAME
One of the difficult things about shame is that it doesn’t simply disappear once someone intellectually accepts themselves. Many LGBTQ+ adults still carry shame responses in their nervous system years after coming out.
You can consciously know there’s nothing wrong with being gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer and still feel anxious holding someone’s hand publicly. You can believe your identity is valid and still panic about rejection. You can know you deserve love and still struggle to trust intimacy.
That’s because shame becomes embodied. The nervous system remembers years of threat, concealment, hypervigilance and fear.
Many LGBTQ+ people grew up constantly scanning for danger. Will this person reject me? Will I be mocked? Will I lose people? Am I safe here? Can I relax?
Over time, living in a prolonged state of threat can narrow somebody’s window of tolerance. The nervous system becomes organised around survival rather than safety. Some people become anxious and hypervigilant. Others emotionally shut down. Some become people pleasers or perfectionists. Others numb through substances, alcohol, sex, work, or compulsive validation seeking.
Often these patterns make perfect sense when understood through the lens of survival.
LGBTQ+ SHAME, ADDICTION AND NUMBING
For many LGBTQ+ people, alcohol and substances become less about pleasure and more about relief.
I remember discovering alcohol in college and suddenly feeling different. More confident. Funnier. More relaxed. It felt like I finally had access to a version of myself that people might actually like. Of course I wanted more of that feeling.
Many LGBTQ+ people grow up carrying social anxiety, self monitoring, loneliness, fear of rejection and internalised shame. Alcohol or substances can temporarily silence those feelings. They can create confidence, belonging, escape, connection, or emotional numbness.
That’s partly why addiction and substance misuse rates tend to be higher within LGBTQ+ communities. The substances themselves are often only part of the story. Underneath them there is frequently pain, shame, fear, loneliness, rejection, trauma, or the desperate need to finally feel comfortable in your own skin.
HOW LGBTQ+ SHAME DISRUPTS DEVELOPMENT
Many heterosexual people get to experience adolescence relatively openly. They can talk about crushes, experiment, make mistakes, and gradually develop confidence around relationships and identity. Many LGBTQ+ people don’t get that same freedom.
Instead, adolescence can become shaped by fear and concealment. Some people never got to openly experience first relationships as teenagers. Some emotionally disconnected from themselves. Some became experts at masking. Some abandoned hobbies, interests, friendships, or forms of self expression because they feared what those things implied socially.
There can be enormous grief in recognising how much energy went into hiding rather than living.
Many LGBTQ+ adults carry sadness for the younger self who never got to simply exist openly and safely. The younger self who sat rigidly on the sofa when gay characters appeared on television. The younger self who abandoned dance lessons because they didn’t feel safe enough to say yes. The younger self who hid bullying because even speaking about it felt too exposing. The younger self who learned to disappear emotionally in order to survive.
WHEN I REALISED HOW MUCH SHAME HAD SHAPED MY LIFE
For a long time, I didn’t fully understand how deeply shame had shaped me.
Like many LGBTQ+ people, I thought I was simply adapting to life. I didn’t consciously recognise the extent to which fear, hypervigilance, people pleasing, perfectionism, emotional concealment, and self monitoring had become woven into the way I related to myself and other people.
Then a friend recommended two books to me: The Velvet Rage by Alan Downs and Straight Jacket by Matthew Todd.
Reading them was one of those moments where suddenly everything starts making sense.
For the first time, I could clearly see that shame was the thread that had woven itself through so much of my life.
Not just obvious moments connected to sexuality, but the deeper patterns underneath: the fear of rejection, the need to monitor myself, the perfectionism, the people pleasing, the emotional hiding, the anxiety, and the feeling that I somehow needed to compensate for being gay.
It helped me realise that many of the coping mechanisms and behaviours I’d developed over the years weren’t random personality traits. They were shame avoidance strategies. Protective adaptations that had developed slowly over a lifetime without me consciously realising I was even doing them.
That’s one of the difficult things about shame. It can become so embedded within somebody’s personality and way of relating that it simply starts to feel normal. You don’t necessarily realise you are adapting because the adaptations have become part of how you survive.
THERAPY AND THE PROCESS OF HEALING LGBTQ+ SHAME
Through therapy, I gradually started recognising and challenging many of those shame based patterns.
I began noticing how often I prioritised other people’s comfort over my own authenticity. How hyper aware I was of other people’s reactions. How easily I slipped into people pleasing or self criticism. How difficult vulnerability and emotional exposure could feel.
Therapy helped me understand that these strategies had once served an important purpose. They had helped me survive environments where being fully myself hadn’t always felt emotionally safe.
But survival strategies that protect us in one stage of life can later start limiting us in another. What once protected intimacy can eventually block intimacy. What once protected connection can eventually create emotional distance. What once kept us safe can eventually stop us from fully living.
One of the most healing parts of therapy was beginning to separate my identity from the shame that had attached itself to it for so many years. Because shame had convinced me that there was something fundamentally wrong with me.
Therapy slowly helped me understand something very different. There was never anything wrong with me. There were simply environments and experiences that taught me it wasn’t safe to fully be myself.
That distinction changed everything.
WHY LGBTQ+ SHAME DOESN’T ALWAYS END AFTER COMING OUT
Many people imagine coming out as the finish line, but shame often continues long afterwards.
Sometimes LGBTQ+ spaces themselves recreate hierarchies around masculinity, femininity, body image, race, age, desirability, or status. People may finally enter community spaces hoping for acceptance only to discover new pressures waiting there too.
Some people begin chasing validation through dating apps, sex, partying, gym culture, appearance, or external approval. Not because they are shallow, but because they are trying to soothe wounds that started much earlier.
At its core, shame often leaves people asking, “Am I lovable as I am?” And that question can quietly shape relationships, attachment patterns, boundaries, intimacy and self worth for years.
QUEER JOY IS THE OPPOSITE OF SHAME
One of the most powerful antidotes to LGBTQ+ shame is authentic connection and visibility.
Queer joy matters because it directly challenges the belief that LGBTQ+ lives should revolve around secrecy, fear, or suffering.
Joy says, “We deserve more than survival.”
That joy can exist in huge moments such as Pride events, chosen family, relationships and community spaces. But it also exists quietly in introducing your partner without fear, laughing openly with friends, dressing authentically, feeling safe in your body, holding hands publicly, and finally relaxing enough to exhale.
For many LGBTQ+ people, these moments carry enormous emotional weight because they directly challenge years of shame and concealment.
THERE WAS NEVER ANYTHING WRONG WITH YOU
Many LGBTQ+ people grew up believing they were the problem. But often the real problem was growing up in environments where authenticity felt unsafe.
There’s a huge difference between, “There’s something wrong with me” and “I adapted to survive difficult environments.”
That distinction changes everything. Of course people became hypervigilant if they were bullied. Of course people hid if visibility felt dangerous. Of course people struggle with intimacy if rejection felt inevitable. Of course people learned to monitor themselves constantly. These were human responses to shame, fear and relational threat.
And healing doesn’t happen through more shame. It happens through compassion, safety, connection, visibility and finally being able to exist without needing the sofa to swallow you whole.
If any of this resonates with you and you’d like support exploring it further, I offer LGBTQ+ affirming therapy both online and in person from my practice in Manchester city centre. You’re welcome to get in touch to arrange a free 15 minute introductory call.
You can also follow me on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube where I regularly share videos, reflections and resources around LGBTQ+ mental health, shame, relationships, trauma and healing.