LGBTQ + Mental Health Blog
Sharing regular reflections, articles, videos, and insights exploring LGBTQ+ mental health, relationships, shame, identity, trauma, recovery, and emotional wellbeing through an affirming, trauma informed, and psychologically grounded lens shaped by both professional training and lived experience.
Growing Up LGBTQ+: The Rites of Passage We Lost
There are certain experiences many people take for granted when they think about adolescence. First crushes. Flirting awkwardly at school. Holding someone’s hand for the first time. Going to parties hoping the person you fancy might be there. Talking openly with friends about attraction, relationships, heartbreak, and sex. Making mistakes, getting rejected, being liked back, slowly learning about intimacy and connection through experience.
For many LGBTQ+ people, those experiences didn’t happen in the same way. Or they happened in secrecy, silence, confusion, fear, or not at all.
Chemsex, Shame & Connection: Understanding the Emotional Reasons Behind Chemsex
When I first started taking ecstasy in the clubbing scene, before chemsex later entered the picture, it felt transformational, it felt like freedom. Suddenly I wasn’t worrying what people thought of me. I didn’t feel awkward, anxious, self conscious, or trapped inside my own head anymore
Trauma, Shame, and Survival: Why Being Trauma Informed Matters in LGBTQ+ Therapy
A couple of years ago, I overheard two people talking and one of them said something very simple: “Trauma’s trauma.” That sentence stayed with me because it completely shifted how I understood my own experiences. It helped me realise trauma doesn’t need to be ranked, justified, or compared in order to matter. Trauma isn’t a competition. What matters is the impact experiences have on the nervous system, our sense of safety, and the ways we learn to survive emotionally.
Minority Stress: The Hidden Emotional Cost Of Growing Up LGBTQ+
As a gay man growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, I learned very early on that being visibly different could attract attention, ridicule, rejection, or shame. I remember being called “Gay Gavin” at school from around the age of seven, years before I even properly understood what being gay meant. Even then though, I understood enough to know it was being used as something negative. Something humiliating.
Why So Many LGBTQ+ People Become People Pleasers
Why LGBTQ+ people become people pleasers often begins with fear, shame, and the need to maintain acceptance. For many people, people pleasing is not simply about being “too nice.” It can become a survival strategy that develops in environments where belonging feels uncertain or conditional.
Growing Up Gay in a Heteronormative World Can Shape Mental Health and Identity
Growing up gay in a heteronormative world can shape identity, self worth, relationships, and mental health in profound ways. In this personal reflection, I explore shame, survival, healing, and how therapy helped me understand myself differently.
Why We Need To Stop Calling It Conversion Therapy
Many LGBTQ+ people have spent years hearing promises that conversion practices would finally be banned, only for governments to delay, consult, and ultimately fail to act. Following the recent announcement in The King’s Speech of plans for a trans inclusive ban on...
Conditional Acceptance In LGBTQ+ Families: When Love Doesn’t Feel Fully Accepting
Conditional acceptance can leave LGBTQ+ people feeling tolerated rather than fully accepted. Whilst love may still be present, it can come with unspoken conditions that shape self worth, relationships, boundaries, and identity for years.
Protect Your Peace and Stop Absorbing Other People’s Emotions
Sometimes people say things like “you’ve ruined my day” or “you’ve spoilt my evening” without really stopping to think about what sits underneath those words. While people can absolutely upset, disappoint, or hurt us, there’s also an important conversation to be had...
Healing The Inner Child in LGBTQ+ Adults
A lot of people move through adulthood carrying emotional wounds that began much earlier in life. Experiences like rejection, bullying, criticism, emotional neglect, or feeling unsafe to fully be ourselves can leave lasting effects on confidence, relationships, self...