How to respond to a coming out
How to respond
to a coming out
A GUIDE FOR FAMILY AND FRIENDS
Which questions you can ask, which phrases to avoid, and how to support the person and yourself — explained by the psychological service of Insight NGO.
Coming out is the situation in which a person stops hiding their own sexual orientation or gender identity. For the person who decides to come out, it is often an event that divides life into a before and an after. In importance it could be compared with, say, the birth of a child, or finishing your studies, or moving to another country.
But it is also, quite often, a dangerous event — especially in societies where the level of homophobia remains high to this day.
So why come out at all?
Some people decide to live what is known as a double life: showing one part of themselves to their family and the people close to them, and presenting the other part in a limited, sometimes closed circle.
First of all, living a double life is not easy. It requires constant tension, and that leads to rapid exhaustion, both emotional and mental.
Second, it is hard to live knowing that your own family does not really know you, does not even see you. What they see is some other image of their son or daughter, or of another close person. You have to match that image, or else you will get neither attention, nor love, nor support.
Another reason people take the step of coming out is the feeling of openness and ease that arrives when you live with your partner and no longer have to hide your family life and your relationship.
Many LGBTQI+ people start families and have children while hiding their sexual and gender identity from their parents and other relatives. Sometimes such families have to invent stories in which a partner is a friend, a godfather, or a godmother. And you have to admit, that must be very hard.
For the people close to someone who is coming out, it can first of all be frightening and bewildering. They often feel as if their life has collapsed, and they find themselves at a loss. That gives rise to anger and misunderstanding. Anxiety appears for the health and safety of a loved one who is now known to have an identity that society does not approve of.
What should parents do if their child has come out?
The first thing you need to do is calm down. After that you will need more information. Try to find sources of that information. There are organizations that work specifically with the parents and relatives of people who have come out or who belong to the LGBTQI+ community. It would be very helpful to find other people whose relatives have come out too. When you see that you are not the only one, that there are other people going through the same thing you are, the relief is noticeable.
In any case, we would advise being on your loved one’s side: “I am with you, I am for you, even though it is hard for me right now; I don’t know how to react at the moment, I am in this period of confusion, it will pass, I will find answers to my questions, but I am with you all the same, even if right now I cannot be the way I always am.”
Why does this happen?
Because plans for your daughter’s or your son’s future really have collapsed too — but it is worth understanding that those were your plans, not theirs.
The fact that you had certain expectations and hoped they would one day come true is your own inner problem, one you will have to work through with yourself, and your children should not be held responsible for it.
How can you support yourself during this time?
Try not to view what has happened as a misfortune. See it as an event that has unexpectedly entered your life and that you have to learn to live with.
We also advise you not to ignore this event. Avoiding the subject will not make it stop existing. If it is still hard for you to talk about it, you can calmly say so to your child, or to the other family member who is coming out.
It is a bad idea to fall back on the position of “let’s wait it out until it passes, it will pass”. If what you are dealing with is transgender identity or homosexuality, the person will most likely remain in their identity, and in the form in which they present it to you. And hoping that it will pass is a way of pretending that what is happening to them right now is mistaken, wrong, pathological, or somehow otherwise not as it should be.
Take care not to get stuck in the stages of denial, guilt, and pain. Those stages are natural when something in our life collapses, even if what collapses is a belief about our children’s future. We naturally move through the stages of denial, unwillingness to come to terms with it, pain, guilt, and so on. If you notice that this period has been going on for several months and simply will not end, you would most likely be helped by turning to a psychologist or a psychotherapist with whom you could find a way out of the place where you are stuck.
Phrases to avoid
There are also phrases and expressions that people who come out may hear from their families, and these words are painful — they can wound a person.
We have collected several of them, and we want to talk with you about these as well.
So how long has this been going on?
You can be sure it has been going on for a long time. If someone is coming out, they have been living with this for a while. A phrase like this sounds as though the person is being accused of something, or as though the truthfulness of what they feel about themselves is being called into question.
Why don’t we go and see a specialist, or a priest, a guru, someone?
This demonstrates what is known as a pathologizing stance: you are telling your child that something is wrong with them, that this is an illness. Sexual orientation and gender identity are not an illness; they are a normal variant in the development of human sexuality and gender identity, and to try to correct something that is normal is not merely senseless, it is unethical.
Maybe you just imagined it? Are you really sure this is how it is?
A person usually lives with their identity for a long time, and if they have found the courage to tell you, then in all likelihood they certainly did not imagine it.
Why is all this happening to me? What are you doing to me? Is this what I raised you for?
Phrases like these accuse the child, or the person, and in effect shift responsibility for your own difficulties onto them. It is you who cannot cope with the situation right now. Your emotions and your feelings are entirely your own responsibility, and if you are having difficulties, your child is not to blame for the fact that you have them. If you cannot work through certain states on your own, you may need the help of a specialist.
It is a sin. It is immoral.
If your child has told you that their sexual orientation or gender identity is what it is, they have most likely already thought many times about how this would be received and how society would react to it. When parents say this, they seem to be hoping that the child will hear them and come to their senses, but in reality it will only add guilt and that surplus responsibility which it is unethical to place on a child.
And what am I supposed to say at work now? What will the neighbors or the relatives say?
A child does not have to answer for your feelings about what relatives will say, or for how you will handle it. It can be unpleasant, but experience shows that most people take the news that someone they know has a sexual orientation or gender identity beyond the bounds of heteronormativity fairly calmly. If this question troubles you, then most likely you need help learning how to support yourself, how to be more steady in the knowledge that you are living your life the right way and that you do not have to be convenient, or to be whatever other people would like you to be.
Well, at least it isn’t drugs.
This phrase may sound like a phrase of acceptance, but in fact it is dismissive and pathologizing, as though a person’s gender identity were the same thing as drugs, only a little bit better — and it is not. These are concepts that should not be placed side by side at all.
So what should you say instead?
There are several ways to support someone who matters to you when they have come out.
1. Listen more closely and trust their experience
When someone shares their story with you, that is a gift.
It means they trust you enough to share their own experience. And that experience may not be the one you were expecting.
Receive the coming out of the person close to you with respect: an enormous amount of inner work went into recognizing their own identity, and the last thing they want is to have to prove their right to it to the people closest to them.
Be patient with someone who is questioning or exploring their gender identity. That person may need some time to work out what is right for them. They may, for example, use one name or pronoun and then decide to replace it with another. Make every effort to show respect, and use the correct name and pronoun.
2. Learn to use correct language
You do not have to know every term in order to support someone close to you. You simply need to respect and use the ones your loved ones prefer.
If you want to know which pronouns a person uses for themselves, it is better to ask than to try to guess. If you accidentally use the wrong pronoun, apologize, and then make an effort to use the right one.
3. Avoid misplaced compliments and unhelpful advice
Even if you mean to be supportive, comments like these can be hurtful or even harmful.
4. Look for information on your own
If you want to know more, the best way to do it is to do a little research of your own. Just as it is not your job to explain to other people what it is like to be a cisgender person or a heterosexual person, your friend may not want to explain their experience to other people over and over again.
It is never appropriate to ask anyone personal questions about their body or their sexuality, except when you have specifically been invited to do so. That does not mean that being curious or wanting to know more is wrong.
Fortunately, there are many good sources of information. Many activists publish video blogs on YouTube in which they talk about their personal experience and answer questions from people who simply want to know more.
5. Approach this with understanding: do not push the person, just let them know that you are ready to listen, without passing judgment or offering unsolicited advice.
6. Turn to knowledgeable people for support
It is normal to feel all of these feelings, and it is important that you find the support you need in order to make sense of them and to understand your own experience. A family member or a friend may not be able to help you here, since they are certainly spending no fewer resources of their own on living through this process.
Many relatives of LGBTQI+ people our team has worked with have found support and understanding in psychotherapy, or in talking with support groups for the parents of LGBTQI+ people. The office of a friendly psychotherapist is a good place to start. For example, the psychological service of Insight NGO works not only directly with transgender people, but also offers the chance to receive family counseling.
You may find this longread about transgender identity by the coordinator of the trans program at Insight useful. Our website also has publications for and about transgender people.
7. Do not be afraid to admit it if there is something you do not know.
It is better to acknowledge that than to make assumptions or to say something that may be inaccurate or harmful. Look for relevant resources that will help you learn more.
There is a major publication on caring for and raising transgender children, issued by the Human Rights Campaign in collaboration with the American Academy of Pediatrics, which describes the differences between transgender and gender-nonconforming children, and forms of support for gender identity with and without medical intervention.
A longitudinal study shows that gender-neutral upbringing not only does no harm, but also allows children to build a more stable sense of their own identity. Where, on the other hand, a child tries from earliest childhood to fit into a stereotypical gender role under pressure from their environment, there are often various difficulties later in legitimizing their own needs, their various feelings, and the expression of those feelings (aggression, tears, determination, tenderness, and so on) — as psychological work with transgender and cisgender people alike shows.
If you need to explain to a child the changes taking place in their body, it is better to try to do it in a non-judgmental tone. It is important to talk about how to take care of your health, to talk about the culture of consent — which concerns more than sex alone — and to maintain an atmosphere in which the child will feel safe coming to you for help or advice.
