For almost three decades, I have immersed myself in the life stories of many people in the LGBTQ community who have experienced painful homophobic and transphobic upbringings. Many of the personal narratives I have heard from gay men are not very different from my own. Regardless of national origin, we are part of a tribe with similar stories of growing up in a homophobic and heterosexist world where our gayness was repeatedly assaulted. We are everywhere, and unfortunately, so is homophobia.

Many gay men have shared with me that, as long as they can remember, they have always felt different. They were unable to articulate why they felt that way, and, at the same time, they did not feel safe talking about it. Some knew that this feeling of being different was related to something forbidden. “It felt like keeping an ugly secret that I could not even understand,” one person described. Other gay men have disclosed to me that this feeling revealed itself in the form of gender nonconformity, which could not be kept secret. Therefore, it made them more vulnerable to homophobic mistreatment at school and often at home. Gay men of color reported even worse experiences because of the additional stress of racism and racial bullying.

Many school-age children organize their school experiences around the notion of not appearing different, particularly queer. Any school-age child's worst nightmare is being labeled a faggot, an experience commonly reported by many gay individuals who did not conform to the mainstream. Educational institutions felt like scary places for many of them as they were scapegoated as queer while growing up. Therefore, they had to cope with daily assaults of shame and humiliation without any support. This is a form of child abuse on a collective level, and it needs to stop.

Much has been written about the devastating impact of homophobia on gay people's psychological functioning, but not enough has been written about its biological impact. It is important to understand how repeated hateful acts toward gay youngsters can affect the way their bodies and minds function, including the functioning of their nervous systems. Unfortunately, this also applies to any child who is a target of hate and abuse. As Peter Levine, the founder of Somatic Experiencing, stated, “Trauma is not in the event, but in the nervous system.” Based on my personal and clinical work, I also concur that trauma becomes embodied during a person's life and can affect the functioning of the autonomic nervous system (ANS). Much of the healing from this trauma needs to happen through the body. In particular, the nervous system needs to be regulated.

The ANS is the part of the nervous system that governs the fight, flight, or freeze instinct and is responsible for unconscious bodily functions such as breathing, digesting food, and regulating heart rate. It also plays an important role in supplying information from our organs to our brain. The ANS can become dysregulated due to thwarted responses of fight, flight, or freeze in the aftermath of trauma.

The ANS is central to our experience of safety, our connection with others, and our ability to bounce back from life's overwhelming experiences. This ability to recover defines resilience and requires the help of our ANS to keep us within our “window of tolerance.” In the book Nurturing Resilience, trauma specialists Kathy Kain and Stephen Terrell define the window of tolerance as “the zone where we effectively process environmental signals without becoming too reactive or too withdrawn, given the circumstances.” The window of tolerance, as a framework, is very helpful in understanding where we feel safe or unsafe and how to expand our optimal arousal zone.

Stephen Porges's, Bessel van der Kolk's, and Peter Levine's research and writings have significantly reworked my understanding of how the nervous system responds to threat and trauma. Drawing from their work and my decades of experience, it is my understanding that ongoing stress from homophobia can activate a youngster's nervous system, and that “unresolved activation will be stored in the body as bound energy and manifest as trauma symptoms.” In other words, under daily homophobic assault, a child's sympathetic nervous system—the “stress response” or “fight-or-flight” response—can become overly activated. Often, during such stressful situations, neither fighting nor fleeing can resolve the overwhelming situation, and the thwarted or incomplete fight and flight responses can become “trapped” within the body and dysregulate the nervous system.

Such a dysregulated nervous system is more likely to get stuck on “high,” or hyperarousal. Anxiety, panic attacks, rage, hyperactivity, mania, hypervigilance, sleeplessness, an exaggerated startle response, digestive problems, and many other symptoms can occur in association with a dysregulated nervous system that is stuck in a state of hyperarousal.

According to many studies, gay individuals who experienced homophobia-related stress showed increased production of the stress hormone cortisol compared with peers in safer environments. This experience of being continuously stuck on “high” activates a person's stress-response system, which leads to the release of stress hormones. Research in this area has shown that overexposure to cortisol and other stress hormones can lead to numerous health problems, including headaches, oversensitivity to touch or sound, weight gain, heart disease, impaired concentration, and sleep disturbance.

On the other hand, there are gay men whose nervous systems are stuck on “low,” or hypoarousal, which can result from being terrorized while growing up with no hope of protection. Facing isolation, confusion, physical violence, not being valued, and carrying a secret that the youngster connects with something terrible and unthinkable is too stressful for any child to endure, especially when there is no empathic other to help him sort it out. Such an experience is often beyond the youngster's “window of tolerance.” This is when the dorsal vagus can shut down the entire system, and the mistreated youngster can go into a freeze response. In other words, the youngster suffers in silence, with numbness or dissociation as his only available survival mechanism.

Stephen Porges, the founder of Polyvagal Theory, has expanded our view of the vagus nerve, one of the largest nerves in the body and a major part of the parasympathetic system. The word “vagus” means “wandering” in Latin. The dorsal vagus is a branch of the vagus nerve and is part of a much older system within the nervous system. The dorsal vagus regulates organs below the diaphragm and is instrumental in activating the “shutdown” response of the body, as discussed in cases of overwhelming fear that can result from homophobic mistreatment. This automatic survival mechanism can become a long-standing pattern in how individuals cope with fear and stress in life. For example, people whose nervous systems are stuck on “low,” or hypoarousal, may default to shutting down when faced with life stresses, resulting in dissociation, chronic isolation, detachment, numbness, and suicidal thoughts.

In my counseling work, I have noticed that when the nervous system gets stuck in a freeze response, and numbness and detachment become a gay man's dominant state, he may be more likely to engage in risky behaviors as a temporary relief from inner deadness. Thrill-seeking behaviors such as sexual acting out, excessive gambling, and crystal methamphetamine (crystal meth) use are ways some gay men may attempt to escape the emotional flatness that can result from experiencing a hypoarousal state. The same behaviors can also be used to cope with ongoing activation of the fight-or-flight response. One person might turn to substance abuse to escape his inner deadness, while another might use substances to dampen his anxiety, which can result from being stuck in a state of hyperarousal.

As Peter Levine stated, “Trauma is a fact of life. It does not, however, have to be a life sentence.” For those of us who have had painful struggles with homophobia, life after the closet needs to include dealing with memories of homophobic mistreatment that can lie dormant in our bodies. Recovery from this trauma needs to start with identifying helpful resources and then progress toward completing the thwarted responses of fight, flight, or freeze. Such healing can help regulate the nervous system and restore inner balance. In The Body Keeps the Score, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk writes about a body-centered approach to healing that allows “the body to have experiences that deeply and viscerally contradict the helplessness, rage, or collapse that result from trauma.”

How far the LGBTQ community has come in our struggle for equal rights reflects how brave we are as a community. Our bravery can continue by facing the traumas we experienced while growing up in oppressive environments that did not nurture our true essence. Not every LGBTQ person felt traumatized while growing up, but those who did can benefit from the vitality and sense of liberation that can come with incorporating somatic work as part of the healing process.

Somatic Experiencing International offers trainings and seminars on the biology of traumatic stress reactions. They also offer tools for bringing the body, mind, and spirit back into balance. Participating in their trainings has enhanced my ability to help others who are interested in tapping into the wisdom of their bodies for healing and growth. There are many other organizations that offer body-centered approaches to healing, reflecting the increased popularity of such work.

© Dr. Payam Ghassemlou, MFT, Ph.D., is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (Psychotherapist). Online anywhere in CA, OR, and FL.
www.DrPayam.com
www.SomaticAliveness.com

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