作为酷儿，如何找到平静与快乐

‘It’s such a relief to finally be in a room with people who just get it.’ I heard this message a lot when I was providing group therapy sessions for LGBTQ+ clients. The group members on any given day might have included a gay man who’d had slurs blurted at him; a trans woman who worried about how her clothing choices affected her safety; a pansexual woman who painfully doubted her queerness because she was married to a man; or an intersex person who felt broken after hearing yet another politician claim ‘there are only two biological sexes’. Although their identities and experiences differed, there was a connection. A shared understanding of the myriad ways that being LGBTQ+ in today’s world can be stressful.

Indeed, most of my queer clients had experienced some form of LGBTQ+ minority stress – the unique social pressures and emotional burdens that people face due to anti-LGBTQ+ prejudice, bias and discrimination. These clients were also creative and resilient. In that group therapy space, they collaboratively learned how to cope with the anxiety, shame and stress they experienced. As a queer person myself, I learned along with them as they shared.

If you’re queer – ie, a member of the LGBTQ+ community – minority stress could be negatively affecting your mental health, especially if you don’t know how to cope with it. In this Guide, I’ll share some of the wisdom that the group members and I found together in that space.

Why minority stress matters

Compared with heterosexual and cisgender people, LGBTQ+ people face particularly high rates of anxiety, depression and other mental health difficulties. These disparities are not caused by being LGBTQ+. Rather, they’re related to living in a world that stigmatises same-gender attractions, gender-expansive expressions and queer ways of being.

The minority stress model, which advanced this idea scientifically, is supported by decades of research, and queer people can benefit from learning about it. Better understanding what LGBTQ+ stressors are, as well as how they can accumulate and affect you, can help you have more compassion for your own experience.

You may have faced some, or many, of these stressors yourself:

• Experienced or witnessed discrimination. This includes being mistreated, called names, rejected, harassed or physically assaulted because you are LGBTQ+. Even unintentional or seemingly small instances of discrimination (sometimes called ‘microaggressions’) can negatively impact a queer person’s mental health, as can witnessing other queer people being discriminated against. Living in jurisdictions with anti-LGBTQ+ laws or policies appears to have a negative impact on LGBTQ+ people’s health, too.
• Anticipated discrimination. Many queer people, because they have experienced or witnessed discrimination in the past, understandably expect to experience it in the future. If this is the case for you, you might also feel on edge in social situations, worry about being hurt or judged, or struggle with rejection sensitivity or hypervigilance.
• Concealment. To protect themselves from discrimination, many queer people choose to hide or deny their LGBTQ+ identity. This might include actively changing the way you talk, dress or act in order to appear straight, cisgender or somehow ‘less queer’. While concealment may help a person avoid harm or rejection, it’s cognitively taxing and might lead to its own psychological problems.
• Internalised stigma and shame. Many modern cultures are packed with stigmatising messages that being LGBTQ+ is wrong, sick, weird or bad in some way. If you hear these messages enough times, you might start to believe them. These internalised negative beliefs can lead to you to judge yourself, other queer people or specific ‘queer’ ways of being. They can also contribute to chronic shame or self-doubt.

Of course, if you have more than one marginalised identity – eg, if you are also a person of colour, have a disability, or you’re a woman or a femme person – you’ve likely experienced unique and intersectional forms of these stressors.

Experiencing minority stress does not doom LGBTQ+ people to perpetual mental health struggles. Many are mentally healthy and thriving, and research shows that numerous things can help protect queer people’s wellbeing. One such protective factor is learning coping skills, like the ones taught in dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT). While DBT was originally created to treat people diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, it teaches dozens of skills that have been shown to help reduce anxiety, depression, substance use and other mental health difficulties. It also can be helpful for LGBTQ+ people specifically.

Knowing how to deal with minority stress and painful emotions – as well as how to more fully connect with queer joy and other pleasant emotions – is essential for queer mental health. What follows are some specific, practical tools and ideas to help you deal with the stressful experiences that LGBTQ+ people face today.

Cope with emotional overwhelm

One way to get better at coping with LGBTQ+ stress as a whole is to get better at coping with the acute emotional responses that often come with the sorts of experiences I’ve described. For example, if you read a news story about increasing rates of anti-LGBTQ+ violence, or if you hear someone judgmentally comment that you’re using the ‘wrong’ bathroom, you might experience a spike in anxiety or fear. If you’re not sure how to cope with painful emotions like these, chronic stress can build up. And when future stressors happen, you might be more likely to feel panicked or overwhelmed.

DBT teaches a number of distress-tolerance skills designed to help in moments like these. They’re tools for your coping toolbelt. While these skills won’t get rid of minority stress and won’t always help you feel better, they can help you feel more empowered and hopeful about your ability to handle whatever the world throws at you. I’ll teach you two of DBT’s distress tolerance skills here.

Paced breathing

You’ve likely been told to ‘take a deep breath’ when you’re stressed. DBT takes this skill to the next level by asking you to breathe in a specific way that helps to de-activate your stress response and activate your parasympathetic nervous system. To practise:

• Breathe in through your nose, and out through your mouth.
• Take full, deep ‘belly breaths’. Place a hand on your stomach, just below your belly button, and try to breathe into your hand. You may even see or feel your hand move with each breath if you’re breathing deeply enough.
• Most importantly, make your exhale longer than your inhale.
• Choose a breathing pace: eg, breathe in through your nose for 4 seconds, and breathe out through your mouth for 6 seconds.
• Practise breathing like this for 5-10 minutes, or as long as you need.

In an overwhelming moment, even a single minute of paced breathing can help you emotionally ground yourself. And if you practise paced breathing regularly outside of times of stress, you’ll be more ready to use it when you need it to get through difficult moments.

For an extended demonstration of paced breathing, check out this video:

Cold temperature

This skill is one of the most fast-acting DBT skills for coping with panic or emotional overwhelm caused by minority stress. In those moments when you feel like you can’t think clearly, your body is super-agitated, or everything just feels like ‘too much’, it offers one option for regulating your nervous system. It takes advantage of something called the mammalian dive reflex – when your body senses that it’s under water, it involuntarily triggers this reflex and lowers your heart rate to preserve oxygen. (Please note: this skill works so well that people who take heart medications or who have physical issues that impact their heart should consult with their doctors before using it!)

To practise:

• Put cold or iced water in a bowl or stopped-up sink, and then hold your full face under the water for about 30 seconds (or as long as you can).
• Alternatively, you can hold your breath while placing a cold, wet towel over your face, being sure to cover your eyes and nose.

Drinking a glass of iced water, taking a cool shower or splashing cold water on your face may be helpful, too. While these won’t activate the dive reflex, they cool you down physically, which can cool you down emotionally when you’re overwhelmed or stressed out.

This video has more on how the practice works:

Beyond these approaches, there are so many other options for coping with emotional overwhelm. You can find some resources for learning more of these skills in the Links & Books section below.

Treat yourself with compassion

LGBTQ+ people often struggle with self-judgment (and even self-hatred) because of the stigma they have internalised. If you grew up repeatedly hearing negative messages about LGBTQ+ people, it would make sense if you started to believe those negative things, even though they are untrue and harmful. If you grew up learning that your queer desires are bad or dangerous, you might have started to disconnect from your inner experiences in order to protect yourself. As a result, you may have trouble understanding your emotions, recognising your body’s physical needs or knowing your true desires.

Practising self-compassion is a key method for fighting self-stigma, shame and other stressors. At its core, self-compassion is treating yourself with the same kindness and support that you offer to the people you love most in the world – your best friend, child, life partner or beloved pet, for example. It’s learning how to connect with, accept and affirm your queerness, and all of your inner experiences. Again, I’ll offer you two specific options to practise.

Self-validation

Invalidation is getting the message that your inner experiences, reactions or identity don’t make sense, or are ‘abnormal’ or ‘wrong’ in some way. LGBTQ+ people face significant and chronic invalidation. Validation, in contrast, tells you that your experiences make sense. Getting validation from other LGBTQ+ people is one incredibly powerful way to affirm your experiences and cope with painful emotions. But you will not always be able to find support from others, so learning how to self-validate is important, too.

There are a number of ways to self-validate, including:

• claiming your queer identity/identities proudly (whether publicly or just to yourself);
• identifying and pursuing your desires;
• letting yourself fully feel your emotions; or
• understanding and affirming why you’re feeling what you’re feeling, including your emotions and struggles related to minority stress.

If you have faced discrimination or other stressful experiences (particularly microaggressions), it’s possible that you’ve downplayed or judged your own experience (I’m just being way too sensitive, it’s not a big deal), or that you’ve ruminated and worried about it (Do they know I’m queer? Should I have said something about that homophobic joke? Did they do that on purpose?) These reactions can add to your stress, and might even be more stressful than the experience itself.

Instead, it can be helpful to simply validate your emotional reaction – regardless of whether or not your interpretation of the situation was correct, or whether the discrimination was purposeful or malicious. To validate, try saying: ‘Of course I feel this way.’ Communicate to yourself why it makes perfect sense you’re feeling the way you’re feeling. For example: ‘Of course that joke frustrated me; even if it wasn’t about me, it was based on negative gay stereotypes.’ ‘It makes sense that I’m upset because I believe he misgendered me on purpose.’ Or: ‘Of course I’m hurt by that comment, because I was bullied in similar ways growing up.’

Validating your emotional reaction doesn’t mean you have to act on your emotion, and it doesn’t mean you have to like feeling how you feel. It just means you try to accept that you are feeling however you’re feeling, so that you can challenge any self-judgment and practise more self-kindness along the way.

Physical self-care

This is an essential DBT skill for emotional resilience. If your body is physically unwell, your mental health can suffer. It’s harder to be emotionally stable when your body is physically unstable. For queer people, it’s harder to access and feel queer joy and gender euphoria (more on these below!) when your body is worn out. But physical self-care is also an important form of self-compassion.

All of your emotions, desires, thoughts and sensations are experienced through your body. Thus, your body is not just something you have. Taking care of your body is taking care of yourself. Many LGBTQ+ people have complicated or painful relationships with their bodies, so it’s important to say: you don’t need to like your body in order to take care of it. You just need to address your basic biological needs, in order to communicate to yourself that you are worth taking care of. Your queer body deserves kindness.

Big-picture health behaviours matter here: eating a balanced diet, getting regular body movement and exercise, getting enough sleep, going to the doctor for check-ups, and so on. But potentially just as important (and possibly easier to practise) is taking steps to routinely check in on and care for your body in small ways. Even just once or twice each day, briefly bring your attention to your body, and then quickly take care of any current physical needs you notice right then in that moment. This can be a powerful way to reconnect with yourself, especially if you live a very busy life.

Let’s practise right now: are you hungry? Thirsty? Have you been looking at screens for a long time? Have you been inside all day? Are you stiff or in pain anywhere? Are your clothes physically uncomfortable? Does your body need or want anything? (You can find a fuller checklist here.) If the answer is ‘yes’ to any of these, take care of yourself. Eat a snack. Open the window. Rest your eyes for five minutes. Stretch. Do anything small to care for your physical needs. The more you practise physical self-care, the easier it will become, the more compassion you’ll have for your body’s experiences (including the queer ones), and the more capacity you’ll have for queer joy.

Practise queer joy

Queer joy is pleasure from feeling affirmed in and empowered by your queerness. It comes from playfully exploring or vibrantly celebrating your authentic self as a queer person. Or, from affirming and celebrating the authentic selves of other queer people. Queer joy is often highlighted as a form of LGBTQ+ protest and resistance – and it is. Feeling joy related to your queerness can help you cope with the grief, fear and anger that accompany minority stress. In the short term, queer joy can distract you from the painful emotions. In the long term, it can increase your resilience against minority stress.

This is not about feeling joy in spite of being queer, but because we are queer. Embracing queer expression and community can provide deep belonging, creativity, freedom and peace. Queer joy deserves your attention and your practice. It is not something you reach or achieve once (eg, by coming out, or by attending your first Pride event). It’s something you can cultivate.

While there are literally countless ways to practise queer joy, below are some options. Please keep in mind, however: every LGBTQ+ person’s queer joy is different! Your likes, desires, passions and preferences are unique. There’s no wrong way to practise or feel queer joy.

Also, minority stressors might affect your comfort with or access to queer joy and certain activities. For example, anticipated discrimination or internalised stigma may make you feel immensely uncomfortable or hesitant to try certain ‘stereotypically queer’ things, even if you want to. The suggestions below for practising queer joy are just that: suggestions. If you notice fear, anxiety, doubt or shame consistently getting in the way of practising or feeling queer joy, I offer some more advice in the ‘Learn More’ section below.

Explore and pursue gender euphoria

Gender euphoria is the pleasant, embodied, emotional experience you feel when your gender identity or the way you express your gender are affirmed (whether by yourself or other people). Anyone can feel gender euphoria, though it’s often particularly beneficial and life-saving for trans and nonbinary people, or for gender-nonconforming queer people.

To prompt gender euphoria, explore activities or gender expressions that help you connect to your gender identity, or that help you explore gender if you’re not sure what your gender identity is. You might do things like:

• wear clothes that feel more or less feminine, masculine or androgynous;
• attend a group specifically for people of your gender identity;
• experiment with makeup, accessories or grooming methods;
• watch drag shows, read about drag history, or do drag yourself;
• try a hobby you weren’t allowed to do as a kid because of cultural gender expectations;
• fantasise about how you’d like to express yourself if you knew other people wouldn’t judge you.

Do anything that helps you feel more comfortable in your skin or that validates your gender. If fear or shame make this hard, it’s OK to start with the smallest thing you’re comfortable with. Rather than going outside with a full face of makeup, for example, you could start by putting on some mascara by yourself at home. Or, rather than actually shaving your head, you could play a video game where you get to play a character who has short hair. Do what works for you, and try to approach gender euphoria practices like playful experiments.

Mindfully engage in pleasant queer activities

DBT teaches an emotion-regulation skill called ‘accumulating positive emotions in the short term’. This skill reflects that an enjoyable life involves doing pleasant activities intentionally, regularly and mindfully. To practise queer joy following this advice, mindfully do pleasant queer activities. Remember: you get to define for yourself what makes an activity ‘queer’ (or trans, or bi, or gay, etc). Beyond the above ideas for gender euphoria, try doing anything that helps you feel pleasurably connected to the broader LGBTQ+ community or to your personal identity, sexuality or queer desires.

For example, you might:

• read LGBTQ+ novels, erotica or memoirs;
• listen to LGBTQ+ musical artists;
• get a new haircut or tattoo, or imagine getting one;
• attend a queer-affirming religious service;
• journal about your sexual fantasies or share them with a lover;
• donate to LGBTQ+ nonprofits or mutual aid networks;
• mentor a queer youth, or visit a queer elder;
• dance;
• self-massage or touch yourself;
• join an LGBTQ+ theatre troupe, sports league, or club.

Whatever you do, do it mindfully; appreciate how it connects you to other queer people or to your own queerness.

Act on your queer values

Since a fulfilling life requires deeper meaning as well as pleasure, DBT also teaches a skill called ‘accumulating positive emotions in the long term’. This skill involves identifying your values and doing your best to live by them, so that you can find more pride, connection and purpose across time. Many LGBTQ+ people express gratitude for being queer because it has illuminated what’s most important to them (ie, their values). For example, being disowned by one’s family of origin for being lesbian might inspire someone to value community, leading her to cultivate strong friendships and ‘chosen family’ or to pursue activism as part of her career.

Some common queer experiences lead to values that are common in the queer community, such as creativity, compassion, being nonjudgmental, authenticity and equity. But your personal ‘queer values’ are unique to you. Mindfully acting on your values – particularly the ones that feel influenced by your life experiences related to being queer – can help you connect to a sense of queer joy that is longer lasting than the joy felt from doing pleasurable activities.

Queer joy is your birthright as a queer person. No matter your specific identity, outness, location or current connection to the community, queer joy is accessible. It may take effort or patience to find what evokes it for you, but the practice is worth it. Purposefully pursuing queer joy can help you cope with minority stress and can bring you more overall fulfilment and pleasure in life.

What to do when coping skills aren’t enough

As I mentioned above, many LGBTQ+ people struggle with depression, anxiety and other diagnosable mental health difficulties. If you’ve been unsuccessfully trying to improve your mental health using self-help options, you may want to seek out therapy.

Minority stress can directly interfere with queer people’s ability to use some of the above coping strategies. It can be harder to practise queer joy, for example, if you live in a location with laws or attitudes that make it truly unsafe for you to come out, dress how you want to dress, date who you want to date, or otherwise express your queerness publicly. You can still explore or practise queer joy (ie, in the privacy of your own home, or in your own mind), but it will indeed be more difficult, with fewer safe options.

Minority stress can also indirectly interfere with using these skills via shame and anxiety. Even if practising queer joy wouldn’t put you in physical danger, you may still feel too scared of potential social rejection or judgment to pursue your true desires. Navigating these barriers can be tricky. It can feel hard to know when you should trust your anxiety and hold back to keep yourself safe, versus when you should challenge the anxiety, ‘come out’, and practise queer joy.

Luckily, licensed psychotherapists are able to help with these difficulties and decisions – especially if they’re trained in providing LGBTQ+-affirmative therapy. There are several evidence-based therapies beyond DBT that have been shown to be helpful for LGBTQ+ people specifically. For example, LGBTQ+-affirmative cognitive behaviour therapy purposefully incorporates teachings about minority stress, methods for challenging internalised stigma, and skills for improving relationships and connections to the LGBTQ+ community. Even if it is difficult to find therapists nearby who are queer-affirmative or who are members of the LGBTQ+ community themselves, there are more and more virtual options available for connecting with therapy that could help you.

So, if you’ve been struggling, you don’t need to struggle on your own. Below, I offer some specific ideas for how you might find a queer-affirming therapist, as well as some more resources for learning additional coping skills.

If you want to learn more about combatting LGBTQ+ stress and practising queer joy, you can read my latest book, The LGBTQ+ Mental Health Workbook: Find Emotional Resilience, Self-Love and Queer Joy with Dialectical Behavior Therapy (2026).

For more ideas on how to practise queer joy, you can read my Substack newsletter How To Queer Joy. There, I write in more detail about some of my suggestions above (ie, finding gender euphoria through clothing or acting on queer values).

Some of my other favourite books for LGBTQ+ mental health include Gender Magic (2023) by Rae McDaniel, A Queer Dharma (2021) by Jacoby Ballard, and The Queer and Transgender Resilience Workbook (2018) by Anneliese A Singh.

To learn more about DBT in general or find resources for learning DBT skills on your own, visit my website or read my first book, Self-Directed DBT Skills (2023). Psyche also has previous Guides on how DBT skills can help you build a more meaningful life and overcome problematic feelings for an ex (both authored by me), improve relationships through validation, or cope with overwhelming emotions.

Connecting to LGBTQ+-affirmative therapy (or to LGBTQ+-specific support, in general) can be incredibly helpful and protective for queer mental health. For help finding an LGBTQ+-affirmative therapist, you can search on LGBTQ+-specific therapist directories (eg, The LGBTQ+ Healthcare Directory, Inclusive Therapists, or Manhattan Alternative directories in the US). Or find your nearest LGBTQ+ centre (eg, through CenterLink) and join their community, or ask them for local mental health resources. Finally, connecting to organisations that provide resources for people with your unique LGBTQ+ identity can be life-changing (eg, Trans Lifeline for transgender people, the Bisexual Resource Center for bi+ people, interACT for intersex people, etc).

We work hard to bring you the most trustworthy, expert and up-to-date information on psychology and mental health in our Guides. You can learn more about how we ensure that they are a reliable source of information here. This Guide is provided as general information only. It is not a substitute for independent, professional medical or health advice tailored to your specific circumstances. If you are struggling with psychological difficulties, we encourage you to seek help from a professional source.