queer invisibility in the body and in growing up
I am trying to find a language that is not cis-heteronormative to describe what queer bodies know long before they have words. Queer shame is not a psychological defect, nor something that originates inside us. It is a consequence of growing up and living in a world that subtly—and often very directly—teaches us that we are not meant to exist as we are. This text explores how queer invisibility becomes embodied, how it is transmitted through family life, education, medicine, religion, and culture, and what it does to a body when breathing, loving, and existing never feels fully safe. The text is personally political and somatically grounded.
I live and work among queer people. Some are joyful, some are deeply wounded, many are both. Again and again, I notice that the language of psychology and psychotherapy often fails to describe what is actually happening in queer bodies. When I use terms like minority stress or shame, they sometimes sound like an apology for suffering, as if these words make something unbearable appear smaller, more manageable, more acceptable. I am searching for language that can hold this reality: how the body learns politics, how love becomes conditional, how self-rejection is learned long before it is chosen.
Queer shame often looks like a body that has never seen itself reflected, feelings that were never met, movement that was never welcomed. Not because being queer is wrong, but because welcome is never neutral. Welcome is shaped by values, history, power, and norms, and many of us learned who we were by first learning who we were not allowed to be.
the suffering that terminology does not cover
Minority stress does not begin with coming out. It begins much earlier, in expectations, assumptions, and silences, in the quiet message that some lives are easier to imagine than others. The term minority stress barely touches the lived reality of queer existence and sometimes sounds like a polite word for something far harsher: be smaller, be invisible, or disappear.
Queer life unfolds within hierarchies of permission that determine who is allowed to feel safe, visible, relaxed, and whole. Race, gender, class, ability, citizenship, body, and gender expression all shape how much space a person is allowed to take. Some lives are supported, others are merely tolerated, and many are actively punished. This is not just about feeling not good enough, but about living in a world where language itself is already tilted against you.
Parents and society teach us—often without words—what is allowed to exist. Permission is learned relationally, and we discover who we can be by seeing who is celebrated and who is erased. If a child never sees strength that looks like them, how are they supposed to imagine a future? And how is a trans child supposed to feel entitled to joy if their reflection is always missing?
the world that determines who is allowed to breathe
The world is not equally safe for queer people. In many countries, being queer is illegal, and in some it is punishable by death. Shortly after I moved to the Netherlands, a gay man was beaten to death on my street by several young men who had arranged a date with him. Still, many privileged people here insist that this is a free and safe country for LGBTQIA+ people, nurturing the illusion that freedom exists simply because laws say so.
Even in so-called progressive societies, queer people wait years for competent medical care. Trans healthcare remains under-researched, therapists refuse queer clients because they are “not specialized,” and bodies are controlled, judged, and regulated. Pride becomes a market, violence becomes a statistic, and oppression becomes invisible. From birth onward, children learn what is welcome and what must be hidden, not only through cruelty but through silence, assumptions, and norms.
Transness exists because of transphobia, and coming out exists because queerness is assumed not to exist. If queerness were truly welcome, it would not require permission. Queer bodies survive by adapting, by learning to breathe where breathing was never guaranteed. This is why shame does not come close to describing queer life; what I see instead is resilience formed under impossible conditions.
the experience of queer therapy
Queer therapy is not just about validating pain. It is about separating what belongs to the world from what belongs to the self. When we recognize that much of our suffering was imposed, something loosens, and the sentence “I am wrong” slowly changes into “this was done to me.” Queer therapy helps rebuild what was never supported: self-trust, embodied safety, and relational permission. It does not erase pain, but it returns agency, and sometimes that is enough to begin breathing differently.