New Book Helps Therapists, Families Negotiate the Coming-out Process
Shock. Denial. Anger. Fear. Shame. Resignation. And, sometimes surprisingly, pride. It’s the arch of emotions parents often experience after learning their child is gay.
Sometimes parents seek professional help to get themselves through the initial painful feelings in the hopes that they can eventually feel pride.
Now a new book can serve as a compass to speed the journey for therapists, social workers, and other mental health experts as well as parents and gay children. It’s called Coming Out, Coming Home (Columbia University Press 2010) by Michael LaSala, PhD, director of the MSW program and associate professor at the School of Social Work at Rutgers.
In the book, LaSala unveils his qualitative, multicultural study of 65 homosexual and lesbian teens and their parents during the coming out process. A leading expert on this issue – LaSala treats LGBT families and individuals in his private practice – he outlines effective, practice-tested interventions for families in transition.
Through anecdotes and research data, the book explains that the revelation of sexual preference can be as gentle as a heart-to-heart talk initiated by the child or as jarring as a parent discovering pornography on their child’s computer followed by angry accusations.
Every family has a different experience when their child comes out, but, according to LaSala, there seems to be one common denominator: fear. “Parents are nervous that their child will be unsafe in a society where lesbians and gays are discriminated against, assaulted, even murdered,” LaSala said. “Gay children worry they will lose the love of the most important people in their lives – their parents.”
Not surprisingly, the decision to come out can be agonizing for teens. Of the 65 teens in the study, 40 said they felt highly anxious and depressed in the months before they broke the news to their parents, 14 to the point where they considered suicide.
Jennifer, a young teen LaSala interviewed for the book, fantasized about ending her life during the month before her mother found out she was gay. “I didn’t want to feel sick any more,” she said. Her mother experienced her daughter as antagonistic. “In the fights she was having with herself, she would lash out,” Jennifer’s mother said. “She lashed out at me more than anything.”
While the hope is that parents will accept their child’s sexual orientation and provide unconditional love and support, the reality is that some have an opposite reaction – ending the conversation, throwing their child out of the house, or cutting off college funding.
For Rutgers students, some relief may be found through a new LGBT Scholarship Fund, which will award its first scholarships this year in support of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and allied students. The fund was established by Rutgers University Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Alumni/ae Association (RU BiGLATA). At a later date, the group hopes to create an “emergency fund” for LGBT students who have been cut off by their parents.
LaSala advises teens on the verge of disclosure to take a step back and be sure they have an alternative place to stay, another way to cover college costs, and a separate emotional support system in case their parents react negatively.
“When kids tell their therapist they want to come out, they are often like a freight train and you have to slow them down. You have to get them to prepare for it,” LaSala said. “I tell them, ‘Don’t expect your parents are initially going to be there as a blanket for you, as your support. You have to expect they are not going to be there.’”
In LaSala’s book, the average age children came out to their parents was 17. That means that in years before they opened up to their parents, the gay children were alone in dealing with difficult situations, such as verbal and physical assaults by their peers.
One strategy LaSala employs when working with families is to have children share their successful stigma-busting strategies with their parents. Seeing how their child has negotiated prejudice and coped with being different often helps parents appreciate their child’s competence and ability to survive in a world often unwelcoming to gays and lesbians, LaSala said.
The unexpected result, LaSala said, is that parents come to admire their resilient lesbian or gay child. “For some, there is a feeling of pride. A feeling that, ‘I raised a kid to be so strong that he could be gay and be happy,’” LaSala said.