When we’re young, we unreservedly look to adults to tell us about life. “This is a tree. The color of the sky is blue. You are a woman. Woman like men.” and so on. These words and the wider world are a mirror we search dilligently for what it tells us about ourself. Unfortunately for most queer people, the mirror is often warped and skewed. If we were very lucky, we had some of our family to support us, a lesbian aunt to serve as a role model, or a trans neighbor to show us ‘hey its something else out here!’

But most of us aren’t that lucky, and not even the most supportive family can change the messages of the patriarchal culture at large.

Most of the messaging we receive supports the belief that we are broken or flawed in some way. Even as we start to accept ourselves, much of this messaging lives on as internalized queerphobia.

As we begin journalling this week, you might ask “why stir up old negatives?” The answer is that these beliefs are the underpinning of our internalized ideology around queerness. Because they act as a mental filter to our perceptions, our beliefs end up being self-fulfilling. This is true regardless of whether we have conscious awareness of them or not, but only through conscious awareness can we begin to struggle against corrosive beliefs.

Just about everyone has some amount of internalized negative beliefs. Let’s get empowered and liberate ourselves from them! Take the initiative to hunt out the negatives! Actively shape your beliefs!

Dare to struggle, dare to win! Gay is good!

Exercise 1: Unconcious Negatives—Taking Inventory

A) ‘Being Queer is…’ We’re going to start by trying to examine our unconscious beliefs about queerness. Using whatever language makes the most sense to you, label a notebook page or word document 1-10 then complete the sentence ‘Being Queer is…’. If queer isn’t how you describe yourself, use what language fits best.

Write as quickly as you can and put down whatever comes up. Your mind will try to edit every word to make your responses acceptable. You’re looking for what your really believe, which won’t always be positive, consistent, or affirming. The best way to beat your inner censor is to write so quickly you don’t have time to think. If you’re really spitting, keep going after the tenth sentence!

B) ‘Because I’m Queer, I can’t…’ Repeat the exercise above, this time using the sentence ‘Because I’m Queer, I can’t…’

When you finish, read the lists over. Put a mark by each statement you consider negative. Resist the urge to judge or critique yourself. Just because you harbor negative thoughts, you are not a bad person or queerphobic! Uncovering your hidden negatives will allow you to push past them.

Exercise 2) Role Models

Take a little while to reflect on your life and your early queer role models. Where did you learn what it meant to be gay, to be bi, to be ace, to be trans?

Often, internalized queerphobia takes on a life and voice of its own. For this discussion, we will personify this voice as your Inner Critic. For most people, the Inner Critic is maladaptive adaptation to protect us from the perceived dangers of being queer. This is what is operative when we tell ourselves things like ‘that guy will never like you because…’ or ‘I’ll never be a real ____ because of my ____’

Your Inner Critic fights dirty. Because they know you so well, they will always hit below the belt. Their accusations are usually slippery—vague enough to be hard to disprove, while containing enough (perceived) truth to feel weighty.

When we were young, we learned to maintain a high degree of vigilance in self-defense to protect us from social pressure or violence for our deviance from patriarchal gender and sexual norms. Deep inside, we record every correction or reprimand aimed at us from peers, parents, and other authority figures. We learned to watch out and police how we held our bodies, how our eyes lingered, how our voices sounded.

This vigilance may have helped us survive, but it can also inhibit us from living in liberated queer joy and self-acceptance. As Mao exhorts us ‘No investigation, no right to speak’. In the first exercise, we will begin by examining our self-critical beliefs. In the second, we will begin their re-education.

Exercise 1) Taunt the Critic Out This one works best on paper. On a blank page, draw a column that takes up a third of the page. In the larger part, begin writing some variation of the following affirmation at least ten times ‘Being Queer is natural and good.’ If this statement doesn’t make your heart jump with excitement, revise it to one that resonates with your goals and journey.

As you write, over and over as quickly as you can, listen to what starts bubbling up in the back of your mind—comments, rejections, protests, criticism, editorializing. You might hear ‘yeah, right’ or ‘so what? I’ll never fit in even if I embrace this.’ Whatever comes up, write it immediately in the right-hand column and keep trucking. Don’t judge or argue. Just get as much down as you can.

When you finish, compare what’s left with your unconcious negatives from the previous exercise and see what patterns come up or what statements are really striking or cutting. These are the most incisive statements your Inner Critic uses to control/inhibit you.

If time permits, spend some time trying to interrogate where each of these statements come from. Did someone tell you these things growing up? Did you read it? Don’t worry if there isn’t an answer for some of these. You don’t need to find the origin to release them, but the insight can be helpful!

The goal of this exercise is not to find someone to blame, but to examine and release—ultimately you are the person carrying these beliefs

Alternate mantra suggestions I am a trans man and that is beautiful. Ace is good. I love my queer soul.

Exercise 2: Write Your Own Script A key step in escaping the Inner Critic is to create an alternative, liberatory framework from their oppression.

Let’s assemble beliefs that support us to supplant our internalized queerphobia. Begin by writing “I’m willing to replace negative beliefs with new ones that support my actualization and queer joy.”

Similar to how we reframed our challenges as goals in week one, come up with a positive alternative to each of the core critiques brought up in your early beliefs or investigation into your Inner Critic. For example, I struggle with the belief “I will never embody real femininity.” I am working to supplant this belief with the belief “My femininity is an authentic and real part of myself (whether or not I feel safe to express it)”.

Make your new words enthusiastic and positive. Add any positive beliefs that came up earlier to the new list you are forming. Read the list aloud to yourself. How does it make you feel? If you need to revise anything, do it now!

Be patient with yourself. Letting your new scripts supplant your self-criticism and internalized queerphobia takes time. Making your affirmations a working part of your consciousness and understanding takes time and effort.

Two factors help us install these new ideas more effectively. The first is repetition of the new mantras. Try to make time to actively reflect and apply the new beliefs to your self understanding. Repeat the affirmations you developed to yourself. The second, remember that the part of our mind we are accessing is not rational. While we can logically understand and apply a queer liberatory framework, we need to have grace for when it is not fully internalized.

Be creative! Be playful and silly in finding ways to practice the new beliefs you are working to build and instill into yourself. Make little posters, Make songs. Look in the mirror and hit on yourself if that’s your thing.

This exercise is intended to help you realize how superficial and repetitive your inner policeman is. Create a dedicated space (digital or on paper) to record what your Inner Critic is saying. Then whenever you notice that you’re self-bashing, acknowledge the Critic. “Oh, hi Critic. Back on the bullshit? So, whaddya gotta say this time?”

Give them their say. In your running Critic’s Corner, write down whatever it wants to tell you. You don’t have to believe it. After the first few times, you’ll see the the Critic is pretty much a broken record. Instead of writing out what it has to say each time, you can just put a tally next to the relevant passage from the last time. The Critic is a paper tiger! Putting it under the spotlight will let you see how flimsy it is.