How Therapy Can Help You Unlearn Internalized Homophobia and Shame

While many spaces have increasingly become more accepting, affirming, and inclusive of LGBTQIA+ folks, there has also been a rise in backlash politically and socially. Trans and nonbinary folks in particular are facing increasing levels of resistance. This includes harmful legislation, misinformation, and rising hate. It’s a painful reality that even as things get better in some ways, they’re also getting harder in others. And that can make healing feel even more complicated.

Specifically, LGBTQIA+ folks often carry invisible wounds from living in systems that stigmatize and devalue who they are. When people consistently experience rejection from family, friends, institutions, and culture, it can start feeling like something is wrong with them. Even with a supportive community, hearing political and media messages that frame non-heterosexual or non-cisgender identities as "less than" or "wrong” can create internalized homophobia.

Said another way, people can start rejecting the parts of themselves that others are rejecting. It can be hard to love all parts of ourselves under the best of circumstances, so it makes sense for it to be that much harder when it feels like you’re constantly getting ‘unloveable’ messages. 

Feeling unloved, unsafe, or like your belonging is being threatened due to who you are can also create a sense of shame. Not because who you are is bad or wrong, but because you’re getting that message, the strong urge to hide, minimize, or reject these parts of yourself. This shame can contribute to issues in relationships, with mental health, as well as your capacity for joy.

Let’s keep working together to co-create a culture that doesn’t marginalize LGBTQIA+ identities. In the meantime, therapy may be able to help you love yourself well despite ongoing sociopolitical challenges. 

Understanding Internalized Homophobia and Shame

Internalized homophobia occurs when an LGBTQIA+ person unconsciously absorbs society’s negative beliefs about queerness and turns those beliefs inward. It might sound like:

• “I’m too much.”

• “No one is going to take my relationship(s) seriously.”

• “I can’t come out to my family or community.”

• “I’m too gay/queer/trans” or “I’m not gay/queer/trans enough”

• “I’m disgusting, wrong, or sinful.”

Shame, in this context, isn’t just embarrassment—it’s the painful sense that you are fundamentally unworthy of love, safety, and belonging. 

These beliefs often take root in childhood and adolescence, when belonging feels like a matter of survival. Without a safe space to question and process these messages, many people bury their identity or perform a version of themselves to survive.

This survival strategy can come at a cost: disconnection from yourself, isolation, anxiety (or hypervigilance), depression, and deep longing. Ultimately, relying on a performative identity reinforces the message that the real you isn’t acceptable and we want to work towards loving all of you and trusting that others want to love the real you too.  

How Therapy Can Help You Unlearn and Heal

Working with a culturally humble, LGBTQIA+ affirming therapist can offer a safe and compassionate space to explore and begin releasing these internalized beliefs. Here are some ways therapy can help:

1.Naming the Shame

Healing begins with recognizing what’s going on internally and validating those experiences. Therapy can give you language to name the harm and understand its origins. Many clients find immense relief in realizing, “This isn’t me, this is something I learned to believe about myself.”

2.Exploring Identity in Safety

Therapy creates a confidential, nonjudgmental space where you can explore your gender and sexual identity with curiosity and compassion. Whether you’re out or questioning, your identity will be respected and affirmed. This also provides a corrective experience you can build on as you work towards trusting that others can love all of you too.

3.Challenging Harmful Beliefs

I like to use Internal Family Systems (IFS) to help folks recognize how they are interacting with themselves and the impact this is having on their system. When you meet parts of yourself that carry internalized homophobia or shame, you can learn to respond to them with agency and self-trust. You can also experiment with new ways of being that can help you keep loving you well even if/when others don’t. 

4.Healing from Trauma

Many LGBTQIA+ individuals have experienced trauma whether overt (e.g., bullying, violence, spiritual abuse) or subtle (e.g., microaggressions, invisibility, rejection). Therapy can help you process these experiences and reclaim your sense of safety and power.

5.Rebuilding a Positive Self-Concept

Over time, therapy helps you internalize new messages rooted in self-compassion, self-acceptance, and self-worth. You begin to see yourself as inherently deserving of love, safety, and belonging - not in spite of your identity, but because of it.

What Healing Can Look Like

Healing from internalized homophobia and shame isn’t about becoming a “perfectly healed” version of yourself. It’s about becoming more fully you and learning how to love and support yourself. That might mean:

• Feeling confident in your identity without apology

• Setting boundaries with people who don't affirm your identity

• Building meaningful, authentic relationships and experiencing acceptance and belonging

• Reclaiming joy, pleasure, and pride

• Letting go of guilt around self-expression

Unlearning shame is not a linear path, but it is a powerful one and you don’t have to walk it alone.

Final Thoughts

If you’re seeking support in unlearning internalized homophobia or shame, consider working with a therapist who is LGBTQIA+ affirming and exhibits cultural humility. You deserve to feel safe, seen, and celebrated exactly as you are. 

If you’ve ever struggled with feeling “not enough” or “too much” because of your queerness or trans identity, and believing you’re the problem, it might be time to seek support. Therapy can help you remember who you are beneath the layers of shame and support you in living a life that is freer, fuller, and more aligned with your truth. Schedule a free phone consultation to learn more about therapy with us!

Author Biography

Jessica Carpenter is a therapist with Catalyss Counseling who works with adults who have experienced stress, grief, trauma, and a variety of relationship issues, including communication and conflict resolution, jealousy and betrayal, affair recovery, LGBTQIA+ community, and polyamory/non-monogamy. Jessica is also a licensed massage therapist, yoga therapist, and TRE provider. She is passionate about making wellness accessible to everyone. Follow Catalyss Counseling on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.

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Here at Catalyss Counseling, we want to meet all of your counseling needs in the Denver area. Our supportive therapists provide depression counseling, therapy for caregiver stress, grief and loss therapy, stress management counseling, couples counseling, and more. We also have specialists in trauma and PTSD, women's issues, pregnancy and postpartum depression or anxiety, pregnancy loss and miscarriage, and birth trauma. For therapists, we can also provide clinical supervision with Firelight Supervision! We look forward to connecting with you to help support your journey today.