Training LGBTQ+ Youth in Self-Compassion

Unlike the previous chapter on individual level strategies, which addresses the needs and experiences of the professional, this one shows professionals how to train LGBTQ+ youth in self-compassion. Self-compassion is associated with decreased depression and anxiety, as well as increased wellbeing. When applied to LGBTQ+ youth, the power arises in mitigating the extreme discrimination they face.

Reducing the risk of dissociation and decompensation due to increased rates of traumatization is an important professional responsibility when caring for LGBTQ+ youth. Self-compassion strategies for LGBTQ+ youth are offered to clinicians and educators alike, in order to promote healthy forms of courage, vulnerability, bravery, and self-kindness.

     SELF-COMPASSION FOR LGBTQ+ YOUTH

LEARN

Self-compassion arises when people cultivate four sets of skills:

i. Mindful awareness

ii. Self-kindness

iii. Shared humanity

iv. The willingness to take action to relieve suffering

Being LGBTQ+ unfortunately invites discrimination and maltreatment in some places. By embracing your authentic identity, you’re already attuned mindfully to yourself. Outward expression of your sexual and gender identity is also an act of self-kindness. When you remember that others before you have also suffered as a result of being LGBTQ+, and that others after you may also suffer, you may feel less alone in difficult times. Moreover, if you’re willing to take action when times are tough, you’re really in the self-compassion ballpark!

PRACTICE I

Thinking about the four parts of self-compassion practices:

i. Mindful awareness

ii. Self-kindness

iii. Shared humanity

iv. The willingness to take action to relieve suffering

Mindful awareness can be cultivated through meditation and other kinds of practices that focus attention.

Self-kindness increases with a daily loving kindness practice. (This is also called Metta, and is listed in Appendix C.)

Shared humanity is remembering that others suffer too, and that you are not alone when suffering. (This is also cultivated by practicing Metta, which can be found in Appendix C.)

Lastly, self-compassion and compassion involve the willingness to take action to relieve suffering. There’s a certain amount of self-worth and agency required to take action when suffering. When you are empowered to do so, you can acquire the tools for self-preservation.

PRACTICE II

Let’s evaluate the degree of self-compassion you bring to yourself.

On a scale of 1-7, where 1 = Never, and 7 = Always, please rate the following statements:

1. I pay attention to myself, my feelings, my experiences, and needs with tenderness. ________

2. When something important to me doesn’t go well, I speak kindly to myself and offer comfort. ________

3. When times are tough, I remember that other people also suffer like I do. ________

4. When I am in pain, I do healthy things to feel better. ________

5. When I feel blue, I pause and offer myself the kindness I need. ________

6. When feeling inadequate and worthless, I remember that there are other ways to look at the situation and try to find better ways of looking at mine. ________

7. I am patient and accepting of my flaws and mistakes. ________

8. In hard times, I remember to connect with my body by breathing and/or moving. ________

9. When something that matters to me goes badly, I remember that it is part of life to fail; it happens to others, too, and I try to learn something from it. ________

10. Even though it can be hard, I try to be kind to myself when I suffer and take action to heal my pain. ________

Total Score ________

“Scoring Instructions:

• Add up your score.

• Under 30 – Maybe cultivate some more self-compassion

• 40-50 – Average

• More than 50 – A lot of self-compassion; keep it up!”

REFLECT

•  The statements are all framed towards the positive. When people actively cultivate self-compassion, these are some of the ways they try to treat themselves.

•  When rating the statements, some people use lower numbers if they aren’t used to being kind to themselves. It’s ok to be unfamiliar with self-compassionate ways of being.

•  Take time to train yourself in ways that promote higher ratings on the statements. Doing so will benefit you the most!

     SELF-COMPASSION TRAINING PROTOCOL FOR TRAUMATIZED TEENS

LEARN

Many LGBTQ+ youth face discrimination and trauma as a result ofexpressing their authentic identities. Suffering is a by-product of these interactions, and self-compassion is one way LGBTQ+ youth can heal themselves while coping with social inequities.

The following protocol is adapted from Self-Compassion for Teens: 129 Activities and Practices to Cultivate Kindness (Gray, 2016) and is intended as a guide for clinicians and educators who care for LGBTQ+ youth. The 20 points can be used in any order and are also modified to suit the LGBTQ+ youth you’re caring for.

PRACTICE

Self-Compassion Training Protocol for Traumatized Teens

1. Trust and depth in relationships

•  Being LGBTQ+ can involve contact with pain, suffering, and trauma. LGBTQ+ youth require additional support to heal wounds.

•  This protocol begins with the relationship between LGBTQ+ youth and their therapist or teacher, because that relationship can be a bedrock to cultivating a healing self-compassion practice.

•  The therapist or educator must have a consistent self-compassion practice themselves, in order to be most helpful to LGBTQ+ youth beginning to cultivate one.

•  When rapport between LGBTQ+ youth and their therapist or teacher isn’t solid, it could further injure LGBTQ+ youth who’ve experienced trauma.

•  To deepen trust and rapport, therapists and teachers are encouraged to be more available to LGBTQ+ youth.

•  LGBTQ+ youth who have been through traumatic situations need clinicians and educators upon whom they can rely for support.

2. Centering and Grounding

•  Centering and grounding practices (such as the one in Chapter One, #1) are effective in helping LGBTQ+ youth gain the balance, skillfulness, and resilience needed to explore pain and suffering.

•  Emotional and spiritual grounding keeps LGBTQ+ youth firmly connected to the Earth, so that emotions, ideas, beliefs, and even external influences don’t knock them over.

•  Music can also be used to anchor LGBTQ+ youth in the present moment (Germer, 2009) and can re-orient them to something soothing and enjoyable.

•  Gazing upon a tree, beloved pet, or fire are also good ways to anchor attention and center again.

•  The more frequently these practices are utilized, the more effective they become.

3. Deep Body Breathing

•  Guide LGBTQ+ youth to breathe deeply into their belly three times.

•  Direct them to hold the in-breath for a count of five.

•  Then, exhale slowly and purposefully through the mouth.

•  On the out-breath, imagine pain, suffering, and negative energy, ideas, beliefs, and memories flowing out and away.

4. Build Positive and Negative Affect Tolerance

•  LGBTQ+ youth who have been traumatized may have difficulty tolerating negative affect and believing that positive affect is real, possible, and safe to experience.

•  To counteract this problem, LGBTQ+ youth benefit from new opportunities to increase affect tolerance in both directions.

•  For negative affect, begin by scaffolding to serve as a source of support to LGBTQ+ youth, when they need it.

•  To increase positive affect tolerance, invite LGBTQ+ youth to share or write down any positive feelings they experience. This can be an ongoing journal activity, for one week only, or a verbal report.

5. Define and Explore Abreaction

•  Shapiro (2001) described abreaction as “the re-experiencing of the stimulated memory at a high level of disturbance.”

•  Abreaction can arise at any time, in response a trigger event associated with a traumatic memory.

•  Abreaction is a serious event, which can involve a great deal of terror for traumatized LGBTQ+ youth.

•  Explain to LGBTQ+ youth that self-compassion practices involve touching pain and suffering, which can lead to intense levels of disturbance.

•  Preparing LGBTQ+ youth for possible abreaction, and creating a plan for how to cope with it, when and if it occurs, is helpful when cultivating a sustainable self-compassion practice.

6. Establish Expectations—Feelings Are Real, but not True, and Should Be Treated as Re-Experiencing Rather Than Experiencing for Real

•  Rinpoche & Swanson (2012) suggest that feelings are real, but they are not true. Feelings can be strong and felt as if they are completely real, in the here and now, but this isn’t always so.

•  Take fear for example; when truly in danger, people rarely feel any fear at all, because they are mobilized to protect themselves from danger. When we feel fear, it is a real feeling, but it isn’t necessarily true that we are in danger and need to be afraid.

•  LGBTQ+ youth need to know this about their feelings, in order to increase emotional toleration and cultivate self-compassion in the face of difficult moments.

7. Allow Emotions to Flow Out for Complete Release

•  Crying can be reframed as a cleansing process, and feeling feelings can move them through for clearing and release.

•  Having an emotion is one way of letting go, which is a healthy and restorative aspect of healing.

•  When a cut heals in the skin, a scab forms. Over time, the scab sloughs off. Sometimes, a new scab emerges, at other times, the wound is open for a while and then heals. Emotions are like the scab forming and falling off.

•  Permission to feel emotions, and appreciation of their purpose in the healing process, gives meaning to suffering, which also eases it.

8. Breathe Through and With Pain

•  Breathing deeply into and through painful moments is a very real and instant way of calming the nervous system.

•  Breathe, and focus on the sensations of breath, at any moment in order to center and ground.

•  This is effective for physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual pain.

•  The more often LGBTQ+ youth make contact with their breath, the more effective it will become in grounding and centering.

9. Sustain Healthy Practices, Especially Around Setting Boundaries and Eliminating Toxic Situations, People, Chemicals, Foods, and Beverages

•  Invite LGBTQ+ youth to make a commitment, and set daily intentions, to live healthfully in every way.

10. Embrace Inner Wisdom and Intuition as a Guide

•  Encourage LGBTQ+ youth to tune inward and see if they can hear/feel/see/know the wise part of them that holds the wisdom of the universe.

•  As LGBTQ+ youth age, traumatic learning experiences, coupled with heavy emphasis on the provable, dims access and interest in intuition.

•  For LGBTQ+ youth, it is crucial to healthy identity formation that they find and nurture any kind of inner wisdom that they can begin to trust. This process cultivates deep selfempathy and highly effective self-compassion.

•  Finding and growing intuition is a very powerful antidote to the harmful effects of discrimination on LGBTQ+ youth.

•  Being hurt leaves memories and internalized negative beliefs that further damage the selfconcept of LGBTQ+ youth. To counterbalance these negative effects, inner wisdom becomes a trusted friend who is always there.

•  It takes a long time to nurture this, and it is well worth the investment of time and sustained practice to do.

11. Graciously Identify and Receive Gifts

•  LGBTQ+ youth who have been discriminated against and traumatized can easily fall into depression. To counteract this propensity, a self-compassionate practice includes finding all the gifts that come by LGBTQ+ youth.

•  A gift can be a cancelled class, a great parking spot, or time with a good friend. It need not be a material item.

•  The more LGBTQ+ youth train themselves to notice “gifts,” more “gifts” will appear. It’s the law of attraction coupled with the perceptual tendencies to find what we seek.

•  Graciously receiving gifts is an important part of increasing the flow of gifts. This includes being grateful, not only with the words “thank you,” but also deep within the heart.

12. Actively Reduce Stress and Increase Joyful Activities

•  Help LGBTQ+ youth learn to avoid activities and people that cause stress.

•  Promote discovery of activities, people, places, and things that bring joy.

•  It is self-compassionate to act to relive suffering. One way of doing so is by reducing stress, and increasing pleasure.

•  Healing happens when LGBTQ+ youth rest, play, find joy, and live in alignment with their true nature.

13. Request and Receive Help When Needed

•  Like identifying and graciously receiving gifts, requesting and receiving help is another aspect of self-compassion practice.

•  Trauma can create trust issues, which prevent LGBTQ+ youth from requesting and accepting help.

•  Please remind LGBTQ+ youth that requesting and receiving assistance when needed is an act of self-compassion; one to be taken as often as needed in order to heal.

•  Help LGBTQ+ youth see that some people are trustworthy and helpful, while others may not be. As they begin requesting help, they will learn more about whom they can and cannot trust. This cycle of trying and failing, learning, and trying again repeats itself throughout the lifespan.

14. Welcome Trustworthy People Into Your Life

•  This can be as easy as setting a daily intention to welcome trustworthy people.

•  The more LGBTQ+ youth fix their attention on welcoming trustworthy people in their lives, the more trustworthy people will show up.

•  Set limits and boundaries with toxic people, substances, and activities, too.

15. Practice Loving Kindness for Mind, Body, Emotions, Soul, Other People, the Environment, Animals, and All Beings Everywhere

•  The loving kindness practice (Appendix C) is a main component of cultivating selfcompassion. It is also very helpful when LGBTQ+ youth heal trauma.

•  Metta is a direct route to retraining attention and brain connections with kindness becoming the predominant way of being.

•  Encourage LGBTQ+ youth to extend their loving kindness practice to their mind, body, soul, other people (as is typical in the practice) as well as animals, and all beings everywhere.

•  This kind of practice softens one’s approach to life and promotes healing from trauma.

•  It also creates a loving kindness mindset, which lends warmth and tenderness to every interaction and action.

16. Have Fun!

•  Our true nature is the state of joy, and yet we aren’t able to have it 100 percent of the time.

•  The juxtaposition of joy and pain creates the capacity for pleasure.

•  Fun times and activities are a great way to return to that natural state of being after trauma.

•  It is not easy to pursue fun when traumatized; however, this point in the protocol is meant to remind and emphasize the importance of fun in healing and recovering from trauma.

•  Any kind of play and enjoyment is encouraged and recommended with the same priority and importance as school, medication, or any other intervention.

17. Positive Reality: Focus on What You Want

•  This is a reminder to LGBTQ+ youth to let go of any thoughts, ideas, and beliefs that do not serve their highest good.

•  This goes beyond kind self-talk to the release of any and all stories that are not in alignment with the highest good of LGBTQ+ youth.

•  Help LGBTQ+ youth learn to use language that frames ideas in the positive and speaks to what they truly want. Assist in finding whatever it is that their heart longs for; let that be the focus of their communication.

•  This is a gentle way of re-directing negative self-talk or beliefs to a more self-compassionate place.

18. Honoring Unique Needs and Talents

•  Although we know we are all unique, there are so many ways we are clumped together and expected to behave the same.

•  A self-compassionate approach to the unique needs of LGBTQ+ youth involves gently reminding them that honoring their uniqueness is worthwhile.

•  This is ever more important when recovering from trauma because uniqueness can be internalized as damaged, disgusting, unlovable, and worse.

19. Have Open and Honest Communication With Respect for All Life

•  Encourage LGBTQ+ youth to speak openly and honestly with those they trust.

•  Invite them to be as honest as they can with themselves.

•  It takes courage and bravery to open to the truth in any moment.

•  Remind LGBTQ+ youth how very strong they truly are.

20. Allow Things to Be in Their Own Time, Starting With Yourself

•  Healing trauma takes a long time.

•  Healing takes patience.

•  It takes effort and a lot of energy.

•  The more time and energy that are applied to healing, the more effective it is.

•  Each one of us is endowed with self-healing properties; our bodies know exactly how to heal cuts and wounds. We also have everything within us to heal mental, emotional, and spiritual wounds.

•  Facilitate LGBTQ+ youth having the time and space they needs to feel safe and to heal wounds.

REFLECT

•  The components of the protocol may not be comfortable for everyone.

•  Use the elements that feel right, modify those that can be, and discard those that do not resonate.

•  For traumatized LGBTQ+ youth, it is important to start self-compassion training with this protocol. The protocol is sufficient for initiating a self-compassion practice, and need not be expanded upon until such time as LGBTQ+ youth decide to.

     SCAFFOLDING LGBTQ+ YOUTH FOR SELF-ADVOCACY & EMERGING ADULT INTERDEPENDENCE

LEARN

How might LGBTQ+ youth learn to advocate for themselves and pursue interdependence in relationships? This question blends three different developmental challenges for LGBTQ+ youth into one!

a. Gender and sexual identity development

b. Self-advocacy

c. Interdependence

The first challenge, gender identity development is addressed in detail in Chapter Five, while sexual identity is addressed is Chapter One. The practice below covers all three domains in two steps as LGBTQ+ youth develop into adulthood.

PRACTICE

Silently say to yourself:

“What do I need to be happy and thrive?”

Now, pause for a quiet moment, and see what arises...

When you know what you need, you can tell others. Use the following template and fill in the blanks to fit different situations:

I observe _____________

I feel _____________

I need _____________

I request _____________

REFLECT

•  It can be challenging to identify needs and articulate them to other people.

•  What is it like for you to rely on other people to meet your needs?

•  What is it like to find the words for your needs? If it’s a challenge, look up Marshall Rosenberg’s list of universal human needs in Non-Violent Communication.