Queer Holiday Safety Planning II

Yo! The holidays are hard!

Listen, the holidays are hard for everyone. Routines are thrown off balance, and stressors add up. Every year, emotions are activated in response to our families of origin (whether you engage with them or the holidays or not).  For us LGBTQ+ people, there is a deeper layer of stressors associated with the holidays. Culturally, we need more support in navigating this time of year. So, here are some tools!

As an LGBTQ+ therapist, I spend much of the holiday season with my clients, cultivating awareness for foreseeable stressors, re-traumatization, and planning for emotional wellness. Last year I shared the Queer Holiday Safety Planning approach I use with clients and community members. Go check last year’s article here. This year, I am going more in-depth about several tangible tools that help protect emotional and nervous system regulation and personal values related to healthy conflict resolution.

This holiday, I am giving you a time out.

Time outs are the most effective tool for conflict resolution. I learned about time outs during my time working exclusively in LGBTQ+ intimate partner abuse and anger management. Traditionally, anger and abuse intervention is a crucial tool for conflict resolution, de-escalation, and self-regulation for partners, family, friends, and ourselves. The term may sound patronizing, I get it, but it’s an extremely effective name.  We all have nervous systems and were never taught how to regulate them. And time outs work.

There is so much to be angry about, and what do we want to do about it?

I used to run an anger management group with my mentor, Deborah DiGiovanni. She taught me the ins and outs of time outs with clients. It is a tool I love to use with myself when I am disregulated and having a hard time recovering. She would always frame the use of an effective time out with this Viktor Frankl quote:” Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom.” Contextually, this helps us understand how we cannot change (overnight) oppressive people or homo-bi-transphobic situations. With practice, we can gain autonomy and empower ourselves in challenging situations and with problematic people. And that is queer liberation.

The A-B-Cs of Time Outs

Time outs are all about self-regulation, so noticing when you are becoming disregulated is critical. Within time outs, there is a five-step, sequential approach to de-escalate conflicts and regulate emotional distress. The first step is to recognize the physical cues and stress thoughts you experience that signal that tension is building. Second, assert immediately, “I need to take a time out.” Third, immediately leave the situation for a full hour to disengage from the conflict, regulate activated emotions, and not spend the hour trying to fix the situation, blaming/ridiculing yourself or others for the conflict. In step four, you return to the person or situation after one hour (if it is safe.) The final step is to check with the other person/people and attempt to clarify the situation with I-statements, revisit boundaries, and use assertive communication. If tension or conflict continues, take another time out.

What if going home is an inside job?

 Returning to our Queerness. 

Wondering what you can do during a time out to self-regulate? Great question! It’s all about calming down, grounding ourselves, and returning to our queerness. So often, people try to calm down by meditating, turning inward, and turning off or being silent. However, for traumatized and oppressed folks (like us queers), meditation is not a safe place because silence becomes filled with our fear and painful memories. Physical and active grounding techniques are an excellent alternative.

My all-time favorite grounding exercise is 5-4-3-2-1 grounding. It is simple and can be practiced anytime and anywhere by simply noticing and orienting. Think of five objects you can see, four sounds you can hear, three things you smell, two tastes you can notice in your mouth, and one thing you are feeling. By moving from outer to inner, you come back home within yourself, where you connect to what you need. There are endless free grounding exercises available online on YouTube. I suggest you explore a few and find a grounding exercise you like to ensure it is a good fit for you before using it in a stressful situation.

Holiday Wellness Activities

Alternatives to grounding exercises can be focused on daily tangible activities. I love to help folks cultivate positive thinking, focus on positive memories, and affirm our qeerness. This doesn’t have to be exhaustive and can be as simple as listing 10 things we are grateful for… Queer things, lol.

We can make a simple “Daily Needs List” that we check off throughout the day to stay accountable to our needs and values. This creates accountability and builds self-esteem for values. When all else fails, distract. Go for an engaged walk where you focus on breathing, look, and count all the instances you see your favorite color. Listen to your favorite album from start to finish. Watch a non-stressful movie or show. Call a friend and ask them to help you to not talk or think about the conflict or trigger. Journal, draw, collage, be creative, dance, move, stretch. Set a timer for when you will address an issue and let yourself let go until that time comes.

Do anything and everything that helps you feel connected to yourself and your truth. All these emotional regulation tools are included in this article as images. Save them to your phone, and use them as needed this holiday season and in the future.

Now, what do you do once you are regulated and return to a challenging situation? These are great opportunities to engage in clarifying conversations. We can never control if those we are engaging with will be respective. We can, however, keep our side of the street clean in how we approach resolution. I love a good I-statement that helps us only speak from our experience of an issue or conflict. Here’s a pro tip: As you utter, “You did, you made me feel, you caused” in an I-statement, you are dead in the water.

The Holiday ‘Yes, And’ of Difference

Other types of clarifying communication like I-statements include simply naming shared agreements, like: “I also want to enjoy the holidays with you, and we are very different people, and I need my identity respected as much as you do,” or, “I know we love each other, and we are very different people, and I don’t know how we can best respect our differences.” It’s the “yes, and” fluid approach versus the “no, but” polarized stance. If the choice is to enter challenging situations this holiday season, how can we approach them with queer multiplicity versus heteronormative politicization?

Ultimately, this holiday season, you can always say “no.” I encourage it if that is correct for you. The holidays are complicated no matter how us queer folks approach them. So, what is in your best interest? What honors your values? Queerness? This holiday season, how can you, as Frankl stated, honor your power, growth, and freedom?

We can’t control others, situations, or the holidays. However, with practice, we can control ourselves, our role in relationships, and methods of leading a life in line with our queer values. I hope you don’t need these tools; more than likely, you will need one or two of these tools.

I invite you to lead this holiday season with compassion for yourself, your nervous system, and your queerness. Australian LGBTQ+ Activist Alexander Leon stated beautifully, “Queer people don’t grow up as ourselves; we grow up playing a version of ourselves that sacrifices authenticity to minimize humiliation and prejudice. The massive task of our adult lives is to unpack which parts of ourselves are truly us and which parts we’ve created to protect us.”

Please take good care of yourself over the holidays, and I wish you a happy new year.

All graphics by Jesse Proia