What Are Your Queer Core Needs?
Image description: There is a graphic showing a pyramid of different colors with the title “Queer and Trans Core Needs” and the subtitle “5 queer and trans core needs.” There is an arrow pointing from each section of the pyramid to text that identifies a specific needs. The text reads: “the need for queer and trans safety”, “the need to feel seen and heard”, “the need for affirming education and health care”, “the need for queer and trans affirming representation” and “the need to be valued and celebrated.” At the bottom of the graphic is the website: www.tiffany-landry.com
Sometimes I like to guide clients through what I call a Queer Village practice. It’s an opportunity for someone to imagine or visualize what it would have been like growing up in the queer and trans affirming village of their dreams. What would the elders have taught you? What affirming messages around sexuality and gender would you have grown up listening? If you had grown up in this village what might your relationship to your sexuality and gender have been like? The unfortunate reality is that many of us didn’t grow up receiving the queer and trans care that we deserved. Which is why taking a queer and trans affirming approach to healing includes identifying our core queer and trans needs and exploring how to get them met now as adults. In this blog I’m going to share ways we can tend to our core queer and trans needs.
What are Queer and Trans Core Needs?
In your own healing work you might have heard people talk about the core developmental needs that children need to grow up feeling safe, secure and with a secure attachment. I believe that it’s also important to talk about queer and trans specific core needs. Queer and trans specific core needs are the basic needs you needed growing up as a child and teenager. They might include things like:
feeling safe as a queer and trans person.
feeling secure and comfortable in your queerness and transness.
feeling worthy in who you are as a queer and/or trans person.
Access to queer and trans sexual education and affirming health care.
Affirming queer and trans representation.
Image description: There is a graphic with a border of photos of LGBTQIA+ individuals and couples, pride flags and colors. There is black text on a white background in the center. The title reads “what are your queer and trans core needs?” The text below the title reads: “An important part of tending to your LGBTQIA+ mental health is getting your core queer and trans unmet childhood needs met now as an adult.”
It might be supportive to ask yourself: “what queer and trans specific core needs did I need to get met as a child or teenager?” and “what queer and trans specific care would have felt like a miracle to receive when I was a child or teenager?” You might think of queer and trans core needs as the soil or foundation that you needed so you could grow up feeling safe, seen and comfortable as a queer and/or trans adult.
But what if I didn’t get my core needs met?
It can sometimes bring up sadness, anger or grief when we identify a lot of queer and trans specific needs that we didn’t get met. It might feel really supportive to give yourself space to tend to the emotions coming up. Perhaps that looks like giving yourself time to feel the depth of the sadness or grief or working with a coach or therapist to unpack the emotions that are coming up.
It’s important to note that there are many reasons that we might not have gotten our core needs met. It could be due to a lack of education or understanding from our care givers or due to systems of oppression such as homophobia or transphobia. Perhaps you grew up with such a lack of representation that you didn’t realize your sexuality orientation or gender until you were already an adult. Whatever the reason you didn’t get your core needs met it can be so helpful to:
gently remind yourself that you deserved to have your queer and trans needs tended to. It makes so much sense to feel grief, sadness or anger that you didn’t get the care that you needed.
know that you can get your core unmet needs now as an adult. In fact working on getting your queer and trans childhood unmet needs met now as an adult can be a really important part of your healing journey as a queer and/or trans person.
Let’s explore some core queer and trans needs and how you might get them met now as an adult.
1.) The need for safety and security.
All children have a core need of safety and security. But I believe that safety is a queer and trans specific need because a lack of safety can mean that we don’t feel safe enough be our authentic selves. That might mean that it doesn’t feel safe enough to come out even to ourselves, that we hide our authentic ways of being (such as our behavior, how we want to dress, what names and pronouns we want to use) and it can impact our mental health and how we perceive ourselves. Many of us didn’t get this need for safety met either in our individual homes or in the cisheteronormative society that we live in.
How do get this need met as an adult:
We’re going to explore how you can get this need met not as an adult. However, it’s important to note that safety might not always be a reality due to the society we live in, political climate and depending on our environment (such as where we live, work, who we interact with.) So we want to create spaces where we can experience queer and trans safety and have tools & support for when we’re in unsafe environments. Here are some things you might explore:
Cultivating a supportive queer and trans support system. This could be through social media, in person groups or with one on one connections. The important thing is that you have a queer and trans safe space where you can relax and be yourself.
Identify your queer and trans boundaries. This could be identifying for yourself what spaces you’re comfortable being in, what type of care you need before and after spaces that feel unsafe or challenging and even practicing how to share your boundaries with others.
Queer resourcing. In somatic work we often focus on a resource or connect to something in or outside our bodies that feels safe, good or even neutral. We can do the same thing when we notice that we need a little extra queer support or resourcing. Queer resourcing might look like: talking to a queer or trans friend, reading a queer or trans book, connecting to your queer or trans ancestors, engaging in online queer community spaces.
2.) The need to feel seen and heard.
Image description: Over a white and purple background there are graphics of pink and purple flowers, the word “queer” written in pink and on top of a rainbow diamond. The title reads “How to feel seen and heard in your queerness and transness.” The text reads “spend time reparenting your queer inner child”, “write a letter to your queerness and/or transness” and “play the compliment game!” At the bottom of the graphic is the website: www.tiffany-landry.com
I believe that the majority of queer and trans folks have a deep desire to feel seen and heard in our queer and trans identities, whether we recently came out or have known that we’re queer and/or trans since we were kids. But so often due to a lack of queer and trans care and acceptance we didn’t grow up feeling seen and heard in our queerness and transness. Here are some ways you can feel seen and heard now as an adult:
Spend time reparenting your queer inner child.
Write a letter to your queerness and/or transness. What words or wisdom, love or support would you want to tell your queer and trans self? Writing can be a way we can meet the need to feel seen and heard.
Play the compliment game with a friend! I learned the compliment game from my teacher Rachael Maddox and I think it’s a great way to feel seen and heard in your identities. With a friend or loved one you’ll very specifically tell them what you’d like to be compliment you on your queer and trans identity. Perhaps you’d like them to celebrate how you came out later in life, celebrate your trans joy or compliment you on your queer authentic expression. Share what you’d like them to say and they then have 3 minutes to compliment you-then you get to switch and they can share what compliments they would like!
3.) The need for affirming education and health care.
You deserved to grow up learning about queer and trans history, queer and trans sex education and having access to queer and trans affirming health care. Unfortunately, a lot of us didn’t grow up receiving this very important need. Our queer and trans mental and physical health deserve to have affirming education, support and health care. So as adults it’s important to seek out this type of care as a way to getting this need met. Here are some ways you might get this need met:
Gift yourself with the queer and trans sex positive sex education that you never got! There are so many amazing queer and trans sex educators, online courses and free content. Make queer and sex education a priority. If you’re looking for queer and trans sex education books you can check out my resource list here.
Find queer and trans affirming practitioners. You deserve queer and trans affirming care! That means that it’s worth it taking the time to find practitioners and providers that are truly queer and trans affirming. I suggest making a list of questions to ask new practitioners and to try (whenever possible) to only work with practitioners where you feel safe and seen as a queer and/or trans client. Not sure how to find queer and trans practitioners? Ask your queer and trans community!
Identify the queer and trans education that you missed out on and get that need met now as an adult! For example: did your teachers never teach you about queer history or trans heroes? Identify your queer and trans “gaps” in your learning and make a list of topics you want to explore from a queer and trans perspective. Depending on your preferred learning style, you can learn from books, audio books, documentaries, podcasts or in person workshops.
4.) The need for queer and trans affirming representation.
I see again and again how much so many of us longed for affirming queer and trans representation. I still remember watching lesbian movies with truly tragic endings and thinking “Uh oh, does being a lesbian mean that my life is going to look like that?” Representation truly does matter and positive representation can give us cues that it’s safe to be our queer and trans selves. But due to growing up in a cisheteronormative culture you’ve probably didn’t get the representation that you deserved. The beautiful thing is that now as an adult you can access the affirming representation that you might have dreamed of as a kid! Here are some ways you might explore that:
A part of reparenting your queer and/or trans inner kid is by providing the representation that was missing when you were a kid or teen. You might ask yourself “what type of representation might have felt so healing to receive as a kid or teen” and then explore different ways to get that representation now as an adult.
Join a queer book or film club or group that focuses on queer and trans books, films or art. It might feel supportive to get to explore with your community different types of affirmative representation.
What type of queer and trans representation feels most healing to you now as an adult? It might be supportive to make a list and then go Treasure Hunting for different types of representation that would feel so supportive for you right now as an adult.
5.) The need to be valued and celebrated.
I believe that a huge unmet for so many of us LGBTQIA+ folks is the need to be valued and celebrated for who we are. Being valued and celebrated for our queer and trans identities goes beyond being accepted. Whether you grew up without healthy queer and trans representations, experienced homophobia or transphobia or were gaslit around your sexuality or gender-you deserve to be valued and celebrated. Here are a few ways you might do that now as an adult:
Image description: Over a beige background there are graphics of a pride celebration, a happy anniversary cake and a book. The title is written in white text over a purple background. The title reads “3 ways to feel valued and celebrated in your queerness.” There is text under each graphic. The text reads: 1.) “Have a coming out party!” 2.) “Celebrate coming out anniversaries!” and 3.) “Create a living document where you and your loved ones celebrate your queerness.” At the bottom of the graphic is the website www.tiffany-landry.com
Have a coming out party! How would it feel to have a celebration celebrating your queerness? If you’re more a quiet gay, you might enjoy gifting yourself a cake or a small gift to celebrate you beautiful queerness and/or transness.
Celebrate coming out anniversaries! Whether you know exactly when you came out or pick a random day to honor your queerness, it might feel really lovely to create a specific way of celebrating your self. Perhaps that’s a ritual you do to honor your queerness and/or transness or maybe you invite friends over to celebrate with you.
Create a living document where you and a loved one(s) celebrate each other queerness and transness. You might share what you value about your queerness, have friends celebrate your transness or coming out journey or more! The purpose of this document is to celebrate each other’s LGBTQIA+ identities and for each participant to feel truly seen, heard and celebrated in their queer and trans selves.
Meeting your queer unmet core needs is an important part of healing.
When we approach our healing it can be supportive to ask ourselves: “what would be the most healing thing for my queer self?” and “if everything and anything were possible what would be so healing for my sexuality and gender?” Bringing a queer and trans centered approach to healing might start off by simply acknowledging your queer and trans specific needs that didn’t get matter-as well as identifying 1-2 ways you want to focus on getting them met now as an adult. We want to work with our nervous systems and aim for small doable steps so it might be helpful to ask yourself: “what is the smallest doable way I can meet this unmet need now as an adult?” Then make sure you celebrate each small step, shift and momentum as you show up for yourself and your needs.
Thank you for reading!
I hope this blog post was supportive. If you’d like to share a bit about your own experience with tending to your queer and trans needs-please feel free to share in the comments.
The information contained in this blog post is for general educational and informational purposes only and should not be construed as medical or mental health advice. The information provided is not a substitute for advice from a qualified professional who is aware of the facts and circumstances of your individual situation. We expressly recommend that you seek advice from a professional familiar with your specific situation.
Tiffany Landry is a queer autistic coach and trauma resolution practitioner. She works with queer and autistic clients in her programs Slow and The Autistic Mentorship. Tiffany also writes a newsletter on Substack called The Queer Autistic Newsletter.