Douglas Knutson, PhD: Supporting & Affirming LGBTQ+ Kids

 [00:00:00] So when the focus is on the relationship, bonding with your child. Building trust with your child, having a deeper understanding, and sometimes being transparent about your mistakes and modeling for them that it's okay to be imperfect and still a successful and healthy person that all of that can focus on relationship. And when it does and we make mistakes, or we do something silly. There's also a need for that self compassion to say, I'm trying my best.

I deeply love my kiddo. I'm doing everything I can to bond with that child. And for the difference, The slack that's left in that care, the failure that that I may exhibit, there is an ability to still love myself. Welcome to This Way Up. We are bringing you engaging, informative, and inspiring conversations Surrounding all aspects of mental health from the perspective of us as parents and caregivers.

I'm Andrea Nanigian. And I'm Emmy Watters. When someone you care about is struggling with their mental health, this can be an incredibly stressful and challenging time. So we're Here to provide valuable resources to support you as you navigate this journey. Thank you for joining us today.

We are so appreciative of you, our growing community, and we are so excited to share this next guest With you, Douglas Knudsen, he is a ball of light and so warm and inviting, and I just, You just can't help but love the guy. Absolutely. So full of joy and positivity, and we have so much To learn from him today, especially as parents. And he does offer some great wisdom and insight As he specializes in helping both parents and kids move through unique challenges. Doctor Douglas Knudson is a licensed health service psychologist in Oklahoma And a coordinator of Health Education and Rural Empowerment Lab, a consortium of scholars who research and advocate for rural LGBTQ plus Health and resilience.

He coauthored the book Counseling in a Gender Expansive World, and he is currently working On a workbook for parents of LGBTQ individuals. Welcome, Douglas. Thank you so much for joining us this morning. Thank you for having me. We are so excited to get this conversation going.

And I think a good place for us to start is if you can outline for all of us Exactly what LGBTQ plus is and how it evolves. Absolutely. I love that you point out that LGBTQ plus evolves because I'm gonna give some approximate definitions that are gonna help ground us in an understanding of what we're talking about. But The caveat is that these terms are changing, and we may get into that later. And this may not capture everybody's experience, so I'll do my best here.

LGBTQ plus is 1 of the accepted, so to speak, umbrella ways of capturing a broad community of people who are gender diverse and identify with different sexual orientations. And so 2 Basic ways of differentiating broad categories would be heterosexual people, so people who are, so to speak, attracted to people of the opposite gender in a binary system. So men who are attracted to women or women who are attracted to men. And then everyone else. So lesbian, gay, bisexual, pansexual, a variety of other identities.

So that's the first major division between heterosexual and not heterosexual. The second division is between cisgender people and trans and nonbinary or gender diverse people. And the way that I usually define cisgender to ground it a little bit is to say that cisgender people generally identify with the gender that is associated with the sex that they're assigned at birth. So based on my physiology, I was assigned male at birth, and I was expected to identify as a man and grow up as a man in our society. I do identify as a man.

So I would be cisgender because my Signed sex and expected gender are consistent with my actual gender identity. Trans and non binary people than would be, and these are broad brushstrokes, but anyone who does not identify as cisgender. So they were assigned a sex at birth, have a gender identity, were expected to have a certain gender identity based on that sex assignment, but do not. Maybe, for example, They were assigned male at birth, expected to identify as a man, but identify as a woman. And so that person we might refer to as transgender.

Those are the major divisions, and the LGBTQ plus umbrella then captures people who are not cisgender and who are not heterosexual. LGBTQ plus as a term also acknowledges that we are not able to represent everybody who is not cisgender and not heterosexual under the same umbrella. So we include lesbian, gay, and bisexual, that's the LGB, trans, that's the T, And q can be questioning people, queer people. And then we add the plus. And the plus acknowledges that The list of identities is always expanding, that it is much larger than we're able to list in a in a list of letters.

Um, and you'll see different iterations of that. You'll see LGBTQIA or LGBTQIA plus or QQ. And so There are different iterations of that acknowledging different identities and foregrounding them. But for the purposes of our conversation, we'll just use LGBTQ plus to refer to those non heterosexual, non cisgender people. Thanks for that.

Wow. That was very actually, probably the most concise Description of it that I've ever heard. And I like how you just bucketed it into 2 because I think that's very easily understandable at that point. It's like, okay. That makes it good.

Can you share what the unique some unique challenges might be within this, um, community that you serve? Absolutely. LGBTQ plus people and and I I appreciate that question because it gives me an opportunity to give a little caveat. You'll notice that I've defined these terms as who LGBTQ plus people are not instead of who they are. And that is because it makes it a little bit easier to talk about these topics, but it also reveals the fact that LGBTQ plus people are viewed as a deviation from the norm, that these kiddos are in some ways not normal kids.

They're different kids. And that perception of difference from our society, you should be heterosexual, you should be cisgender, and you're not creates a lot of tension within families, and it creates a lot of tension within interpersonal relationships that creates distress. As human beings, we are basically social creatures. We need to be loved. We need to be accepted certainly within families, definitely by our parents.

We need that kind of embrace, that affirming space. And when we don't receive that because we're not the right identity or the right existence, so to speak, or from the perception of society. That creates to stress. And so you'll hear about elevated levels of depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation for trans and non binary folks, Gender dysphoria, this sense that of of a disconnectedness between who they are, quote, unquote, supposed to be and how they identify within this world and the distress that can arise from that. So there's a lot of distress that gets talked about in the psychology literature in medical literature around LGBTQ plus people.

And I think it's important not to beat a dead horse, but to take that back to the not conversation because it's not about something that's inherently disordered about being LGBTQ plus, but rather that there is a great tension that occurs relationally, interpersonally, and within a person when they are not acceptable based on social standards and expectations. And so your your question answered more clearly is there's a lot of distress that can be related to that. Wow. That's an amazing that you make and really enlightening. It gives us something to to anchor to to be able to understand just conceptually What that could feel like for an individual in a society, in a culture, or family that you feel different, abnormal than, less than, other than, Yeah.

It can bring up a lot of a lot of issues, actually. I love that you highlight that because that's something that I talk to parents about when I'm doing shops or trainings or even at clinics, is I invite people to begin to connect with that discomfort and that pain. And I think I can say for myself, I've experienced that. So I sometimes share a story that when I was young and growing up, I had a very high pitched voice, and I had a very late puberty. And so when I would go through the McDonald's drive through because I Loved McDonald's as a early teenager.

I would order my food going through the line and inevitably if a person couldn't see me but they could hear my voice, they would say Thank you, ma'am, or please pull around to the next window, ma'am. And I remember the grinding sort of disconnect and disappointment and and feelings of really pain around being assumed to have a gender identity that I didn't or in some way not being man enough. Um, and I think in all of our experiences, people who are listening and as we're having this conversation, we [00:10:00] can think back to when we were called Told me we're throwing like a girl or a tomboy or man up or, uh, put down those tools. You need you need to have a different job. And so in ourselves, I think I would invite all of us who are in this space to then try to connect with what that feels like, and it Stings.

And to think about engaging with that kind of discomfort and that pain on a daily basis, being misunderstood over and over and over again, having to hide you who you are in every conversation. You can see how just a little distress could build to a lot of distress and create a lot of problems for people who are regularly being misunderstood in ways that we can identify with if we really try. Yeah. So it's an internal issue of not feeling like You're accepted or maybe seen for who you are in totality authentically. And then also a secondary issue of how, Yeah.

How your environment is viewing you. You know? What do you think the transition or what's the process to to an individual then just feeling Yes. I am, and that is enough. Are you talking about an LGBTQ plus young person who's Yeah.

Or anyone. Yeah. Any young person. Sure. We've talked a little bit about how terms change, and and sometimes that's held up by people who are maybe not convinced that LGBTQ plus people exist or or that these, uh, identities are valid.

There's this feeling that to Explore identities or to think about them means they don't exist or you're you're changing who you are or you're deciding to be someone else. And and I would push back against that narrative and say, I think anyone and I love I love how you push back when I said, Uh, do you mean LGBTQ plus people? And you said, no. I think all people. And and that's such a beautiful response because you're right.

I think Everyone, regardless of whether they're a kiddo, an adult, someone who's, uh, LGBTQ plus or not, That we all have opportunities to get to know ourselves. And that's such an important part of development for a kiddo and such an important part of being a parent for grown ups who are engaging with their kids. And so I think exploring our identities, thinking back to those times that we've been told Who we are is not acceptable or that we've been rejected for something that we can't change about ourselves allows us to build not only a self understanding that creates a foundation for living in this world and and engaging with other people. But it also gives us the opportunity to become more authentically ourselves and connect with who we are. And that's not about being gender diverse or queer.

It's just about being human. And sometimes we don't take that opportunity to examine selves in healing ways, uh, that's available to us. Yeah. I remember when my daughter was, I don't know, maybe 10, And, um, we were my husband and my son and even me to some extent are very rational people. We we look at things in in kind of black and white, But she's got more of me who is this the emotional side of things.

And she was in this quandary of, You know, feeling kinda like she was out of place, like she had no place in the family. And I remember, um, 1 of our therapists told her she they they're like, You're the heartbeat of the family. You're the heart of the family, and she holds that to this day. You know? It it gave her A place to be, to be understood.

And I think just like what you've been saying is once you are accepted for who you are as a whole. It makes life just so much easier because you're not conflicted Between the internal and the external expectations. I love that so much. And I my students sometimes laugh at me. I I have grounded theology.

So I jokingly say that the queer spirit is moving or, you know, I get real preachy. I get into a sermon And you are speaking to my heart, so I am real preachy in this moment. And I I just love what you're saying because I do think that What we often view as outsiders in our society are the heart of our society. And and I think that it's very easy to focus on the problems, the depression, the anxiety, the distress, the rejection, and those are important things to keep our eye on. But there is also Credible beauty and incredible opportunity in the LGBTQ plus community.

There's gender euphoria. When you connect with your gender and just Hold who you are as a person. There's incredible community that can be built when we when we sometimes foreground our identities and connect over our shared community and and who we are. And I think that's an opportunity that when when we look at LGBTQ plus people as a problem, we see the problems. When we see the LGBTQ plus community as a gift, as a gift to our families, as a gift to our society, we begin to see how we're called to better understand ourselves, How we're called to better connect with our own humanity and have shared spaces where we just love on each other for who we are.

And and that's the invitation. And and I love that your therapist said to your kiddo, no. The invitation isn't to be an outsider. It's to see yourself as the heart, uh, and the opportunity of your family. And it you're right.

That I I I love what was said earlier too by Emmy about Seeing, just being seen and and the importance of being seen. Sometimes doing this work, I can see when you use the right pronouns or you To create an an accepting space for someone, you'll see the kiddos face just have this peace wash over it. And it's this experience of being seen and being said to have saying to them, you belong, and you're not the outsider. You're the heart of of healing. And and I just I love that so much.

Yeah. You bring up a good point, which I know Emmy and I have talked about, which is using the right pronouns. And I know for The majority of people, there is this fear that you're going to say something wrong. And I would imagine as a parent, it's gotta even be Tenfold of that. How should people address that or make sure that they are not they're living in the place that is coming from a good place?

Yeah. I love the movement of our conversation from we're we're now not seeing LGBTQ plus people as the problem. Now we're dedicated to trying, but trying as hard. Right. Because you can really mess up, especially when entering a new frontier of, like, what is the right word and what what is the right way to engage?

So 1 very basic skill that we talk about in a lot of the trainings that I do is when you make a mistake. So for example, I may go out to a waiting room and 1 of my clients is non binary and I make a mistake. I say, I'm gonna take him back to the room with me. And I realized, oh my gosh. This person used they, them uses they, them pronouns.

The appropriate way to deal with that is just to say, I'm sorry. I'm going to take them back with me, and then you you move on. So you apologize, you correct, and you move on. What that does is it saves the kiddo, the young person, from a couple of things. 1 is, if I fall apart in front of the kid in the waiting room and go, oh my gosh.

I'm so sorry. I can't believe I did that. I I feel so bad. I'll never do it again. The kiddo then is placed in a position of taking care of me, reassuring me it's okay, emotionally regulating me.

And so it creates the offended person then has to fix the offense. Yeah. You're making it on you. Now I'm making it about me. Yeah.

Absolutely. So now you have to love on me because I made a mistake, so that's not great. The other thing is it draws a lot of attention to the mistake. If anyone else is in the waiting room, now they're hyper noticing. The kiddo now is even more distressed because I've really pointed out my issue.

And so so we just apologize, correct, and move on. What that does is it trusts something. And I love, Andrea, what you were asking about when you were saying, like, when your heart is good, when you're when you're really trying to to do the right thing. When your heart is in the right place, you are creating opportunities for corrective experiences. So in the outside world, outside the family, outside the The therapy room, other people make a mistake and their attitude is deal with it.

Or they fall apart and you have to take care of them or They draw a ton of attention to it and you're humiliated in the line at Qdoba. 1 of my students had that experience. That that you you Have the opportunity to create what's called a corrective experience, and that is an experience of something that's different than the outside world. When everybody is going to make mistakes. But when people in the outside world, so to speak, make mistakes, they don't address them appropriately and correctingly correctly and in a bonding way.

When you just apologize and move on, when you stay there with the kiddo, when you show that you're not going anywhere, when you do better next time, There is a healing experience of seeing things done appropriately and and in a way that heals. And so you can be a healer even when you make mistakes. That's beautiful. From a concept of from your background as a psychologist, can you speak more to what that means for a young person to be seen And heard. Why that's so important at that age?

Yeah. That's a great question. We we've done a little bit of work. I have a student who focused on and so I I hope this kind of segue addresses the question that you're having. I'm gonna do a very nonsense scientifically and nebulously, but It researched chosen families.

So you may be aware that and listeners may be aware that when people are kicked out of their families or they don't receive port from their mom and dad. Sometimes they form chosen families or surrogate families cobbled together of queer [00:20:00] people who accept them, listen to their stories, listen to relationship troubles that they're having, and are able to be there present for them in a way that parents may not be. What we found in preliminary research is because we what I was thinking in a biased way as a queer person myself as a gay man that These chosen I've had chosen families. Like, they're they're a surrogate family. They work.

You know? They're we can replace our families of origin, I I might have thought. But what we found is that there are not, in in our data at least, replacements for our family of origin. There is something deeply affirming, and deeply meaningful about being loved by your family of origin that you just can't outsource. In a pinch, you can get support elsewhere, but you can't replace your family of origin.

There's something about the people who raise you and are instrumental from the very first days of of your development. And we know that from, for example, attachment theory. Yeah. But the way that you attach to early caregivers and the way that you feel affirmed and grounded by them impacts your developmental trajectory and the way that you even engage with others and as adults. Those meaningful moments of being held, being loved, being cared for, being accepted have echoes and dividends into a person's later journey in their life.

And when some aspect of your person is not accepted by your family, there is a feeling that you're not wholly accepted. Some of that grounding, some of that attachment, some of that warmth, some of that anxiety reduction and and depression Battling that families do for us is missing from our development. And so it is deeply important to be accepted by our families as a kiddo and to have a safe space to announce who we are and explore that as we develop. Curating these valuable conversations is really about our shared passion for promoting mental wellness. Behind the scenes, however, there are some platforms and Forms and systems we utilize that cost money that help bring these episodes to you.

If you found value in our conversations and feel inspired to support, Consider making a donation. Whether it's the price of your morning cup of coffee or more, your contribution directly supports our ability to keep connecting, Sharing and growing. Please visit our website at this way up podcast dot com to support this community. We thank you, and we So, Douglas, I can imagine as a parent, your and your child comes out as LGBTQ plus that there's going to be some shock. And how, as a parent, is the best way To I don't know.

Do you hide that shock? Do you express it? How is it the best way that you can Work with your child as they are exploring this, and then also be true to yourself, but make sure that it's healthy for everybody. I don't think there's a 1 size fits all answer for families. I think that the important thing is to highlight before maybe offering an answer for this question is to acknowledge families are messy.

Okay. For me, when I was a kid, it was the cleavers. Half of your audience probably or more aren't gonna recognize that reference. But think of the I do. Okay.

Good. Good. Good. Good. But the The archetypical the archetypical perfect family in your mind that you think your family should be like, that family does not exist.

There are mistakes. There's pain, there's repair and rejection. All of those things happen in a family. And what's important is not getting it perfect as a family, but finding ways to heal and bond and trust and move forward from whatever a family may experience throughout It's lifetime connecting and being a family. So there is no perfect.

But what I do hear a lot, and and I was having a Conversation the other day with a leader of a gender and sexual orientation alliance for a school uh, of high schoolers. 1 thing that she was talking about is that it's important for parents to take responsibility for their reactions, for their role as parents, and for their own training and education in these things so as not to make the kiddo responsible for parenting them. And so while you may while parents may be shocked, They may be hurt. They may need to process some of those things. Using their kiddo as the therapist to process those things is not helpful.

Using their kiddo as Google to ask about what every single term means and have them explain themselves thoroughly and speak for everybody that has the same identity is not helpful. Parents need to take responsibility for regulating their emotions, for finding some of the answers, for sharing their hurt and their pain with a friend Yeah. And not make the kiddo the recipient and the responsible party for everything that the parent is going through. So I think that's key. Some parents will be sad.

Some parents will grieve the future that their child will never have. Some parents will struggle deeply with entering this journey with their kiddo. All of that is okay. Life is messy, but it's about how you handle those experiences that either create bonding with your family or can fragment a family in ways that hurt everyone involved. Yeah.

I like how you make the distinction of not looking to the child as the expert of their current situation. Absolutely. The kiddo is probably figuring it out themselves. Exactly. You know, Douglas, I love that you say that families are messy.

I personally think that so much growth happens when When things aren't perfect. And I know I encourage with my kids to see where we've changed as adults because I think it it lessens the pressure on them to try to be perfect. But I also know in that same same sentence that I always strive to be perfect and there is, You know, a lot of times guilt when I'm not perfect. And I just can't imagine going from a place where there's so many different dynamics And feeling like I'm disappointing my child again and again as I'm learning. I I don't know if I have a question for that or if I'm just, like, Babbling and just saying that that's how I would feel.

Like, I would feel like I was constantly disappointing until I got it right. Is there some overarching, Okay, mom. If you're trying and you're really putting in the effort, everything's gonna be okay. Well, first, I wanna backtrack and say I love your observation because there's not just pressure from the kiddo. There's pressure from other family members.

Uh, sometimes having a trans child or a gay child is viewed as a failure as a parent. You did something wrong. You weren't present. You and so you've got the blame from other family members you may be experiencing, broader society may be dissatisfied. So you're there are a lot of other as a parent, you're kind of between all of these different expectations.

And I think having that broader lens and that broader context is incredibly important. And then I I love I I hear in what you're saying a call, maybe maybe I'm putting words in your mouth, so I am so sorry if I'm doing that. But This call to self compassion, I think and and we're, um, working on a workbook right now for parents, and 1 of the things that we're measuring to see if the workbook is Effective is parental self compassion. As you learn more about your kiddo and you focus more on connecting because I know I'm all over the place and I apologize for that, but I think it's also important to note that as a family, 1 of the focal points, Maybe I'm inviting parents to consider is not being right all the time or not being perfect all the time or not, but is about valuing family relationships and knowing that relationships within family are healing and account for a lot of that chaos that we're talking about. So when the focus is on the relationship, bonding with your child, building trust with your child, having a deeper understanding, and sometimes being transparent about your mistakes and modeling for them that it's okay to be imperfect and still a successful and healthy person that all of that can focus on relationship.

And when it does and we make mistakes, or we do something silly. There's also a need for that self compassion to say, I'm trying my best. I deeply love my kiddo. I'm doing everything I can to bond with that child. And for the difference, The slack that's left in that care, the failure that that I may exhibit, there is an ability to still love myself.

And I think sometimes kiddos, especially when they're born, they they need to be fed. They need to be monitored. They need to be there. There's so much that's poured into the child that sometimes I think parents forget to focus some love and compassion on themselves and that in this work is equally as important. Because again, We're creating a stable foundation of understanding for a child.

And in order to do that, we have to stabilize and love and care for ourselves and sometimes forgive ourselves and believe that we can do better in the future. I love that. Well and we're modeling for them About a healthy way. We're modeling that we should love ourselves and care for ourselves. Yeah.

And modeling how to be in a relationship And how to be in the messy parts. Andrea, this reminds me I love where this conversation is going. This reminds me of another guest we spoke to, Kaye Warren. Douglas, we were talking about Andrew, I know you remember her process of acknowledging from the parent point of view, Grieving and kind of [00:30:00] going back to what you said earlier, Douglas, about allowing that. That feels like a gift that you just said that because I wouldn't, as the Parent want to admit that I might be grieving because then that implies I wanted something else for my kid, which I didn't.

But her statement, which I think is kinda where you're going to, is You're allowing that for the parent. What more can you say about that? Because I thought that was really special. There's a exercise that we actually use in in the workshop and, uh, that I found very helpful in other context. And it's a parenting bill of rights.

So Parents are able to sit down and give themselves space and claim their experience as parents and in in some ways liberate themselves from all of those unspoken expectations that are swirling around. You have to be perfect. You can never fail your child. It's the end of the world if you do something wrong as a parent. And that bill of rights allows parents to write down and look at a list of of rights that they've given themselves.

I have the right to grieve and still love my child. I have the right to not understand and still do my best to be there. I have a right to have my own feelings, and still care for the feelings of my child. And those things don't have to be intention intention with 1 another. You are a human being and a person too.

And as a parent and you can be a whole person with your child. What oh, this is I'm I'm connecting. What what it also So does and I love the lens that you applied when you said and really emphasized modeling for a child. Because in parenting, it's not any given moment. It's not any given It's not any given rupture that we experience with our child necessarily, but the overall ways we are teaching our children, to deal with the future.

And right now, LGBTQ plus people are the thing. Like, nobody gets us and and Or there's all this intrigue, but there will be a day that these children grow up and go into a society where there is something they don't understand. Their child identifies with something they don't get, chooses a profession that drives them up a wall. There are All sorts of challenges their child will face in the future. And when we see the story of our relationship with our children as a story, and not episode by episode.

We understand that we're preparing them to be the adjusted humans of the future. And in order to do that, they need to see us fail. They need to see us be sad. They need to see us pick ourselves up and try better and see how you do that emotionally, how you regulate through that, how you still relate to other people and love them after yelling at them. And when we show them the Full picture of our humanity, we prepare them to be full humans in the future, and that includes a lot of messiness.

As long as we're committed to loving them, modeling humanity for them, and connecting to who they are in the fullness of their humanity as people that we're in relationship with. Oh, gosh. I just want it. We both adjusted in our seats at the same time. Like, oh, this is great.

We're ready for more. I know. I think I could just sit down for, like, hours with you. You just have a way of expressing things that just Makes so much sense. Yeah.

So eloquent. And I love the direct honesty of everything. This Right. We might need to edit this out. I fully admit this.

But Last week during Christmas season, I watched 1 of my favorite holiday movies, The Family Stone. And in that have you seen that? In that movie, It there's the most uncomfortable dinner table scene where the 1 character is trying to be is trying to empathize. I think she's trying to empathize, ends up Completely offending the gay son and partner, and it just, like, goes off the rails. You know?

And it was just an example of I think they're trying to say she thinks she's trying to be empathetic, but she's not, and then it just completely blows up. There's all of these Assumptions and all of these offenses, and it just goes wild. I could see that that would be Yeah. If we could have that family here, it'd be so fun to dissect that and and just kinda get into what the hell just happened. Right?

Do you remember that scene? Yeah. And you know what, Emmy? I just I just came to a very poignant psychological, um, conclusion here. Your favorite Christmas movie is the family stone, and mine is elf.

Yeah. So I'm a I know elf too. Oh, I'm I'm a little curious as what's going on here. That's awesome. I I love that you bring that up.

And and, you know, the it it points out a tension that I struggle with as as I have these conversations. And that is, on the 1 hand, it is so important for parents to hear, I believe, a message of self compassion, encouragement, and that it can be okay. Sometimes and there's there's attention. So folks in my lab and people that I have, uh, conversations with around some of this, Try to strike a balance because it's dangerous to say, as long as you're trying, anything you do is okay. Don't worry about it.

Right? Because I am my own best cheerleader. Right? And so I'm always gonna see my actions as I'm trying, I'm trying to understand, you know, I'm I'm loving the person in the best way I can. But this should not be a hall pass or a free opportunity to just do whatever you want and say, well, I was trying to love the person.

So Self compassion is important. Grounding, understanding relationship is important. And then there's some accountability. And so 1 of the main interventions for, uh, Gender affirming care and LGBT affirming care is to create community. And I would say that's a great thing for parents as well.

If you're in dialogue with other people and you're open outside of your family about your experiences in a support group or In an online forum or you join a Facebook group of parents who share challenges and whatever, that creates an side perspective that allows you to keep yourself accountable to appropriate behavior while trying to do that the thing's right to the best of your ability. And so I don't think this happens in isolation or in an echo chamber or what happens in the family stone can occur in your family where you're very well meaning and very destructive at the same time. Yeah. It's a fine balance. So it's it's like It's really understanding where your heart and intentions lie and come from versus hinging on something that you could use as an excuse.

Absolutely. Yeah. So well said. Um, Douglas, you keep on mentioning affirming care. I would love to hear Your, um, interpretation of that or how it's defined and how it came about.

Absolutely. So affirming care is is widely used in a lot of the medical literature and and, uh, psychology research to frame care that, uh, has, I think, a couple of essential elements. 1 of them is that it really goes beyond taking LGBTQ plus people at face value, but it certainly starts there at believing that LGBTQ plus people exist and that they're able to express their identities and should be taken at face value. Affirming care in in at least my practice with gender diverse populations goes a step beyond that and becomes really an active affirmation or a celebration of who a person is. So it's not just a resignation that they exist, but and understanding that there's something beautiful about being who we are.

And I think that's an important part of affirming care for parents is that Just accepting who our child is at face value might not be as healing for that child as loving them for who they are and celebrating who they are. And so There's an invitation in affirming care to celebrate who a person is and deeply connect with that as as much as we can. The second piece of affirming care is then to create a healing environment for LGBTQ plus people to reach their full potential and to push back against and navigate some of the pain and rejection and distress that that they may experience on it on a daily basis. And so There are a lot of models and whatnot. I think where affirming care dovetails with our conversation here is that it's an invitation to Create that space by finding ways to fundamentally value and believe our kiddos.

And so this is what some of that looks like. Affirming care so so basic care would be, for example, I might say that someone is getting sex change hormones or something. Affirming care language would say they're getting gender affirming hormone therapy. And that's a A kind of a mental shift, but it's an important 1 from acceptance to affirmation that says, I understand that you are who you are, and that these medical interventions are supporting who you are. And so they are affirming the identity that you hold as opposed to changing who you are to something else.

I do want to create the caveat that I used hormones and I'm talking about some medical procedures that are very uncommon for children under the age of 18. Surgery is very uncommon under the age of 18 and there are other ways of providing care for kiddos prior to adulthood. I'll give another example. This is an affirming mindset that I worked on recently. I've always heard people talk about and I used until a Student just blew my mind and helped me be a better person.

When someone transitions so maybe they were assigned, uh, male at birth and they They were expected to identify as a man, and they identify as a woman, and they've [00:40:00] gone through transition as a young adult. They might need to then change the gender marker on their driver's license. And so I always refer to that as you might need a lawyer for gender marker change. And, um, A student or a name change on your driver's license. And a student the other day was talking about that process and said, yeah.

That person got a name correction on their driver's license. And I was like, oh my gosh. Right? If I believe that people are becoming more who they are, then my language reflects that you're not getting a change. You're not getting a sex change.

You're not getting a gender change. You are getting things more aligned with who you are as a person. And so an affirming mindset helps us to grow into Just the basic assumptions we make about how people live their lives and who they are are an affirmation of that existence rather than an acceptance of that existence. Wow. Small nuanced changes and shifts.

I said changes. I shouldn't have said changes. Small nuanced Correction. Correction. Corrections in our language and our vocabulary elicit huge response.

What? I mean, for both of you, like, is that amazing? We're we're here. Right? Where we've got such attention to detail in language.

That's amazing. I find it, Anna and I will talk before, you know, we were talking with you and others about, yeah, wanting to get it right. Don't wanna offend our guests. We don't wanna offend you. We don't wanna say the wrong thing.

But, yeah, like, there's some nuance to the language that is important. And even though we've just said we don't have to blame ourselves and then make it about us and our mistake, It's still a thing for me. I can even tell. Like, I don't want to disappoint you. I don't wanna offend anybody.

And I also now don't wanna suck the energy back. So what the heck? I'm like, I'm just swirling in this muddle. Yeah. Yeah.

But but that's so real. And I think You kind of modeling that thought process really connects with me as well that sometimes I can go down this dark hole of, Um, I should have said something because I have privilege, but then I take up space if I say something and steal somebody else's voice, but then I abandon them. We can really get into our heads about, and then I made that mistake, but I just apologize, but I could have said more, but what if I and and so I think, uh, sometimes clients will come in and they'll say, I'm terrified that I'm a narcissist. And they're not a narcissist. Narcissists.

Right? Right? You're not even afraid of being a narcissist. You're probably not a narcissist. Lots of narcissists aren't worried about being narcissists.

Right? And so I use that example to say that if you are really deeply thinking about these things and having these sort of Spinning out moments that were I'm sharing that I've had. That also says to me something about who you are as a person, And I am so grateful for you. I'm grateful for your existence in this world and your capacity to really Reflect on your existence in this world, to reflect on your impact on others. And if that is your thought process, I have a lot of faith that you're probably not the terrible person you're afraid of being.

You're probably not the narcissist That you're afraid of being so to speak to to use that example. And and so it's probably small comfort for the distress that that we feel as we cycle through these thought processes and wanting to get everything right. But I think we can take a step back and say, hold on a minute. These thought processes that I'm going through and this difficulty I'm experiencing, I I allow that to give me 2 pieces of information. 1, I am an accomplice in some respects.

I am able to build deeper empathy with people who suffer on a daily basis because I'm feeling suffering and caught in between and trying to explain and trying to understand it. And so it gives me a deeper understanding of, in in my case, trans and non binary people and and other individuals that I work with. So I take a step back and go, wow. I'm gonna embrace that feeling of discomfort because, a, it's an opportunity to be with people who are uncomfortable and distressed, and it's an opportunity to Hold in my body what it feels like on a daily basis for for that distress to come up. And then the second thing is that it reassures me, as I make mistakes that, um, I'm probably not the terrible person I'm afraid of being.

And I think that's an invitation again for self compassion an opportunity to take inventory and then to move forward leaning into the fact that you care. Wow. You have so much wisdom and grace all at the same time. I love it. Thank you.

We can't wait to, uh, Dive into your work, but can you share some of some of that with us? Absolutely. Yeah. So I had the incredible opportunity to work with Um, a youth services agency in the semi rural area, it it's rural facing. So I I live in a small town in Oklahoma that's just a university.

And then there's an agency that serves youth in schools in the surrounding area and and connects with folks. And so there are a couple of individuals who've been working with youth for ages and are parents and grandparents of of queer youth. And so we got the opportunity to kind of reflect on what does our community need? What's coming up for the kiddos that are being provided services and and how can we really make an impact, not just locally, but more broadly beyond our community. And What we identified is that, uh, there are a lot of queer youth and parents of of queer youth that are coming to parenting classes on Uh, there are a variety of different parenting classes that they provide that are bringing up in the course of their parenting conversations, their children's identities and the fact that their kids are coming out as LGBT.

And so we started looking around, and there are some books and there are some emerging materials that are being researched by researchers across the country. I think Em Matsuno is a psychologist that's doing some really incredible work around families, but we didn't find a tangible workbook that actually concretely helps parents build some of the skills that they need to to sort of regulate this. And so We sat down and and looked at another intervention that I've, uh, tested and created that's text message based and started looking at how could we put together a workbook that would would assist parents and could be administered in a group setting. And so we've been developing that for a while. We just had focus groups of community members and stakeholders come in and look at the different components of the workbook and provide feedback.

But it helps exercise some of the skills that we've been talking about here. So I talked about the parenting bill of rights, um, how to sort of claim your rights as a parent and and stand grounded in that. It gives parents an opportunity to explore, um, their beliefs, their own gender identities, and to become grounded in who they are as people because I I fundamentally, in a lot of my work, have found that the more we understand ourselves, the more grounded we are and able to understand other people and engage with them. So sometimes parents and other individuals see the existence of a trans person as a threat to their masculinity or a Gay person is a threat to their manhood. The more grounded and the more stable the more I hold and enjoy and love my existence as a man, The more I'm able to reach out to people of other genders and affirm their genders and understand them and take them at face value because I've grounded myself in who I am.

And so the the workbook really keys into that and helps people to explore their own experiences and build empathy for their children out of some of those experiences and then kind of concludes with opportunities to build advocacy for kiddos. 1 of the main exercises, and and I hope I'm not giving too much away, is At the beginning of the workbook, parents are invited to talk about their dream for their child. Mhmm. How they dreamed their kiddo would grow up and who they would be. And then we go through the workbook and explore how beautiful, uh, LGBTQ plus people can be and and kind of work on some of these biases and build self compassion.

And then then at the end, we have parents write down their dream again and compare their dream for their child now to their dream for their child before starting the workbook to think about how some of those things change. And in the middle, as we're working through some of these things, we open up Space for parents to grieve the loss of the dream they had. Because some parents think ahead and think, oh, my son is gonna have a wife and 2 kids, and I'm gonna be a grandparent, and Parent, I'm gonna go shopping with my daughter-in-law, and it's gonna be amazing. They they create this incredible narrative, this beautiful expectation for their child. And sometimes me saying, hey, mom.

I'm gonna marry a man and not a woman suddenly crumbles all of that possibility and Parents experience not just a loss of the the relationship they have in the present, but the relationship they projected into the future. And so We give space for parents to vie with that, to process it, to think through it, and to reimagine what relationship in the future may look like with their kiddo. Wow. That's so important. So important.

And what a tool parents can use that don't have access to Therapy or Yes. Or resources to help them be able to just bring it at home or even to reinforce something even if they are seeing therapists and such because, You know, a lot of that is self discovery. Exactly. Yeah. And it seems I'm like, I'm interested in reading it.

It it Feels like there are some things that are universal Absolutely. In your workbook, for sure, for parents. And I wanted to go back something else you said a couple of times, and it's even in, It was [00:50:00] an adjective in your psychology referred to rural rural that is such a hard word for me to say. Rural psychology. What is Unique about the rural context that makes it sort of a subset or a a different Makes it different.

Yeah. I guess that's what I'm trying to say. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, um, there are resource deserts that are usually focused over rural areas.

So fewer mental health providers available, more travel demand to go to urban places to to receive services and medical care for kiddos and for, uh, for parents and families as well. So There can be some isolation from the support that would be generally available or more available in a larger, more urban area. It also and and this is somewhat anecdotal, but rural communities tend to be closer and more relational. And And the we've keyed in on the the importance of relationship, relationship with the child, relationship as a family, relationship to the community. And Some of those relationship components can become even more magnified and even more intense for a family to navigate.

So If your kiddo isn't accepted at your church or you can't tell people at your church or it gets out in the community that your kiddo is LGBT and you own a small business and then people start woodcutting their much higher stakes in some respects and much larger impacts on the resources that you have available and the friendships that you can build when it is a smaller, more insular community. And so I think 1 of the key components of the differences, so to speak, between urban and rural settings for the conversation that we're having here Is that when relationship matters so much and relationship is so central to rural communities, That disruption, the stakes can feel higher. The impacts can feel higher. And then when that intensity occurs and there are fewer resources available and you have to outsource it or travel or try to access those resources. There can be more unique and intense challenges, uh, in rural communities.

However, and I found this in my work as well, rural communities are not all gloom and doom. So there are beautiful things about it. Right? I was doing a a interview once with, um, a a person from, uh, 1 of NPR's, uh, outlets. And that person said, Why the 1 of the questions I hear regularly, and so I'm gonna pose it to you because it kind of echoes in my head is, why wouldn't A trans person who transitions in a rural community just moves somewhere else if they are experiencing disconnection and lack of community.

And And on the surface, that kind of is intuitive. Go to an urban area where you may experience more acceptance. But rural communities are beautiful. People, We choose to live where we live because nature is gorgeous, and our childhood home is where we've always lived, and The community we've built is all that we know, and sometimes rural communities don't have the financial resources community members to just pick up and leave. It costs money to move somewhere else and to leave your job.

And so there is something beautiful and protective and bonding about rural communities as well, and not all Stories are horror stories. Some people change their communities and live in them and are accepted in them, and and that's an important part of the story as well. Wow. Thanks for sharing all that. There's a lot more in there that I wasn't anticipating you saying, especially about the relationships.

Yeah. The relationships. And When you were saying why don't people just get up and move? Because sometimes home is home. And even if things are hard and the relationships Chips are hard.

You still have a connection to home. I know that myself, I still call where I grew up in Phoenix, Arizona home. I haven't lived there In a long time. But when I go there, I've got a very warm feeling both physically And mentally because it's hot in Phoenix. But, um, but you have to But I've got a, you know, I've got a warm feeling.

I've got a connection to home. And there's times that I wanna move back. And I would think that as, you know, anybody, if they want if they're more comfortable in the rural community, they Well, you know, how do you how do you work that through? Yeah. That's great that you're focusing your your studies there.

Mhmm. Absolutely. And it's about not leaving your community to find out Find something else that seems better than it's about growing your current community through that education and and patience and Communication. Did I say that? Yeah.

Absolutely. I did say that. Communications? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I think so. And you said rural. I'm glitching. You said it right.

Rural. Rural. That was amazing. It's hard to say. It's always been hard to say.

It's like we have a city here, Aurora. Same thing. I can't. Oh, yeah. Like, try saying Ninian 1 day.

Ninian is right. And all the tens and a's. That's my last name. So Totally. Yeah.

We talked about last name privilege. Right. Right. You know, it must be nice to have an easy last name. Yeah.

Well, Douglas, this has been an incredible conversation, and I know personally, and I'm gonna guess that Emmy is probably gonna nod in In agreement with this, that we would love to have you back. I mean, it's just Yeah. Absolutely. So much to talk about, and you have just a way with with your thoughts and words. And we appreciate it.

Thank you. That's such a gift. I appreciate that. And again, thank you for giving us this opportunity. I can only imagine other people listening will Echo the same thing.

But for Andrea and I, the opportunity to talk so openly with you about very sensitive concepts and issues is such A privilege and gift for us. So yeah. Thank you so much. Wow. Well, you all have been so kind and so encouraging.

This is a wonderful start to the new year. My I have a student that always says you're gassing me up, and now I get what that is. Like, I'm so gassed up. That's awesome. I'm ready for the year.

Got gas in my tank from y'all. I I appreciate your kindness. And you're just an absolute joy to talk to. And, again, Your your compassion for families and kiddos and your desire to see improvements in the ways that families relate to 1 another and create healing environments, it's It's a work that benefits our entire world and and, um, and our society. And Yeah.

Your passion for that and your willingness to incorporate this component into it is just a gift. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you for for giving me this space and for the work that you're doing, um, the difference that you're making. As a psychologist, I personally value the difference that you're making in our world.

Thank you for tuning in to today's conversation. To join our community and access more valuable resources, please Visit our website at this way up podcast dot com. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button and share this with a friend. And to stay connected, follow us on Facebook And Instagram at listen to this way up.