Shame, Survival, and the Velvet Rage
Queer folks don’t suffer more because they’re queer. They suffer more because they’re queer in a world that still hates them.
We’ve always known this, at least in our bones. The higher rates of depression, suicide, addiction, loneliness—it’s not some mysterious genetic fluke. It’s not that being queer makes you sick. It’s that repeated exposure to violence, silence, and shame does.
Psychologist Ilan Meyer’s minority stress theory puts a name to this: The trauma of living in a culture that treats your existence like a problem. School, church, family, workplace—everywhere you go, the message is clear: Be less, be grateful, be straight… or be gone.
And it’s not over: Anti-LGBTQ hate crimes are rising. Fewer than 1 in 20 queer people grow up in affirming faith communities. We internalize all of it—until the voice of the outside world becomes the voice in our own heads.
So what happens?
Alan Downs, in his book The Velvet Rage, describes how many queer people cope: They run. Into sex, substances, perfectionism, achievement, codependence, Instagram thirst traps, spiritual bypassing—you name it. It works, for a while. But eventually, shame catches up.
Here’s the good news: We can unlearn it.
There’s no shortcut, no 30-day plan, no “love yourself” slogan that makes it all go away. But in therapy—and in affirming spiritual practice—we can actually face the shame. We can stop contorting ourselves to be palatable. We can grieve what was stolen. And we can build a life that feels whole, defiant, and free.
In contemplative psychotherapy, we don’t treat shame like an enemy. We meet it with compassion. We get curious about it. We sit with it. We stop flinching, and in that process, something incredible happens: Shame alchemizes into pride—not the rainbow capitalism kind, but the deep, cellular kind that says: I am still here.
If you’re ready to face the shame and build something real in its place, I’m here. I work with queer folks across Colorado who want more than symptom relief—they want liberation.