“I Don’t Want to Say the Wrong Thing”: The Comfortable Silence Around LGBTQ+ Topics

“I don’t talk about LGBTQ+ issues because I’m afraid I’ll say the wrong thing.”

It’s a sentence I hear often from therapists, colleagues, friends, organisations, and well-meaning people who genuinely believe their silence is safer than their voice. On the surface, it sounds considerate. Underneath, it often functions as an excuse.

Because the truth is this: fear of getting it wrong has become one of the most socially acceptable reasons for not engaging with LGBTQ+ people, lives, and realities at all.

Silence Is Not Neutral

Avoiding LGBTQ+ topics doesn’t happen in a vacuum. When people opt out of conversations, training, curiosity, or visibility, the message received by LGBTQ+ people is not “I’m being careful.” It’s often “This is too uncomfortable,” “You are too complicated,” or “Your existence is optional.”

Silence can feel polite to the person choosing it, but to LGBTQ+ people, especially those who are already marginalised, it can feel like erasure.

Other Common Excuses (and Why They Don’t Hold Up)

Let’s name a few of the familiar reasons people give for disengaging:

• “I treat everyone the same.”
  This sounds fair, but it ignores the reality that LGBTQ+ people are not treated the same by society. Equality of intention does not equal equality of experience.

• “I don’t want to offend anyone.”
  Offence is not caused by good-faith mistakes followed by listening and repair. It’s caused by dismissal, defensiveness, or refusal to learn.

• “It’s political/controversial.”
  For LGBTQ+ people, identity is not a debate topic. It’s their life. Labelling LGBTQ+ existence as “controversial” is a way of distancing yourself from responsibility.

• “I don’t have any LGBTQ+ clients/friends/colleagues.”
  You almost certainly do. They may simply not feel safe enough to tell you.

• “I’m not an expert.”
  You don’t need to be an expert to be respectful, curious, and willing to learn.

For Therapists: Avoidance Is Not Ethical Neutrality

If you are a therapist and you avoid LGBTQ+ topics because you’re worried about saying the wrong thing, it’s important to pause and reflect honestly.

Your discomfort does not outweigh a client’s need for safety and affirmation.

LGBTQ+ clients often scan for subtle cues: language choices, assumptions, silence, hesitations. When LGBTQ+ identities are avoided, minimised, or treated as awkward, clients learn very quickly what is welcome and what is not.

Being LGBTQ+ affirming is not about knowing every label or never making a mistake. It’s about:

• Acknowledging power and difference.

• Being open to correction.

• Doing your own learning rather than placing that burden on clients.

• Understanding that “not talking about it” is itself a clinical intervention, and often not a helpful one.

Discomfort Is Part of Growth

Most people are not afraid of saying the wrong thing. They are afraid of feeling embarrassed, corrected, or exposed as someone who doesn’t yet know enough.

That discomfort is not harm. It is growth.

LGBTQ+ people live with discomfort every day - navigating assumptions, microaggressions, safety calculations, and the emotional labour of deciding when to explain themselves and when to stay silent. Expecting them to continue carrying that load so others can remain comfortable is not allyship.

What Actually Helps

If you are not LGBTQ+ yourself and you want to do better, start here:

• Be willing to speak, imperfectly, rather than staying silent.

• Listen when you are corrected without becoming defensive.

• Apologise briefly when you get something wrong, then adjust.

• Educate yourself rather than relying on LGBTQ+ people to teach you.

• Understand that allyship is a practice, not a personality trait.

Saying Something Will Never Be Perfect, But Saying Nothing Is a Choice

You will make mistakes. Everyone does. LGBTQ+ people are not asking for perfection. We are asking for presence, effort, and humanity.

The question is not “What if I say the wrong thing?”

It’s “What does my silence cost the people around me?”

If you are serious about inclusion, care, and integrity, in therapy rooms, workplaces, families, and communities, then it’s time to stop hiding behind fear and start engaging.

Not perfectly.

Just honestly.

How to be Happy

 Happiness is a journey rather than a destination. It’s not a place we arrive at and then feel happy forever. It fluctuates. Sometimes we will feel happy and sometimes we won’t. It’s a fact of life. However, there are things that you can do to boost your happiness and experience it more often.

 

Living a healthy lifestyle helps to build and maintain a healthy mind. A healthy mind is a happy mind. So, look at your diet and exercise to see where you can make improvements to boost your wellbeing.

 

Creating daily habits can raise your vibration higher and higher, introducing more happiness to your life. So, when you wake up each morning you could start the day by standing in front of a mirror and saying something you like about yourself. Or you can switch that up by repeating a positive affirmation such as “each day I feel happier”.

 

Choosing to live your life in a positive way is something to embrace. Even if you don’t feel very positive, do your best to make an effort to give it a go. Compliment people, smile, say hello to strangers, look at positive news stories and do everything you can to give your happiness a boost.

 

Talking to people can help you offload but also soak up other people’s positivity. It could be family, friends, colleagues or someone else. But finding a trusted person to talk to can really be a boost.

 

Sticking with the theme of talking, seeing a therapist is something you may also want to try. A counsellor or hypnotherapist can help you work through your problems, address challenges you are experiencing, and ultimately feel happier.

 

So, yes, it is possible to feel happier more often. It takes time and effort, but you will get there.

Helping Therapists Stay Safe

 This is a content/trigger warning for this article: Stalking, violence, homophobia.

 

2020 was a challenging and life changing year. The UK went into lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Millions of people had to stop going to work, stop seeing family and friends, and stay at home. Many more had to switch to online working. It was a time of change and a time of challenge for a lot of people.

 

Looking back on that period, the lockdowns and general impact of the pandemic was the least of my worries and I adapted to those conditions very quickly. Under the mental health exemption, I was able to continue working face to face with my clients, although there were strict safety measures in place, and I limited that to people who needed in-person appointments. It was going well until June of that year.

 

A new client booked a consultation and required it to be in person. I scheduled their appointment and looked forward to welcoming them and exploring how we could work together. The consultation got off to a relatively normal start. However, it soon became more sinister.

 

The client stated that they had been following me for some time. I thought they meant seeing my advertising and eventually deciding to have therapy. I was wrong in that assumption, as the client started to quote my website word for word, told me what my home address is, and disclosed following me around the streets of the local area.

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This was obviously concerning to me, and I wondered where the session was heading. The client then started to say they loved me and wanted to be intimate with me. However, in the next breath they stated that gay people need to be killed and that as I am a gay person I need to be killed.

 

Growing increasingly worried at this development, I started to use de-escalation techniques. Unfortunately, that did not work. The client exposed their genitals to me and then made a lunge at me. Their plan was to assault and kill me.

 

Although the situation made me feel vulnerable, I feel generally able to defend myself if the need arises. While I am anti-violence, I will do what I need to in order to protect myself. I managed to fend the client off me and started shouting in case anyone else was in the building and could help me. I told the client to leave and pointed out the CCTV cameras in the waiting room and at the entrance to the clinic.

 

The client left and I tried to digest what happened. I made an emergency appointment with my supervisor and saw them a couple of hours later. I also reported the incident to the Police and to the owner of the clinic where I practice.

 

As well as being a counsellor, I’m also a hypnotherapist. The client was interviewed by the Police and their defence was that I hypnotised them into doing everything they had done. If you have awareness of how hypnotherapy works, you will know that’s not possible, never mind it being highly unlikely that a hypnotherapist would choose to hypnotise a client into doing something that was very traumatic.

 

After a lengthy process, the legal proceedings ended and there was a satisfactory outcome from my perspective. The client eventually admitted to everything, and the relevant punishment was delivered.

 

However, I was left to live with what happened to me. It took a while until I felt safe again, and I’m not ashamed to admit I had counselling myself. But from something horrific came a learning opportunity. It prompted me to review my safety when working alone with clients. I had not given it adequate consideration previously and now felt forced to give my safety more time and thought, which was absolutely the right thing to do.

 

With that in mind, I considered some key safety points for myself that I feel other therapists may benefit from considering too. So, here are my top tips.

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1. Think about what environment is going to be the best and safest option for you – working in a clinic, working from home, working online, or doing home visits.

2. If you decide to work from home, don’t advertise publicly that your practice is at your home.

3. If you are working in a clinic, check that other people will be in the building at the same time as you in case you need to call for help.

4. If working in a clinic, consider whether CCTV in communal spaces is a possibility.

5. If working in a clinic, consider whether it may be useful to have a panic alarm in your room.

6. Whatever setting you are working in, sit closest to the door in case you need to escape. Of course, you may work with vulnerable clients who for their own reasons need to sit closest to the door. Do consider your safety too though.

7. Tell someone what times you are seeing clients and when you expect to be home. If working from home or doing home visits, do the same but perhaps say you will check in with that person when you have finished.

8. If someone is seeing you in your home or you are doing home visits, ask your clients to show photo ID so you know they are who they say they are.

9. Make sure you have your client’s contact details. Get their home address, email address and a phone number.

10. Keep your room as professional as possible. Don’t have personal items in it. Keep it client focused.

11. If nobody else is in the building, whether a clinic or your home, give the impression that there is someone else around. This could act as a deterrent.

12. Don’t take risks and trust your gut instinct.

13. Have an escape route. If something happens, what is your way out?

14. Be clear about boundaries in your marketing, when you book your client in, and during the consultation.

15. Keep your records/notes clear, concise and factual. Document every session.

16. Carry out a risk assessment covering every aspect of your work.

17. Be mindful that the earlier you pick up on a problem, the sooner you can deal with it.

18. Remain calm.

19. Remove yourself from the situation if you feel uncomfortable at any point.

20. Be aware of your communication and body language. Think about what you say, how you say it, and how your body language could be perceived.

 

Something I don’t want is for therapists reading this to become overly concerned that something like what happened to me is going to happen to you. What I experienced is pretty extreme and I’m sure not common. I had been working as a therapist for over 10 years when that happened and there had not been any type of incident previously. I just believe in supporting therapists to consider their safety and hope that nobody goes through something similar.

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If you are affected by this blog, please contact me if you need to talk. If you have been affected by stalking, there is also information and support available from the Suzy Lamplugh Trust.

A Day in the Life of a Therapist

 As a hypnotherapist specialising in anxiety, confidence, quitting smoking and weight loss, I absolutely love what I do. Every day I help people get to where they want to be in life, and that is truly an honour and a privilege.

 

With this in mind, I wanted to share one of my typical days with you, so you can get a feel for the kind of people I work with and how I help them.

 

9:30am

I arrive at my Warwick clinic for my first client of the day. It's been a productive morning so far. I was up at 6:00am to walk the dogs, then fed my chickens and replied to some emails. Today's first client is on the Virtual Gastric Band programme. She is in her mid-40s and struggled with her weight for many years. Today is her third session and she has lost an amazing 9lbs so far. That's a fantastic result and we celebrate it over a cuppa before the hypnosis starts. Something that this particular lady struggles with is picking at food in the evening. So we have a highly motivational chat about that and the hypnosis focuses on weight falling off even more once that bad habit stops. I believe in this client 100% and tell her so.

 

11:15am

My next client is here for a stop smoking session. They've been smoking for over 30 years, but we discuss how that disgusting habit is coming to an end today. Over the next 90 minutes we discuss their smoking habits, trigger points, and life as a non-smoker. It's highly motivational and involves a heavy reality check about the impact smoking has on one's health. It resonates strongly with this client as their mother died from smoking related illness. The hypnosis focuses on everything covered earlier in the session so that it can be 100% tailored to this client's needs. At the end of the session, the client says that it feels like a switch has been flicked and the urge to smoke is completely gone. I tell the client that's because they are now a non-smoker and agree to catch up with them in one week to see how they're getting on.

 

12:50pm

It's lunch time, so I go to M&S and pick up a salad. While there I bump into one of my ex-clients. This frequently happens as Warwick is a small town. She tells me that since her final weight loss session with me seven months ago, she's lost a further three stone. I prasie her and we arrange to meet up for coffee to talk in more detail about how well she's done. I love my job!

 

2:00pm

I see two new clients for a consultation. This is a free 30 minute appointment that I like to offer. It's important to me that potential clients have a chance to make sure I'm the right hypnotherapist for them, and vice versa. I agree to work with both clients. One wants to lose weight and the other would like to ovecome a fear of driving. I'm confident of helping them both.

 

3:15pm

Now it's time to drive to my Evesham clinic for my final two clients of the day. One is a complimentary consultation, and I agree to help them quit smoking.

 

5:00pm

My final client of the day is on the Virtual Gastric Band programme. She's a lady in her 50s who wants to be able to wear nice clothes again. Today is her fifth session and so far she has lost a staggering 1st 7lbs. This is clearly a superstar client and we discuss how she is going to reward her weight loss. I suggest that nice new outfit may be on the cards, and we talk about that for a little while. The hypnosis focuses on long term weight loss, remaining slim once that goal has been achieved, and not letting anything send her back to old fat habits.

 

6:00pm

It's home time, but first I send a text message to all of my Virtual Gastric Band clients with a call to action. I want them to do one thing this evening that will aid their weight loss. Text messages start coming back, saying things such as "no pudding for me tonight", "I'm off for a run", and "you always check up on me at exactly the right time".

 

Did I mention that I love my job!