Unseen Wounds: Queer Shame, Attachment Trauma, and the Search for Soothing

22 Apr

Shame is one of the most painful (and invisible) emotional wounds. Among LGBTQ+ individuals, it often arrives early and stays silent for years. This article explores how shame and disrupted attachment shape our emotional lives, our relationships, and even our ways of coping, sometimes through substances or sex. It reflects the kind of themes I often work with in therapy: not just pain, but the possibility of healing through understanding, compassion, and connection.

~7 min read • How shame and attachment trauma shape queer lives (and how healing begins).

When the Shame Comes Early

For many queer people, shame isn’t just an occasional feeling. It can feel like a default setting, an invisible lens through which we view ourselves and the world. It doesn’t always come from overt violence. Sometimes it’s a silence too loud to bear. A parent who never says “I love you.” Teachers who look away. A society that teaches you, in a hundred subtle ways, that to be different is to be wrong.

Shame isn’t always loud. It often whispers, and those whispers can echo for decades.

The Bonds That Don’t Hold

Our earliest experiences shape how we relate to ourselves, to others, to the world. If those early bonds (what psychologists call “attachments”) were unpredictable, neglectful, or rejecting, we often internalise a sense that love is conditional. That care must be earned. That we must perform, hide, or contort ourselves to belong.

These early relational wounds don’t just fade with time. They can show up later in adult relationships, in intimacy fears, emotional disconnection, or difficulty trusting others. For many LGBTQ+ folks, especially those whose identities weren’t affirmed early on, this can lead to a lifelong tension between wanting connection and fearing it.

When Coping Becomes Compulsion

For some, the pain of disconnection finds relief in other forms: sex, substances, control, performance, perfection. These coping strategies can be creative, even life-saving. But they can also become compulsions, ways of managing emotional states we never learned to name, hold, or soothe.

In my clinical work, I often meet people who carry shame not just for who they are, but for how they’ve survived. They may use meth, engage in chemsex, binge, dissociate, avoid, or caretake in relationships. The behaviour is only part of the picture. Underneath, there’s often a simple truth: this is the only way I knew how to cope.

That deserves compassion… not judgment.

The Loop of Shame and Avoidance

One of shame’s cruelest tricks is that it drives us to isolate (precisely when we most need connection). The more we feel unworthy, the more we avoid intimacy. The more we avoid, the lonelier we become. And the lonelier we feel, the more we turn to whatever helps us not feel at all.

This isn’t a lack of willpower. It’s not a character flaw. It’s a survival strategy shaped by experience. And it’s something we can gently unlearn... when we feel safe enough.

What Healing Can Look Like

Healing from shame and attachment trauma doesn’t mean “fixing” yourself. It means learning how your story shaped you and reclaiming the parts that were buried by silence, fear, or rejection.

In therapy, this might look like:

Understanding how early relationships shaped your emotional patterns.
Learning to recognise and soothe your triggers, rather than react to them.
Developing more secure and compassionate ways of relating (to yourself and others).
Finding language for feelings that were once unspeakable.
Letting go of the idea that you have to “earn” care, love, or safety.

Therapy isn’t about becoming someone else. It’s about coming home to who you already are underneath the scripts, the shame, and the survival.

If This Resonates

If any of this feels familiar, if you’ve ever felt like you’re “too much,” “not enough,” or trapped in patterns you can’t make sense of, you’re not alone. And you’re not broken.

Working through shame and attachment trauma is possible. It’s not always easy, but it can be deeply freeing.