Blogtober: Coming Out To The World



Hello again everyone, and welcome back to week 2 of my Blogtober challenge. If you missed any of the posts that have gone up so far, you can catch up on the links down below:










This is the second post about coming out as an LGBTI person. Yesterday, we dealt with the process of self-realisation and coming to terms with your own identity; coming out to yourself. Today, as part 2 of that, I’m going to look into the next stage which is coming out to the world and give you some tips and advice about this life-changing process.

After dealing with your identity privately and discovering who you are, there will come a time when you feel comfortable enough in who you are that you will want to let other people know. However, this can be a daunting thing to do, and there are a number of challenges you may face. Below, I’m going to give you some tips on how best to go about coming out to the world.

MAKE SURE IT IS SAFE TO COME OUT

Without a doubt, this is the single most important tip I can give you about coming out to people.

If you are in an environment where you do not feel it is safe to come out, such as an unsupportive/phobic background or you live in a town/city/country where coming out could cause you harm, then please keep yourself safe.

Please come out ONLY if doing so is not going to cause you harm in any way.

DO IT WHEN YOU’RE READY

As I said yesterday, take as much time as you need to be comfortable with yourself before coming out.

It really doesn’t matter whether you come out at 8, 18, or 80, the most important thing is that you do it when YOU are ready, which leads me onto my next point…

DON’T FEEL PRESSURED

You should never feel like you HAVE to come out or that you have to come out to a specific person.

Also, I should point out that some people may have an inkling that you are LGBTI and put the pressure on you to come out. DON’T LISTEN to them. All that matters is you and you should always come out in your own time, when you are ready, and without pressure from others o yourself.

DO IT SLOWLY

You may want to come out to the whole world at once, which is OK if that’s what you want, but I recommend taking it slowly, with an inner and outer circles approach.


Tell people in your inner circle first. These are the one or two people you are closest to in the world and who you trust above all others. Usually these are a parent/family member and your best friend.

The Outer Circle contains those people in your family and friendship group who you are close to but not as close as those in the inner circle. They might be on the fringes of your friendship group or other family members who you don’t have quite as strong a bond with.

It can be difficult to come out to people in the Distant Circle because they are the people you know but have no real relationship with, including work colleagues, classmates, or distant family. Unfortunately, these are the people who are most likely to judge you but remember this.

THEY DON’T MATTER

The reason they are in your Outer Circle is that they are unimportant in the context of your life. They are on the farthest edges of the people you need to interact with and will likely be out of your life in future without so much as a backward glance. With that in mind, I want to tell you that you are under no obligation to come out to these people because they really are not relevant to you. Their opinions are not relevant therefore it should not matter to you if they ever find out about your LGBT status.

Focus on the people in your other circles and trust me when I say that those are the people who will be the most important to you.

IT GETS BETTER

Yeah, I went there, I broke out the old cliché.

After coming out, you will feel be much more able to be open about who you are. Your soul will be set free and you are going to be liberated.

They always tell you it gets better and trust me, this is so true. It may not seem like it when you are struggling to find yourself and worrying about how/when to come out but I promise you there will come a time when you will look back and realise that it definitely got better for you.



There we go. If you’d like to offer any more coming out tips or your own coming out experiences, you can share them in the comments section or by Tweeting them to me (@TrentBlogs).

Until my next post tomorrow, keep positive, keep smiling, and above all, keep believing!

Comments

Post a Comment