Queer Trauma During the Holidays: How to Cope When Family Feels Like a Battle Ground

For many queer and LGBTQIA2S+ people, the holidays with family aren’t just stressful—they’re triggering and potentially dangerous.

While the season is often framed as joyful and family-centered, it can bring up deep emotional pain tied to queer trauma, family rejection, and feeling unsafe being your full, liberated self. If you feel anxious, on edge, or emotionally exhausted around the holidays, you’re not alone—and you’re not overreacting.

Holidays often mean returning to family systems where your identity is minimized, ignored, or “debated,” partners are erased or treated as less legitimate, or you’re expected to stay quiet to “keep the peace.”

For queer people with a history of family rejection, religious trauma, or conditional acceptance, these environments can activate old survival responses—people-pleasing, dissociation, or emotional shutdown. These responses have kept you safe and protected you through moments where you felt usafe.

Even subtle moments—misgendering, jokes, silence—can signal to your nervous system that you’re not fully safe.

This is what queer trauma during the holidays often looks like: invisible, cumulative, and deeply embodied.

Five Coping Strategies for Queer People Spending Holidays With Unsupportive Family

These strategies aren’t about changing your family. They’re about protecting your mental health and emotional boundaries. If you’ve worked with me, you’ve probably heard me use the phrase “let’s build a mental health first aid kit.” Here are strategies for building out your mental health first aid kit while navigating family during the holidays.

1. Set Expectations Before You Arrive

Decide ahead of time what topics you won’t engage in, what comments you’ll ignore, and what crosses a clear boundary. You are not in control of other people’s behavior, but you do have control over the energy you’re willing to give to others.

Having a plan reduces anxiety and helps you feel more grounded when emotions run high.

2. Keep Boundaries Clear and Simple

You don’t need to explain or justify your identity. No amount of denial of your truth or your identity by others is going to change who you truly are: a radiant being. Practice saying some boundaries out loud leading up to the holidays.

Helpful boundary phrases can include:

• “I’m not discussing that.”

• “That comment isn’t okay with me.”

• “Let’s talk about something else.”

Boundaries are about self-respect, not persuasion. Their function is to keep us safe and give us permission to care for ourselves in the ways we need.

3. Create an Exit Strategy

Knowing you can leave helps your nervous system feel safer. It is OK to leave an environment that is unhealthy for you.

• Drive yourself if possible

• Schedule a supportive text or call

• Give yourself permission to leave early or step away

You’re allowed to prioritize your emotional safety and leave at any time if you feel your peace is threatened.

4. Use Grounding Techniques in the Moment

Small grounding practices can help regulate holiday stress. Grounding practices can be utilized anywhere, at any time, and without specialized tools or spaces. Grounding practices can help regulate our breathing and our nervous system’s response to stressors in ways that are inconspicuous and transportable.

• Slow breathing in the bathroom or outside

• Pressing your feet into the floor and naming what you see

• Wearing something affirming or comforting

You don’t need to “power through” discomfort to prove anything.

5. Redefine What the Holidays Mean to You

Family doesn’t have to be the center of your holiday experience. Family, to me, is the community we wrap ourselves in to help us through life. They’re the individuals we turn to in times of crisis and the names that come to mind when we want to celebrate a win.

• Spend time with chosen family

• Create new traditions

• Allow the holidays to look different this year

You’re allowed to build joy outside of systems that hurt you.

You’re Not Broken for Struggling This Time of Year

If the holidays bring up grief, anger, or exhaustion, it doesn’t mean you’re failing at healing. It means you’re navigating environments that may not fully honor who you are.

Trauma doesn’t disappear just because it’s “the most wonderful time of the year.” And sometimes surviving the season is the success.

You deserve spaces where your identity isn’t questioned, explained away, or tolerated—but genuinely respected.