Queerness and masculinity

Most of us are given a script of who we’re supposed to be before we’re old enough to question it. We learn early what’s acceptable to feel, to want, to show. Those rules go deep, and they don’t disappear just because you’ve intellectually rejected them. A lot of the people I work with find themselves caught between who they actually are and a role that was handed to them long before they had any say in it.

That pressure takes different shapes for different people. Many carry an anxiety about taking up the wrong kind of space; holding back anger, desire, need, silencing parts of themselves in the hope of causing no offence. Over time, that kind of self-erasure has a cost.

For queer people, the experience of not fitting the script often starts earlier and cuts deeper. Growing up with a sense that who you are is somehow wrong; performing a version of yourself that feels nothing like you; that leaves a mark. And for many queer people today, it didn’t simply end in adulthood. The current political climate means that marginalisation isn’t just a memory. It’s ongoing.

I’m queer, and a man. I bring both of those things to this work.

Therapy is a space to put down whatever version of yourself you’ve been performing, and to work out what’s actually underneath it.