Learning to Show My Pride When Anxiety Says Hide
The bravest act I perform daily isn't loving who I love—it's choosing visibility when every alarm in my body screams to disappear.
The first time I wore a pride pin in public, my fingers trembled so badly I stabbed myself twice trying to fasten it. It was tiny—barely the size of a dime—six simple rainbow stripes against the black canvas of my work bag.
For most people, it would've been nothing. For me, it might as well have been a neon sign flashing above my head.
My mouth went cotton-dry in the elevator of my office building. Sweat pooled at the small of my back as I counted the floors. Ding. Seven more to go. Six. Five. Each person who entered seemed to look directly at the pin, then at me, their eyes lingering a beat too long.
"They'll all know now," I thought, suddenly unable to remember how I normally stood, where I normally put my hands.
The irony wasn't lost on me. As if they didn't already know. As if my voice, my gestures, the way I dressed, the thousand tiny tells I'd spent years trying to police hadn't already outed me long before that pin ever could.
But there's something fundamentally different about choosing visibility versus having it thrust upon you by other people's assumptions. The pin was my declaration. And that choice—that tiny, terrifying choice—cracked something open in me.
I've found both in my own journey and sitting across from clients in therapy that these small moments of chosen visibility are where both our deepest fears and most profound power live.
The double-bind of queer visibility
A few months ago, a client—I'll call him Marco—slouched in his chair, voice barely above a whisper, as he described backing out of his company's Pride support group just twenty minutes before it started. In online therapy, I typically only see clients from the mid-chest up, but therapists develop a keen sense for noticing micro-movements that signal inner turmoil. Marco's leg was bouncing rapidly—a physical manifestation of the double-bind many queer people experience: the simultaneous desire to be authentic and the fear of the consequences that authenticity might bring.
"I made it all the way to the bathroom outside the conference room," he said, picking at a loose thread on his jersey’s sleeve until it unraveled. "Threw up twice. Splashed water on my face. Told myself I could do this."
"What happened then?" I asked, though I already knew.
"I ran." His voice cracked. "Texted my boss some lie about food poisoning and took the stairs down eight floors so I wouldn't have to face anyone." He looked up, eyes red-rimmed. "I've spent my whole life learning how not to be seen as too gay, you know? Monitoring my hands when I talk, watching my voice, my walk. And suddenly they want me to stand in front of a group and be the professional gay spokesperson?"
I felt that knife-twist of recognition in my gut—that old, familiar tightness that still visits me sometimes before I walk into certain rooms or spaces. The internal voice that still occasionally whispers: Tone it down. Be less. Make them comfortable. Hide.
Here's the thing they don't tell you in those shiny corporate DEI campaigns: visibility is both our medicine and sometimes our poison. The same pride that heals our deepest wounds can also expose us to danger, rejection, or simply the bone-deep exhaustion of being the perpetual "other" in the room.
What anxiety doesn't want us to know
My own therapist once told me something I now share with my clients: "Anxiety is a liar with a very convincing PowerPoint presentation."
When my anxiety tells me to hide my queerness—to remove the pin, lower my voice, police my gestures—it presents a compelling case:
If you're too visible, you'll be rejected. If you stand out, you'll be unsafe. If they see all of you, they won't want any of you.
It took me years to realize these weren't facts—they were fears dressed up as protection. And they were stealing my power one small surrender at a time.
The truth is messier and more beautiful: yes, being visibly queer can sometimes invite judgment. But hiding guarantees a different kind of wound—the slow ache of self-erasure.
The night I stopped negotiating with shame
Three years ago, I was invited to speak at an online community mental health webinar. The topic was LGBTQ+ resilience—something I supposedly knew about professionally and personally. Funny how we can guide others through territories where we still wander lost ourselves.
The night before, I sat cross-legged on my bedroom floor at 1 AM, surrounded by clothing options like evidence at a crime scene. My husband had gone to bed hours earlier, leaving me to my ritual: the same internal negotiation I'd been having since I was fifteen.
How gay is too gay for this space? Would the blue shirt with the subtle pattern read as "too much"? The fitted pants or the looser ones? The more masculine watch or the bracelet I actually liked but that made my wrist look "soft"? (And yes, no one would actually see my pants—it was on Zoom, not a RuPaul runway critique.)
I caught my reflection in the closet mirror—irony noted—and something about the image stopped me cold: a forty-two-year-old licensed therapist, who had guided countless queer people toward their own authenticity, sitting on the floor rehearsing his performance of acceptable gayness. Still calculating the exact amount of myself I could safely reveal without making others uncomfortable.
Something broke in me that night. Not loudly or dramatically, but with the quiet finality of a fever breaking. I realized I'd been treating my queerness like a volume knob that needed constant adjustment based on my audience—louder in "safe" spaces, quieter in professional ones, nearly muted in certain family situations. Always performing this exhausting calibration that no straight person ever had to consider.
The next morning, I wore the blue shirt, the fitted pants, and the bracelet I liked. I joined the Zoom conference call without rehearsing a deeper voice. I mentioned "my husband" without the brief, darting eye-check I usually did to gauge reactions. And yes, my heart still raced. My palms still sweated through my notes. But alongside the anxiety was something I hadn't felt “in public” before—a sense of being fully present in my own skin, of coming home to myself in real time, witnesses and all.
What I tell my clients (and myself) on hard days
When Marco left my office, I gave him the same reminder I still give myself on mornings when anxiety tries to convince me to tone it down:
Our visibility isn't just for us—it's for each other. Every time we choose to be seen, we're creating space for someone else still hiding in the shadows.
The pin on my bag that felt so terrifying years ago? Two weeks after I started wearing it, a young intern stopped me in the break room. "I noticed your pin," she said quietly. "I've been afraid to come out at work, but seeing you be open made me feel like maybe I could be too."
That's the thing about pride in the face of anxiety—it's not just defiance. It's a way of reaching backwards through time to heal our younger selves, and reaching forward to make the path a little less steep for those coming after us.
The practice of queer courage
I wish I could tell you there came a point where the anxiety disappeared—where being visibly queer stopped triggering those old fears. But that wouldn't be honest.
What changes isn't the presence of fear, but your relationship to it. The voice that says "hide" gets quieter, not because it disappears, but because you've heard it so many times that it loses its power to convince you.
The most radical thing I've learned as both a queer person and a therapist is that courage isn't the absence of fear—it's the decision that something else matters more.
Some mornings, I still feel that flutter of anxiety when I put on a tailored shirt or a bracelet or speak openly about my life. But now I recognize it as an old friend who's trying to protect me from dangers that, while sometimes real, are no longer worth the cost of hiding.
Pride isn't a destination—it's a daily practice. This journey toward authentic visibility often benefits from professional support—a therapist who understands both the unique challenges queer people face and the liberating power of incremental courage. A commitment to ourselves that we won't negotiate our existence down to what makes others comfortable.
It's showing up, pin on bag, voice unaltered, heart racing—and choosing to be seen anyway.
Every tiny pin we choose to wear—literal or metaphorical—becomes both our declaration and our invitation to others: Here I am. You can be here too.
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