Dealing with Minority Stress
As Michael was learning new emotion regulation skills, their application
often focused on managing his distress and anger at micro-aggressions
and discrimination. The therapist became aware of these experiences
through the Feelings Monitoring Forms that Michael completed between
sessions to practice identifying his emotional and cognitive responses
to stressors, as well as which coping strategies he employed.
First, he spent some time disentangling the anger he felt arising from
his childhood family rejection from the ongoing social rejection he
experienced as a gay man. The anger was justified on both counts but
might be dealt with in different ways. Michael’s therapist modeled
compassion for what felt like the inevitable burden and ongoing nature
of minority stressors, which, over time, helped Michael experience more
self-compassion. With his therapist’s guidance and encouragement,
Michael practiced using new emotion regulation skills when confronted
with microaggressions. A key insight Michael reported was that, unlike
his childhood, he now had more choices about how to respond to these
situations and more influence in shaping their outcomes. He used emotion
surfing to reduce the intensity of his anger so he could respond to the
other person more skillfully or choose to invest his energy elsewhere.
He understood there were times when he could just walk away from a
situation when he could not respond effectively. He began relying on a
growing sense of community from the clinic and became more aware and
appreciative of a sense of acceptance and safety, which he had not
experienced in a very long time.