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.