Coming Out:

A narrative approach to weaving a new story

Coming out is a process in which a person “rewrites” the story they have about themselves. Before the process starts they have a self-story that is more or less heterosexual, a story that they have absorbed from the world around them. It is a story which has them living as a heterosexual, known to their family and friends and workmates as heterosexual, and which predicts a heterosexual future. But for some people this heterosexual story doesn’t fit—perhaps they never quite felt that it fitted, or perhaps rather suddenly it has started to feel very uncomfortable. Often the contradiction between their sexual and emotional desires and the heterosexual story has led to great anguish and confusion, perhaps even for a prolonged period. Coming out is a process of writing compulsory heterosexuality out of the story, and other forms of sexual and emotional expression into it. 

I am a gay man who has been involved in a volunteer-staffed “post-Stonewall” gay switchboard for a very long time, and a counsellor heavily influenced by the narrative approach of such writers as Michael White and David Epston. This paper was written to show how the practices of the Wellington Gay Switchboard could be understood and enriched by a more consciously narrative approach. I hope it is useful for self-identified gay counsellors and volunteers in gay agencies such as telephone counselling and support services elsewhere. It might also be helpful to men who are themselves in the process of coming out, and, although some of it will not fit, for lesbian and non-gay professionals.

Of course anyone may give useful support to someone coming out, queer or not, professional or not. However people who have traveled similar paths themselves have something special to give to someone coming out, and gay culture contains enormous resources that it can be helpful to be familiar with. 

The role of anyone consulted by someone in a process of coming out is pretty modest. People do their own work, usually turning to others primarily as a preliminary audience, for reassurance, or perhaps when they get stuck. But the more we understand the more we can help. In this paper, I’ll describe some of the questions we can ask to try to assist people remake their stories.

It must be clear that there is no pre-ordained outcome. There are many ways to make non-heterosexual feelings a satisfactory part of your life—and many different story lines (from privacy to public statement) and many different words (gay, queer, bisexual, and so on). Some people (particularly younger people) experiment more or less briefly with a non-heterosexual story line but find it does not fit them. And there are groups of people for whom these issues are importantly connected with issues of transvestism and transgenderism. We must remain open to all the possibilities.

And it must not be imagined that there is a series of stages or steps in the process of coming out or in our counselling work. Coming out is more like a process of weaving back and forth between the old story and the new story, between the past, the present and the future, between feelings and ideas.

While it is in the intense phase of coming out that the help and support of others is most often helpful, coming out is a process that never comes to an end—it continues throughout life. We go on developing, making ourselves, refining our stories. Although this paper focuses on people who are in their intense primary “coming out” phase, I believe its underlying ideas can be applied far more widely.

1. Queer listening

Active, empathetic listening is the first prerequisite. It is the job of a helper to be a good audience for both the old problem-saturated story, and for the early editions of an exciting new story. So we reflect back a caller’s feelings to them, staying where they are at in the conversation, and we play a role of clarifying and summarising where the caller is coming from. 

But our listening does something more than reflection. We have been selected as the listener in part because of our gayness. 

Typically someone early in the process of coming out has a life predominantly defined by heterosexuality, but has some fantasy or activity that contradicts that definition. 

There are few places within the mainstream culture where respectful audiences can be found for non-heterosexual stories, so if someone has deliberately sought a gay counsellor or a gay agency then that must shape our listening. We have special job to listen for non-heterosexual experiences, thoughts and feelings, and to points at which the people who come to see us seem to move away from the heterosexual story, which is so dominant. We must provide an opportunity for exploration of the meaning of these experiences, thoughts and feelings.

Narrative practitioners call this “deconstructive listening to the problem-saturated story”, but it might equally be called queer listening. Queer listening is characterised by a special kind of curiosity. We are especially interested in those elements of the story that do not fit within a compulsory heterosexuality. We listen to the heartache, we empathise with the sense of confusion our callers may be experiencing, we reflect back the grief they feel, but we also maintain a curiosity which seeks to make possible an expanded exploration of the gay element of the story.

2. Externalising homophobia and heterosexual dominance

The basic therapeutic “tool” of the gay liberation movement in the 1970s was the concept of “homophobia”—the fear of homosexuality, which is pervasive in society. This concept helps people with homosexual feelings recognise that the problem is not with themselves, but is external to them. This use of the concept of homophobia was in fact an unwitting application of one of the most valuable practical “tools” of narrative therapy—externalisation.

Narrative therapy trains counsellors in a general habit of inviting externalising conversations about problems. If someone complains of being ashamed, the counsellor will separate the shame from the identity of the client by a manner of talking about the shame as an entity outside the person, asking where the shame came from, what makes it bigger or smaller, and so on. If someone complains of feeling guilty, the counsellor might ask what conditions make the guilt worse, or even start to talk of the guilt as if it were a person, asking if the guilt has any allies, for example. So, narrative therapists will seek to name a problem as if it were an out­side agent affecting a person’s life, thereby helping the client escape from the sense of being totally consumed and controlled by the problem, and making it seem more possible for them to have some sense of choices in how he or she deals with the problem. 

Gay counsellors and agencies have been using this technique of externalisation for many years—externalising not only homophobia, but also, for example, heterosexual dominance, macho values, the closet, and so on. We could however probably be a lot more persistent than we usually are with questions that help people see that the problem is outside themselves.

It is often useful to explain the concepts of homophobia and heterosexual dominance quite directly. It is commonly quite dramatically liberatory for people to hear “their” problems talked about as being an outside force with its own name. Once ideas like homophobia and heterosexual dominance have been introduced to people who are finding a story of compulsory heterosexuality uncomfortable, they can usually quickly start relating these ideas to their own experiences.

John: I was always afraid I might be called gay when I was a teenager.

Bill: Where do you think this fear came from?

John: Well - my family would have been pretty down on gays. And there was a lot of anti-gay stuff at school.

Bill: Anti-gay stuff? What would you call this? We often call it homophobia. Does that fit for you? 

John: It was a homophobic place. 

Bill: It’s a bit like a disease, isn’t it? The fear of gayness. Would you say that there was a lot of this anti-gay stuff, this homophobia at school?

John: Yes it was pretty bad.

Bill: Can you tell me a bit about that?

John: Well there was graffiti in the toilets. And I had the reputation of being a poofter. I don’t know why. I was always getting hassled. I hated school.

Bill: So this homophobia was pretty hurtful, then? What did you do about it?

John: I just kept to myself.

Bill: Would you say the homophobia was very isolating for you, then?

John: Yeah.

Bill: Tell me something about how you first became aware that you weren‘t completely heterosexual?

John: Well I suppose in the third and forth form [13-15 years old] I felt sexually attracted to boys, and I was scared of that - I never did anything about it.

Bill: Would you say it was the homophobia that made you afraid of being gay?

John: Yes I suppose so.

Some possible lines of questions include:

• In what ways does homophobia control your life?

• How does heterosexual dominance hurt you? What other effects does it have? 

• What does homophobia steal from you? What pleasures does it take away from you?

• What does heterosexual dominance tell you about yourself? Has heterosexual dominance robbed you of pride in yourself?

• If you look back a year, do you think that homophobia was a stronger influence then than it is now, or weaker?

3. Relative influence questioning

The externalisation of the problem is made more significant in narrative therapy by a process called relative influence questioning which involves two kinds of questions, one kind which maps the influence of the problem on the person, and an other kind which involves mapping the influence of people on the problem.

We are applying this technique when on the one hand we draw out the effects that homophobia and heterosexual dominance have on a caller, or on the other hand when we draw out ways the caller has been able to hide or escape from the influences of homophobia or heterosexual dominance, or resist them and fight back against them.

Rangi: I know that I want to go to the sauna, but I don’t know if I have the courage.

Bill: What stops you going, do you think?

Rangi: I dunno. I guess I’m afraid of what it will mean if I go there. 

Bill: I’m really interested in this fear, and how it stops you doing what you know you want to do. What would you call it? What would you call this fear?

Rangi: I dunno. 

Bill: We could call it the Fear? Or a fear of gayness? Or homophobia? Or something else? What do you think? 

Rangi: I’m worried about what I’ll think, I’m worried about what my mates would say. I guess that’s homophobia. 

Bill: And so, this  homophobia, has it stopped you doing other things that you know you want to do? Does homophobia stop you from having any sex with men at all?

Rangi: Well I told you about the times when I was drunk with my mate.

Bill: What about when you’re sober? Have you ever had any sex with guys when you’re sober? What about in your imagination? Do you ever think about sex with guys when you are sober?

Rangi: Well yeah, I think about sex with guys quite often, but it makes me feel stink

Bill: Is this the homophobia again? Does it make you feel bad about your fantasies?

Rangi: Yeah.

Bill: But it isn’t so strong that you stop the fantasies?

Rangi: No. Not usually.

Bill: How do you think you managed to keep the homophobia at bay long enough to continue having these dreams, these fantasies?

Rangi: I don’t know. I guess I just enjoy them. They kind of have a life of their own… 

Some lines of relative influence questioning include:

The effect of the homophobia/heterosexual dominance on the person:

•  What kinds of things does heterosexual dominance convince you that you should do?

•  What kinds of things does it stop you doing?

•  How does the homophobia prevent you from going to the sauna / gay bar / coming out group? 

The effect the person has on homophobia/heterosexual dominance: 

• When you were growing up, did you have any ways of hiding from heterosexual dominance in your family or at school?

• Were there any particular times that you can remember when you managed to lessen homophobia’s influence?

• What have you noticed what helps make you stronger in dealing with heterosexual dominance?

• Who are the people in your life who might be allies against homophobia?

 4. Social critique

Inherent in the approach of the gay liberation movement was a criticism of a society in which the heterosexual norm is so strongly entrenched. The socially dominant stories of mythical heterosexual bliss are at times the source of our clients’ ill-fitting personal stories, and so it is these social stories, as much as our clients’ personal problem-saturated stories which must be unravelled.

Whether it is called social critique or, as Narrative Therapists would call it “deconstruction of the dominant discourse”, what we are doing is helping people stand outside the general presumption that heterosexuality is the norm by which all other forms of sexual expression are to be judged. It is not usually useful to offer clients long theoretical explanations about sex-role stereotyping in the patriarchal bourgeois nuclear family. Finding ways to remain sensitive to where the people who consult us are at is important. But we do need clear ideas about the sociology of the family, about the role of dominant constructions of masculinity, about the traditional subordination of women, and so on. Our ethical beliefs about these issues inform the questions we ask, such as:

• Looking back, you’ve spoken about how homophobia and heterosexual dominance were present in your childhood. Do you think they are present in many people’s childhood? 

• What does heterosexual dominance think men should be like in this society?

• How does homophobia influence how some people act? What does it have them doing? 

• What do you think are the effects of heterosexual dominance? For men’s lives, women’s lives, children’s lives?

• What kinds of things might be done to make homophobia in society weaker?

• What do you imagine a world would be like without heterosexual dominance?

 5. Exploring sparkling moments

No matter how problem-saturated the story is, there are always exceptional events—moments and actions which are inconsistent with the problem-saturated story, developments in which the problem has not been in control. Narrative workers call these exceptional events unique outcomes or sparkling moments, and it is from these that new preferred stories are created.

The gay liberation tradition also encourages exploring those moments of fantasy and activity that defy the heterosexual story. We invite callers to talk about remembered childhood thoughts of being “different”, about boyhood camaraderie, about pubescent consciousness of homosexual desire, about early same-sex sexual experiences and fantasies, and about times they as young men stood outside the dominant constructions of heterosexual masculinity.

There must be care here, because while many people experience their first sexual contacts as welcome, others experience them in the context of some form of violation. And in general we must be sensitive to whether the conversation is going along lines felt to be helpful by those we seek to help.

Some starting questions might include:

• Tell me about times when you have not allowed heterosexual dominance to control you?

• What were your first victories against homophobia? How did they happen? What did that mean for you?

• Have you ever fantasised about having sex with men? How did you push the heterosexual dominance back enough to let you have those fantasies?

• Have you ever had sex with a man? How was that? How did you manage to escape the control of homophobia sufficiently for that?

One of the very best things we can do for our callers is to invite them to catalogue these sparkling moments. But we are not satisfied with sketchy catalogue-style descriptions—we are interested in details. We want to find ways in which little moments can be expanded into sub-plots and linked to other sub-plots. A story lives in the details, and we seek in conversations to build a richness of description of such moments and a relating of such moments to other aspects of life.

So we are interested in where and when and with whom. We are interested in the colour of the other guy’s hair and what he was wearing and the music that was playing. We are interested in the kind of personality he had and what his lifestyle was. We are interested in how the caller reacted to the event and the impact it had on the caller’s sleep and his work and everything else in his life. We are particularly interested in the details of the meaning of the event for the caller—what the event said for him about his life and hopes and dreams.

Of course this is not merely a matter of details—we are trying to help people get a better sense of the meanings of these events for themselves.

We are interested in discovering a variety of kinds of sparkling moment or exceptional event. These are not just sexual events. Often the key influence of homophobia is to prevent the caller from disclosing his homosexuality to anyone else. It is often this that is most bothering the caller. There are always exceptions to this aspect of the problem, too—there are sparkling moments of disclosure in even the most closeted of stories. Indeed, if someone has called a gayline or has disclosed thoughts of homosexuality to a counsellor, that is already a courageous exception to the old story in which homophobia has turned important parts of life into “dirty secrets”. Such disclosure is often a sparkling moment to explore and build upon.

The first call to a gayline can often also be used retrospectively as in the following example:

Switchboarder: Can you think back to the first time you rang us? Were you thinking about making that first call for very long before you did?

Caller: Yes, for a few weeks.

Switchboarder: Was it hard to build up the courage to ring?

Caller: Yes I was pretty shit-scared.

Switchboarder: Thinking back, can you explain what that fear was all about, then?

Caller: I guess I was afraid that by calling you I was kind of giving in to being gay. I was afraid of being gay.

Switchboarder: So calling us was in some way standing up to that fear? How did you manage to get it together to call us? How did you overcome the fear about gayness?

Caller: Well I figured that I better do something. I figured I couldn’t live the rest of my life paralysed by fear.

Switchboarder: So you knew you didn’t want to live a life in fear. Is that right? Can you explain to me a bit more how that meant you were able to ring?

Caller: Well I had been thinking about sex with men for years, and I’d never done anything about it. I felt really stuck. I sort of had to ring you guys, or I thought I’d never do anything for my whole life.

Switchboarder: So ringing was not only standing up to fear about being gay, but also standing up to a fear of not doing anything with your life? Is that right? 

Caller: Yes I thought I had to start having a life sometime.

Switchboarder: So making the call was like taking a step towards having a life? Is that right? 

Caller: Yeah.

Having got to this point in the conversation the Switchboarder could then explore what taking a “step towards having a life” meant for the caller, whether it was good thing, if so why, and what he thought it said about him that he could take that step. This conversation would lead into considerations of what the caller does want for this life, his hopes and how calling the Switchboard was reaching out to these dreams. Whenever a sparkling moment is identified it can be used as an opportunity to ask questions that invite the caller into considering how these moments influence his sense of his own identity. We are interested in exploring in detail the meanings of sparkling moments in callers’ lives. 

6. Trying on labels

As a new story starts to develop which is not dominated by homophobia or heterosexual dominance—a story in which there is some room for non-hetero sexuality—it can be helpful to start to “fix” the new story with a name. 

As always, it is important not to have an outcome in mind. There is no obligation to have a label, and it is not helpful to feel forced to choose among labels.

But inviting questions which pose choices about self-descriptions can help people make decisions in story-lines, and can help them construct a self-description that fits for them. 

• From what you’ve told me about your life and what you want for your life, does the word heterosexual fully fit for you? 

• Do you have words that for now might describe you better?

• What would it mean in your life if you started using the word  [insert callers word] to yourself right now?

7. Detailing the action

Telling and retelling the story of coming to terms with their sexuality helps the caller expand it and make it richer, and that expansion and enrichment can be enhanced by focusing on the story in different ways. Narrative therapists make a distinction between what they call the landscape of action and the landscape of consciousness. The landscape of action concerns what is done, or (which may for many purposes be as important) what is imagined, whereas the landscape of consciousness is concerned with the meanings of these events or imaginings. In the context of coming out, the landscape of action refers to homosexual fantasy and experience, disclosure of homosexuality to other people, and such life-changes as leaving a marriage. 

• Tell me something about how gay feelings have been part of your life in the past. When did you first notice gayness? What was it like to notice that? 

• What things have you done towards having the sexual life you want?

• What was the first step you took? 

• Who was the first person you told?

The action-line of a story goes from the past, through the present, to the future. Obviously a great deal of attention will be given to current activities and a large part of the counselling process might well be about what happened just last night, how to overcome today’s obstacle, or the fears about disclosing one’s homosexuality to a best friend tomorrow. Very often a lot of discussion is about the now. We are also aware of the importance of accumulating historical detail that will assist people in dealing with their present circumstances. For example, we often try to explore past events that speak to a willingness on the part of the caller to resist compulsory heterosexuality and homophobia. These past examples of actions often enable a stronger sense of identity in the present.

It is also helpful to give attention to the development of the future of people’s stories: 

• If you managed to resist homophobia/heterosexual dominance effectively, how do you think your life would be?

• In a year’s time, do you think your life will be the same as it is now, or do you think that you will have taken steps to push homophobia and heterosexual dominance out of your life? 

8.  Developing the landscape of consciousness

A story is not just a series of events, one after the other. The point about a story is that it tells events according to patterns and meanings, and so the development of a new story requires a development in what narrative therapists describe as the landscape of consciousness. It is in this domain that people have knowledge about themselves, in which they have their values and beliefs, and in which they see their own stories connected to wider cultural discourses.

In this work counsellors and volunteers are sensitive to a development of self-esteem, a sense of the inherent goodness of gayness, a feeling of pride. One of the ways these developments are encouraged is by asking questions that invite people to reflect on the meaning of certain acts or steps that they have taken. 

For example, when callers retell events from their past in which they resisted the effects of homophobia and / or compulsory heterosexuality, we are able to ask about the meanings of these events. 

• What do you believe it says about you that you were able to take this step? 

• Who else would recognise in you the attributes that this step required? 

It is also significant that many callers find a better equilibrium in their lives as gay people to the extent that they have thought about and decided where they stand in relation to the larger issues of gay community life, sexual politics, gay liberation and queer theory.

At various points in our connection with a caller, conversations around the following kinds of themes might be appropriate:

• Has your sense of yourself as a person changed as your acceptance of your sexuality has increased?

• What does it tell you about yourself that you are increasingly having the strength to resist homophobia and heterosexual dominance in your life?

•  As you live a life that is more and more free of homophobia, how do you think you will see yourself as a person? Is your pride in yourself decreasing or increasing?

•  How do you understand this growing pride in yourself? Is it in anyway connected to your ideas about gay liberation? Queer consciousness?

 9. Using gay cultural resources

While every person’s story is unique, the uniqueness is largely in the combination of the elements, and elements of all of our stories are borrowed. We use bits and pieces from our cultural environment, transforming them along the way. The way we understand ourselves and events, the way we tell them, and the way we perform our stories is derived from the cultural resources around us. In transcending a problem-saturated story, the richer our cultural experience in relevant areas, the better the possibilities for new stories which transcend the problems. Of course there are some areas in which the resources available in the wider discourses of the culture are more developed than others. Narrative therapists have taken to building cultural resources for their clients in some areas, such as bulimia and anorexia. There are various examples of therapists building archives—collecting accounts of clients’ struggles against their problems and accounts of their successes—so that clients through their documents can help each other and be helped by each other.

While often it can be difficult to find the ideal resources, there is a rather a rich body of gay cultural resources—gay novels, coming out memoirs, history and film. It’s not all high-culture, either. We are not ashamed to talk about gay icons in the world of entertainment or rumours about sporting greats. Videos that celebrate gay sex are often also significant resources. It is in reaction to all these sorts of materials that callers develop their own story-lines.

It is necessary to guard against any sense that the cultural resources we recommend are prescriptive of ways of being. These resources are not meant to tell a caller how he should live his life or pattern his sexual interactions. It is a matter of helping in the exploration of options. Often it is as useful for a caller to be able to say to himself  ‘This is NOT me’ as it is to be able to say ‘This IS me’. We try to convey this belief in all of our conversations. 

10. Using peer-groups

An important part of coming out is the development of a network of gay friends, whose roles importantly include story-exchange. To some extent this can be organised or even ritualised. Consciousness-raising groups were a feature of the post-Stonewall gay liberation period. These unstructured, non-hierarchical groups of men, all of whom were in various stages of coming out, provided a forum for the sharing of thoughts and experiences. They were a place where stories of growing up could be shared, a sense of injustice expressed, and where comradeship and support could be given to one another. This tradition continues in the “Icebreakers” groups and coming out groups and newcomers groups that operate in gay communities around the world.

In other contexts, narrative therapists use a number of different methods to involve peers in the process of re-making identities. Building upon the work of other family therapists, they talk about the usefulness of reflecting teams—which listen to a discussion between the client and a counsellor and then reflect on what that discussion brings up for them. It is found that the client can enrich his or her story from these kind of reflections. Narrative therapists have also developed leagues of problem-fighters, such as anti-bulimia leagues, which link people with common problems and common experiences together. In these leagues each person can be the adviser of others, as well as a learner from others, connections can be made and a sense of community achieved.

Coming out groups fulfil many of the purposes of both reflecting teams and leagues of problem-fighters. Participants tell their stories, their stories impact on an audience of peers, and that impact in turn impacts back on the teller, and the story is refined. The next telling will be just a little bit different, perhaps parts will be told with a little more self-confidence, perhaps parts will be told with a slightly different meaning or significance. Participants hear the stories of others, and parts of those stories seem relevant to themselves. Stories become linked, and as they do the sense of isolation begins to diminish. 

11. Coming out into the world

It is one thing to tell the new story to a gay counsellor or in a peer group, but telling it in the wider world has a different significance. Narrative therapists place great store in recruiting an audience for the new story and spreading it—spreading the news, as they say.

This is significant for many reasons. In the first place, the audience, as a result of hearing the new story, changes its expectations of the teller, which makes it easier for the teller to live and perform the new story. This is something we are familiar with. If you tell Mum and Dad or your workmates that you’re gay, even if they react negatively, you’re no longer going to need to pretend you have a girlfriend and you’re going to find it easier to get on with having a gay life.

In the second place, narrative therapists value spreading the new story because the teller gets feedback from the audience, and this feedback leads to further extensions of the story. The reactions of family and friends to coming out stories become integral parts of the coherence of coming out stories in their later retellings.

In this way coming out involves performing a new story in the wider world. These performances occur in many different theatres of life—from one’s friendship and family networks, to membership of gay organisations, to gay commercial venues, to the privacy of one’s bedroom.

We try to provide conversational support as callers begin to perform their newly crafted identities.

• Have there been times when you have displayed your gayness?

• What were these times like? What does it mean to you that you chose to do this?

• Are you interested in telling other people about these stories of your life?

• Who would you like to tell apart from me?

• What part could we play in supporting this process? 

Conclusion

The following table attempts to summarise the approach described above, setting the approach of the post-Stonewall gay peer-support tradition beside the parallel concepts of the narrative approach.

This paper was first written in mid-1999 for the Wellington Gay Welfare Group and its Gay Switchboard, which I have worked with since 1982. Formal training in the Gay Switchboard had mostly centred on a client-centred Rogerian approach, and this paper was intended to show how in fact our approach was informed also by gay liberation ideas current in the post-Stonewall years which had led us unknowingly to adopt some of the content of Narrative Therapy. A second intention was to show how our practice could be enriched by a fuller and more conscious engagement with that approach.

A version of the paper was subsequently published as “Weaving new stories over the phone: a narrative approach to a gay switchboard”, Gecko, a journal of deconstructive and narrative ideas in therapeutic practice, 1999, vol 3. That publication included valuable reflection of the paper by Zoy Kazan, Christopher Behan, Claire Ralfs and Patrick O’Leary, and the version posted here incorporates some of the ideas generated by those reflections. I also wish to thank for their contributions Gene Combs, Dominic Davies, Ian MacEwan, Antony McFelin, David Semp, and Bob Trett, and particularly David Denborough (staff writer at Gecko), who made useful suggestions, and all the members of the Gay Switchboard over the years.—Bill Logan July 2001.

© Bill Logan 2001