For LGBTQIA "coming out" happens more than once.

Orchid children fare worse than their more resilient dandelion peers.

Queer children often mask their true identity to survive.

For many in the LGBTQIA community, “coming out” is rarely a singular event. It can happen again and again. For others, it never happens at all. When it does happen, however, whether it's to family, friends, and colleagues, disclosing your relationship status or who you’re dating can, for the first or umpteenth time, trigger a chain reaction that sets off a trauma response that began when you were very young.

I was born in a household where love was earned and granted in equal measure. The only son of Italian immigrant parents, I was the prince, the hope, the reason you crossed an ocean and survived a dictator. The expectation was enormous and unspoken.

I learned early to read the room before it could read me. I practiced that skill for decades. I understood, even without the language yet, who I was and what I was, without being told. Queer children often do. And so I began early and efficiently the work of becoming the version of myself that the household, the neighbors, the church, and my school could recognize and approve of. Not lying exactly. What Kenji Yoshino calls covering—downplaying a part of yourself everyone already suspects is there.

I didn’t do this out of love, but for survival.

The Hyperempathic Child

A hyperempathic child is often described........

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