Finding Identity Beyond Stigma

In this blog I share my journey of double acceptance. I discuss how I didn’t fully confront questions about my identity until a period of serious mental ill-health forced me to pause and reflect. What followed was a difficult and slow journey of accepting and overcoming two self-stigmas – being gay and being bipolar. 

Editor’s note: This is a long-form personal reflection written to explore identity, stigma, and growth over time.

I’m what they’d call a late bloomer when it comes to finding my sexuality.  It wasn’t until I was 26 that I started seriously asking questions about myself and seeking support. Interestingly, it coincided with a period where my mental health was under particular strain. I, like many people who ‘come-out’ gay, at any age, consider that I was probably always gay. I don’t think I turned gay at any particular point. My experience around the time I first ‘came out’ as gay was a period of enlightenment and discovery in my life. When thinking back over the years the evidence for it stacks up.

Looking back, there were plenty of signs — feelings of attraction and curiosity that I didn’t yet have the language or confidence to understand. As I got older I remember walking down the street and noticing good looking guys but completely miss the girls that my mates would be jeering at. At a time when my friends were finding girlfriends, I was just not all that bothered, but I didn't know why. Despite all of this, I just hadn’t put two and two together. There was little actual information being made available back then about what being gay was or what it meant. All I knew was kids at school just used it as an insult. So whatever it was, it must be bad and that means I can't be it.

So, the years went by. I had friends that had been brave enough to come out at earlier ages and I always felt very comfortable around them – never any sense that it was weird nor did I hold any form of stigma about them being gay. But for me being gay, well that was very different. I went to Uni, I graduated from Uni, I got a job, bought a house etc… Life went on. Yet, I still didn’t identify myself as gay. I had a huge mental block and it was easier just to ignore it and march on. Then, something happened and from an unexpected place I found myself questioning who I was.

That question became unavoidable during a period where life slowed me down and forced me to take stock. In the months that followed, I started to ask what I’d avoided for years — and it became a turning point in understanding who I am.

This turned out to be a fork-in-the-road moment. In hindsight, I think earlier acceptance of my sexuality might have spared me some of the turmoil that followed. At the same time, without being forced to pause and reflect, it’s just as likely those questions would have remained unresolved for years longer.

This hadn’t come out of nowhere. I’d just returned from a three-month work secondment in Dubai. I was living in a place where there was no visible LGBTQ+ community and very little tolerance for difference, which amplified my sense of isolation at the time.

The work placement was largely fine, although it was my first time being overseas for any prolonged period of time and I’d not travelled internationally for holidays more than a couple of times. Whilst it sounded like a great opportunity, I really didn’t enjoy it at all. I struggled massively with loneliness. Weekends seemed to drag and there was little to do. Sitting by the pool, shopping and going to restaurants was about it.

During the secondment, I found myself struggling with loneliness and low mood, which made day-to-day challenges feel heavier than they otherwise might have done. Towards the end of the placement, a relatively minor work issue became a source of anxiety for me — less because of the situation itself, and more because of the headspace I was in at the time.

It was only a few days before I was due home anyway and I had a plane ticket booked. Fortunately I managed to keep myself together to get my stuff packed up, to the airport and on a plane home. By the time I got home, I was very relieved to be back in around familiar surroundings. I felt safe to be home. Whilst this should have marked the start of recovery, it instead became a point where I needed to pause and reset. Over time, I’ve noticed that periods of sustained pressure can mask underlying strain. When that pressure lifts and things slow down, it can sometimes reveal how much has been going on beneath the surface. That’s what happened on this occasion, and it marked a point where I needed to pause and reset and get professional support. The experience was disorienting and unsettling, and it took time and support to regain a sense of balance.

What followed was a period of reflection and integration — a chance to reassess what mattered and how I wanted to live. While that pause created space for reflection, the questions themselves had been there for years; they simply became harder to ignore. I found myself thinking more deeply about how I experience confidence, identity, and self-expression, and how different parts of my personality show up in different circumstances. For the first time, I allowed myself to sit with a question I’d long avoided: am I gay? Despite years of hints and half-recognised signs, I still wasn’t sure — and accepting it felt daunting.

The first person I spoke to about it was someone I already trusted, Michael, who I’d had open and honest conversations with in other contexts. That discussion was straightforward and reassuring, and helped me see that the question itself didn’t need to be treated as a problem to solve, but something to understand. I was encouraged to seek out further support, which led me to organisations and communities where I could explore things more openly and at my own pace.

The first step needed on my coming out gay journey was to actually identify that there was something not usual about my sexuality and work out what it was. It was all to easy to kick the can down the road and not do anything, after all, I’d done that for the last 15 or so years at least (based on probably having my first gay thoughts at around age 11 when starting senior school). The major sticking point with me was definitely self stigma. From my perspective, being gay was something that very much only happened to other people. My bipolar episode was what was needed to kick me in to action in to dealing with these emotions. From the outside, it may have looked as though my bipolar episode had changed my sexuality. In reality, it simply stripped away the avoidance that had kept me from asking difficult questions about myself

Once I started asking questions, I met a lot of people via various gay and coming out support groups who later became some of my best friends and we explored the gay scene together. One of those groups was the Gay Outdoor Club, where on one outing I happened to bump in to no other than Michael, someone I’d previously had open and supportive conversations with. Suddenly a few things from our conversations slotted into place; he knew a lot more about the topic than he was letting on.

As a result of all this, I felt much less alone and that being gay was in fact as normal as being straight. For a long while I had a straight life (work, family, old friends who didn’t know) and a secret gay life that happened mostly at the weekends. In time, I built the confidence to tell people in my straight life and gradually allowed these lives to merge together. It’s a lot harder telling people you’ve known for a long time that you’re gay than telling new friends. I suppose it feels like there’s much more to lose. And this probably comes down to perceived stigma around being gay. But it’s far less now than it has been in the past. Civil rights campaigns have brought about equality and in time this has helped those identifying as gay to open up about it. This has probably lead to a public perceptions of homosexuality becoming seen as quite normal, common and is generally accepted. There’s countless celebrities who have made their fame off the back of it and have broken out of the gay world in to the mainstream which has certainly also helped.

I’ve found that coming-out is something that never stops, but it does get easier. I don’t go around telling everyone, but it’s not uncommon for heteronormative statements to come up in conversation with new acquaintances. I made the decision long ago that I’d always use the right pronouns describing dating activities and latterly, my partner, and to not be evasive in response to any direct questions. I knew that if I couldn’t be honest with others, I wasn’t being honest with myself. Sometimes I still find this difficult. I don’t know why, but being gay is still personal to me and sometimes it’s not something I want to go into as part of light chit-chat with someone I’ve only just met. But that’s just how it is.

With bipolar, at least there was a clear demarcation point in my life. I’d become very unwell after a period of serious illness and a formal diagnosis. But having someone tell you you’re a ‘thing’ doesn’t make it any easier to accept it. That’s a separate process I needed to undertake on my own. With my bipolar, it just seemed easier to hide. I felt ashamed of it. I definitely felt stigma towards it and telling others was and still is difficult. I’ve found that people don’t always know how to respond to conversations about mental health, particularly in professional settings. I suppose the same is true of being gay, but it feels more intense when it comes to mental health. It’s also not the sort of thing that comes up in conversation so often. This makes it easier to avoid than with sexuality. I have to intentionally bring it in to the discussion. But for me I apply the same rules as to being gay. If someone asks me about it, I’ll never shy away from giving honest answers. This means that being open about my mental health has been a more gradual and selective process, much like coming out in other parts of my life. There’s a few celebrities that have opened up about their mental health, and that’s a good thing. Having someone you can point to who has the same condition but also lives a perceivably ‘successful’ life helps normalise the condition in conversation.

I'm sure I'm far from the only one who is both gay and has a mental health diagnosis. If I were to draw a Venn diagram, the crossover is most likely quite large. In my case, I don't think being gay has triggered any consequential deterioration in my mental health; I knew about my bipolar first and I think it's my bipolar that has given me more pain in my life than my sexuality. That said, it was my bipolar that gave my mind the freedom to explore the possibilities of my sexuality in the first place.

For others, I know their sexuality can lay a heavy burden upon them. Particularly if parents, relatives and friends are far from accepting. The rejection can quite predictably lead to depression or in some cases even worse outcomes. I find this so sad and frustrating. People are what people are. It's hard enough to come to terms with ones sexuality or medical diagnosis without other people freaking out and projecting their insecurities and prejudices on to you. A little kindness and empathy from those close to you goes such a long way to helping provide time and space to deal with these things, to blossom in to your true self and then enable you carry on with with what you were doing before life threw you a curveball.

Finding yourself as gay and coming to terms with that can only lead us to experience the world in a different way than our heterosexual counterparts that haven't had to deal with all this stuff. We still live in a heteronormative society where being gay is still seen as different. But having done the 'self work' in dealing with all that comes with it can do nothing other than make us stronger and more compassionate people. The opportunities we get in life may also be different (despite equality laws) but there are now few things that gay people can't do that heterosexual couples can. All I can say is that being gay has perhaps complicated and delayed things a little in my life that would have been simpler and quicker had I not been gay. But overall I believe I've become a stronger, more resilient and more interesting person because of it.

Both experiences have shaped me in different ways. Not because they were easy or desirable, but because living through them required reflection, honesty, and growth.