Created by: Aidan Lahn

Internalized Homophobia Worksheets

Description

The worksheets are meant for clients struggling with negative feelings and beliefs about their sexual orientation. Each worksheet is two pages, and one page if printed on both sides. 

Worksheets take different approaches to this. Both have clients start by circling the distress their sexual orientation causes them on a scale of 1 through 5. The worksheet titled, "Healing Negativity Around My Sexual Orientation," has clients write down thoughts, feelings, and body responses they feel related to their sexual orientation, think about how their sexuality interacts with other parts of their cultural background, and has them do cognitive restructuring with a specific negative thought they mentioned. The worksheet titled, "Understanding Sexuality and My Cultural Background," has clients write down their sexual orientation, race, and gender identity, identify if they feel proud of any of them, select a characteristic they are proud of and identify thoughts, feelings and body responses associated with feeling proud, do the same with a characteristic they said they are not proud of, and explain how they feel when they combine these two aspects and think about them together.

Worksheets can either be used together or on their own. Both can be used alongside a multicultural approach to counseling, as both have questions related to intersectionality. The "Understanding Sexuality and My Cultural Background" worksheet, works especially well with a multicultural approach, and can be used to understand how a client views parts of their cultural background separately and together. The "Healing Negativity Around My Sexual Orientation," can then be given as a follow-up, focusing specifically on sexual orientation, and can be used to see if internal distress has decreased compared to the first worksheet.

References

Morandini, J. S., Blaszczynski, A., Ross, M. W., Costa, D. S. J., & Dar-Nimrod, I. (2015). Essentialist beliefs, sexual identity uncertainty, internalized homonegativity and psychological wellbeing in gay men. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 62(3), 413–424. https://doi.org/10.1037/cou0000072.

Sanscartier, S., & MacDonald, G. (2019). Healing through community connection? Modeling links between attachment avoidance, connectedness to the LGBTQ+ community, and internalized heterosexism. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 66(5), 564–576. https://doi.org/10.1037/cou0000381.