I remember the first time I went to conversion therapy. If I’m honest, I thought it was quite nice really.
The woman at the reception of the church hosting the therapy had me sign in on the visitor’s sheet. Then, I went upstairs to meet a guy who would be able to “help me,” or so I was told. We had a cup of coffee and talked for almost an hour, and I thought he was a kind, helpful person. Sure, some of the things he said made me cry and I’d told him things that I’d never told another human being, but that was part of it all, right? It was 2011, I was in my final year of university, 21 years old, desperately unhappy and quite obviously not straight. My life was spiraling, and over the following months it would only get worse. But I was doing all the things I was told would help me — the light had to be at the end of the tunnel soon.
The thing is, I wasn’t told it was conversion therapy. It wasn’t until about six or seven years later I had a lightbulb moment that the sessions I had with some unlicensed ‘counsellor’ on a sofa in a church with the sole stated intention of suppressing my sexuality did, in fact, fall under the definition of conversion therapy. It was only after I realised this that I began to retrace what happened that year and the depths to which my mental health declined, and was finally able piece things together.
If you grew up in an environment where queerness in any form was not only discouraged but labelled as morally wrong and perverse, attending a place that claims it can change what you’re feeling might seem like the logical, if not the only, choice you have. You don’t have to grow up in a fundamentalist religious cult to feel this way, but it certainly helps. When the pastor in my church — who (quite worryingly now I think about it) often liked to talk to me about my “homosexual struggles” — presented the idea that I go along to this meeting with a guy from another nearby church, everything seemed to be above board. “I’d really like you to push past [your sexuality] and change,” he said to me. This felt like the most natural way to think and talk at the time: At last, there was an easier way of dealing with my sexuality than being miserable about it all the time!
Conversion therapy is based on two ideas. One: that any sexuality or gender expression that deviates from heterosexual or cisgender is wrong (or at least undesirable) and two: that a person’s sexuality or gender expression can be changed or suppressed. Both of these ideas are unsubstantiated, if not simply factually incorrect and harmful. The first is simply a bigoted position — labelling sections of humanity as “undesirable” purely because of difference — and the second is not backed up by science. In fact, it’s actively discredited by science.
According to Stonewall and the UK National LGBT Survey in 2018, seven percent of LGBTQ people have been offered or undergone conversion therapy, with the number almost doubling for trans and asexual people. In the U.S., UCLA School of Law Williams Institute released a study in 2018 estimating that 698,000 adults had received conversion therapy, with 350,000 of these people having undergone conversion therapy while they were under 18. This is a staggering amount of people given that in the UK and the U.S., all major counselling and psychotherapy bodies, as well as the National Health Service, have concluded that conversion therapy is dangerous and have condemned it, with the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims going as far as to brand it torture, and the U.N. Human Rights Council’s report recommending a global ban on conversion therapy.
The myth of realising you’re queer ‘too late’ in life
“But who would willingly send themselves off to conversion therapy?” is the question my friends often can’t get their head around, and to be honest, it’s a solid point. The little that we do hear about conversion therapy involves incredibly aggressive, distressing situations ranging from physical abuse to electroshock therapy. While these versions of conversion therapy do still take place, according to a Human Rights Council report, the more common variety of conversion therapy in Europe and the U.S. will be led by a faith-based institution, meaning a sort of talking therapy that will involve prayer and religious advice. However when looking globally, it is medical and mental health providers who are the main practitioners of conversion therapy in almost half of the cases, and state authorities can also be involved. These treatments can range from homeopathic treatments to medication or hormone therapies, as well as the previously mentioned more violent and cruel abuse. People can feel so coerced by their families, their doctors, and even the authorities where they live to change who they are that some people pay large sums of money to be subjected to these “therapies”.
In the UK, it is still legal for LGBTQ people to be subjected to conversion therapy, but the government is currently running a consultation on legislation to ban it. Stonewall has stated that the proposed ban must have zero exceptions — it must include religious settings and it should be inclusive of trans people. With the fact that governments such as Brazil, Germany, and 24 U.S. states now have legislation outlawing or are currently in the process of drafting the laws to ban conversion therapy, it seems to those on the outside that attending it must contain an element at least of coercion.
The therapy itself was, now I look back on it, both laughable and deeply disturbing. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the method often employed by con artists, psychics, and mentalist illusionists known as “cold reading,” but it is essentially fishing for information while seeming to only ask innocent questions. This man could see that I was a sensitive, ticking emotional time bomb and so he slowly and calmly primed me before pushing all my buttons at once. “When did you first see your mother cry?” he asked me, quite casually in the middle of the first session. Until that point, I’d never spoken of that memory to another person, and something like this is obviously going to be an emotional touchpoint for anyone, especially if the memory was from a young age — I was four. “How did that make you feel?” he continued. As I sobbed to a man I’d only met minutes ago, he calmly explained that this level of emotion was because I was naturally empathetic and compassionate — both excellent qualities, he reassured me — but that my “deviance” in sexuality was because I interpreted these emotions as sexual attraction. I believed him.
The ‘therapy,’ though it leaves a bad taste in my mouth to even call it that, continued in this way over a few sessions. What I remember of it are these statements that what I was feeling was not necessarily bad, I was only misinterpreting it, directing my feelings in the wrong direction. What I needed to do, I was told, was to remember that only sexual attraction to women was natural and that I should distrust other attractions and learn to tune them out in my head. My mental health predictably took a nosedive. I went from being simply miserable at my situation as a queer man trying to work out if my sexuality could fit with my faith, to truly despising my lot in life. I hated that I had to deal with these feelings, and I raged at myself. These emotions quickly manifested themselves as vivid and shocking suicidal dreams, and I began to contemplate harming myself. At this point, I hit the panic button and reached out to someone I trusted.
I remember the pale shock on his face as I calmly detailed how low I felt — to me all of this was normal. I couldn’t be ill, I was getting help! Thankfully, he told me in no uncertain terms that I had choices. Even though he was himself a leader in a Christian group I was involved with, he explained I could choose which way I wanted to go, even if it meant abandoning my faith. His frank honesty, his insistence that the current path I was on was troubling and clearly not the right one, and his genuine care for me, allowed me the space to come to my own conclusions. He made sure I was in contact with friends who would care for me primarily as a human being and not a soul to be ‘saved’ and altered. He offered resources and community support groups led by other Christians who were LGBTQ, but only if I wanted to attend and in my own time. It was his support and this knowledge that I had choices that allowed me to step back and say no, I didn’t want to spend my life struggling to find ways to marry my faith and sexuality. While many LGBTQ people do live wonderful, fulfilling lives of faith, this was not for me. So I left my faith, setting me on the path I’m still on today. I began to learn to love myself, and to work towards choosing to be happy. Without a doubt, this man saved my life.
“Realising that I was allowed to enjoy the personality, the sexuality, and the humanity inside me was the greatest revelation of my life.”
How could all of this come from some benign-looking meetings with a random guy? Since sexuality cannot be altered, nor is it a choice, how did this quackery have even the slightest effect? Conversion therapy is, at its core, simply emotional manipulation. “Change because God wants you to” or “because your family wants you to” or “because your life will be better.” There are so-called ‘success’ stories from various conversion groups where ‘ex-homosexuals’ talk about how they have overcome themselves and now live heterosexual lives. Absent from most of these spurious testimonials, however, is the idea that they are ‘cured’ of their queerness. Most will talk about how they now simply repress themselves — though perhaps not in such terms. Suppressing your own personality, your life, the parts of yourself that make up who you are, is the bedrock of conversion therapy. It’s no wonder that this has clear and dangerous effects on a person’s mental health. So much so that, when previously interviewed about my time in conversion therapy, I was unable to accurately answer how many times I had attended, or give more detailed reasons of what it was that set off the alarm bells in my head. My memory of those days is, mercifully, full of gaps, and I have no recollection of month-long stretches in 2011. After speaking with a therapist, I was told that memory loss is a common symptom of stress and anxiety or a response to trauma. Not only this, I was told, but attending sessions of conversion therapy, or any other incorrectly directed therapy, can not only lead to trauma around the event but also a lasting distrust and fear of mental health services that can impact decisions around a person’s health for years to come.
Stonewall has a very clear and simple line on conversion therapy: “No one should be told their identity is something that can be cured.” As someone who went through it and almost didn’t make it out the other side, I can only echo this.
What I can say for my own part though, is that my life after conversion therapy with all the normal ups and downs, struggles and triumphs that life brings, has been the best I could ever want it to be. I left my faith behind, struck out on my own, and I got to become the person I am today — to discover who it was that I was suppressing. While I began the journey alone, I am not now by any means. My friends, my partners, and the people I meet on my queer journey have become, as we so often hear about, my chosen family and support network.
Realising that I was allowed to enjoy the personality, the sexuality, and the humanity inside me was the greatest revelation of my life. To anyone who has thought about or is thinking about conversion therapy, I say this: Never subject yourself to something that, by its very nature, seeks to remove part of yourself that is good. I did, and not only did it not work, it simply wasn’t worth it. Only by learning to accept and express myself did life truly open up to me — and I can’t thank the people around me enough who put me on this path.
If you want to talk to someone, the TrevorLifeline provides free, confidential counselling for LGBTQ people. To reach a counsellor, call 1-866-488-7386 or text START to 678678. If you’re in the UK, here is a list of LGBTQ mental health helplines. Here is a list of international resources.