Pride & Peace of Mind: Honoring Mental Health During Pride Month

June is a time for celebration, reflection, and visibility. Pride Month is a vibrant reminder of the strength, resilience, and beauty of the LGBTQ+ community. But it’s also an opportunity to talk about something less often discussed — mental health.

While the rainbow flags wave and the parades march on, many LGBTQ+ individuals still carry invisible weights: the burden of rejection, discrimination, internalized shame, and trauma. Pride isn't just about being seen — it's about being supported, fully and authentically.

The Mental Health Landscape for LGBTQ+ Individuals

LGBTQ+ people are at a significantly higher risk for mental health conditions like depression, anxiety, substance use, and suicidal ideation

Pride Month is a beautiful celebration of identity — but it can also be emotionally complex. For many, it's a time of empowerment. For others, it's a reminder of pain. And for some, it’s both.

Taking care of your mental health during Pride means allowing yourself the space to feel all of it. You don't have to march in a parade or wave a flag if you're not feeling up to it. Pride is also about surviving, thriving, and choosing to care for yourself in a world that hasn’t always been kind.

Mental Health Tips for Pride Month

1. Set Boundaries: You don’t owe anyone your story or your energy. It’s okay to say no to events, conversations, or people that feel draining.

2. Find Affirming Spaces: Whether online or in person, seek out communities where you feel accepted, supported, and seen.

3. Talk to a Professional: An LGBTQ+-affirming therapist can help you unpack experiences that others may not understand. Therapy is not just for crisis — it’s for growth, too.

4. Practice Self-Compassion: You're doing the best you can in a world that can be hard. Be gentle with yourself.

5. Connect with Joy: Pride is about joy, resistance, and community. Lean into what brings you happiness — music, art, dance, reading, quiet time — and let that be part of your healing.

   
   

To Allies: Your Role is Vital

If you’re an ally, Pride Month is a time not just for celebration but for action. Support LGBTQ+ mental health by:

• Speaking out against discrimination

• Educating yourself on issues affecting the community

• Donating to mental health organizations serving LGBTQ+ individuals

• Listening more than you talk

• Creating safe, affirming environments

  
  
  
  

You Deserve to Be Here — Fully, Fiercely, and Freely

Mental health is health. Queer joy is radical. And choosing to take care of yourself — body, mind, and soul — is one of the most powerful acts of resistance and pride.

This Pride Month, let’s celebrate loudly and care deeply. Let’s honor those we’ve lost, support those who are struggling, and lift up those who are thriving. Every identity is valid, every story matters, and every person — including you — deserves peace of mind.

Self Love for February: Read more.

Many of us want to read this year.  I just started my Good Reads challenge and set my goal to 24 books. Here’s a list of my favorite self help/ mental books of all time:

1.  CoDependant No More:  Melody Beattie

The OG self help book about codependency.  It is the book that I go back to with clients, and in my own personal life the most. I think people should read this book and then reread it every 5 years.   We tend to think of codependent people as someone married to someone struggling with addiction.  But, what is so helpful in this book is that CoDependency is defined as a person who has let another person’s behavior affect him or her, and who is obsessed with controlling that person’s behavior.  Examining how behavior is codependent is difficult freeing work.

2. Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: Lindsay C. Gibson, PsyD

 The New kid on the Block.  This book sheds light on what it is like to have a parent that is immature, unavailable or selfish and it affects you as an adult.  Focusing on freeing yourself of this pattern, and creating healthy relationships in your adult life today and releasing the pain of your childhood needs that were not met.

3. What Happened to You:  Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing: Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD and Oprah Winfrey

This is the most comprehensive trauma book that is reader friendly.  I know the Body Keeps the Score is the most popular title, but it’s a very technical read. “What happened to you?” is reader friendly and refrains the question from what’s wrong with you to what to you. It teaches readers how adverse childhood experiences affect you, and your health throughout your life.

4. Burn Out: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle, Emily Nagoski, PhD and Amelia Nagoski, DMA

 This is probably the second book I quote most to my clients.  Many of my clients are women, and the primary thing that they come to therapy for is burn out.  Feeling burnt out from their lives, relationships, and careers.  This book discusses the effect of burn out on ourselves, our sex lives, and our relationships and then how to release the feeling of burn out and end the stress cycle.

Ways to Reflect and Set Intentions for the New Year

It’s a New Year!   I’m not a huge fan of traditional New Year's Resolutions, but I do believe in self assessment in January. I enjoy thinking about what worked and what didn’t.  I encourage my clients to think about how they can assess and adjust to what is happening in their lives and think about what they want in the New Year. Whether you are a vision board person, a journaler, or have another way of putting your ideas for the New Year in front of you,  I think it’s helpful to see what you want and be able to reflect back on it.  

I love making vision boards because I'm a visual learner and enjoy seeing what I want. But you can totally turn this into a journal entry, a list in your notes app, or a brain map. I usually think about my new year in three areas: personal, relationships, and career.

Personal:  What do I want for myself this year?  Get specific. Self care is great, but what does that mean for you? Is it taking more time to read?  Incorporating movement into your life?  Taking a break from movement?  Getting out into nature more.  Travel. Taking time to think about what helps you to feel centered and at peace.  Do I want to incorporate more spirituality into my life?

Relationships:  How do I want to improve and grow the relationships in my life?  Do I want to be more present?  Do I need to reevaluate my boundaries with others?  Do I need to engage more with the people in my life and be more social?  Or is it time for me to pull back and create more balance between being social and being with myself?  Do I want to try new ways to meet other people?  Joining a book club, hiking club, cooking class, a local organization?  

Career:  What worked last year and what needs to be changed?  What can I delegate to others?  What is a dream I have for myself?  How can I succeed in the environment I’m in?  What do I need to change?  Can I treat my work as something separate from my identity?  How are my personal struggles affecting my ability to be productive at work?  

These are a few of my journaling/ vision board ideas for taking inventory and creating ideas for yourself in 2025.