Why LGBTQ+ People Feel Exhausted: Masking, Code Switching & The “Game of Belonging

Welcome back to Let's Be Perfectly Queer Podcast, your go to LGBT Australian podcast for all things queer.

In this episode Archie sits down with wellness coach and licensed social worker Devin Scott to unpack something so many LGBTQ+ people experience, but rarely talk about: the exhaustion of masking, code switching, and trying to “belong.”

With Devin we unpack what it really means to play the “game of belonging”… and why even when you “win,” it can still feel like something’s missing.

If you’ve ever felt exhausted from being “on,” struggled to feel seen even when your life looks successful, or questioned who you really are underneath it all, this conversation is for you.

We explore:

•  Why masking and code switching are survival tools for LGBTQ+ people 
•  The mental health impact of long-term masking (burnout 👀) 
•  Queer perfectionism and the pressure to “fit” everywhere 
•  How shame shows up and why it’s not always the enemy 
•  The difference between being accepted and actually being seen 
•  Where to start if you’re realising you’ve been “playing the game” 

Because the truth is a lot of us were never taught how to exist as ourselves safely.

So we adapted. We performed. We survived.

🎧 Listen now and ask yourself… are you being yourself, or just playing the game of belonging? And until next time, stay perfectly queer!

Get in touch with Devin:

Email: devin@findyourmeaning.coach
Website: https://findyourmeaning.coach/
Instagram: @devinscott.nyc

Transcript

Welcome to Let's Be Perfectly Queer, a queer podcast, creating space to talk about all things queer. My name is Archie and I'm joined today by Devin Scott, board certified wellness coach and licensed social worker. And they are going to offer a fresh perspective on the exhaustion many LGBTQ plus adults face due to the game of belonging. 

Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. And so today our main topic is about how the survival tactics of masking, code switching and reshaping, which is necessary for so many LGBTQ plus individuals, impacts authenticity and mental health. 

You know, it's something that I think we all face, but we don't really talk about. So I'm really interested to get into this and see your perspective and your take on it as well. But before we do get into this episode, did you want to tell our listeners a bit about yourself? Sure. 

I'm Devin Scott. I work in New York City. I'm based in Brooklyn.

I consider myself a somatics practitioner. So I'm body based transformation. I do it hands on and hands off. 

So I'm cross-trained in massage therapy as well as psychotherapy and coaching. So when I'm talking to people, my goal is to just get them in touch with their body and see what wisdom arises naturally as opposed to trying to force something. And if it's hands on, it's similar, but I'm also doing body work and energy work, trying to help navigate the change of the physical form that is being requested. 

That's very cool. You hear a lot about the mental work, but you don't always hear about the physical work. That's quite interesting.

I didn't know that was actually a thing. We are not that common, but I love my community. I think it's just the coolest work. 

Pull up from osteopathic strategies and then Eastern strategies and you start to learn the body. And it's really amazing what you can hear when you put your hand on a body and listen. And the basics of a lot of the osteopathic work is that if you listen to the body, the body knows how to heal itself. 

And so all you do is sit with it and then respond to what it's requesting. And I think that is just a beautiful life view. And it's amazing what happens when your hands are on the body. 

That's very awesome. And to start us off, when we talk about the game of belonging, what do you mean by that? So game of belonging, I think of as we're kind of in this Western capitalistic colonialist structure. We have a lot of rules and we're told that we can win a game, right? We can get safety, we can get esteem, we can get friends, we can get the family, we can get the house, we can get the car. 

But the sad thing is the game of belonging is that if you think if you do all the things right, you will feel like you have community. But the nature of it being a game often means that you can never win. Because even if you get all the things, they're not landing on who you truly are.

So if you're playing a game, you're not coming as yourself. And so whatever you get might not actually be what you want. Or if someone loves you or respects you or supports you, it might not be the you who actually wants to be seen or supported or even what you need at all.

So that's what I would think of as the game. Yeah, so it's like the player, you're playing a character, you're not always playing yourself, because you know, this is what I need to be to win. And so then you are impacting who you are and and who you can really be. 

And I think as LGBTQ plus people, we relate with that. And growing up, I was grew up in a Catholic school, you know, so you really have to change who you are and your mindset. And it really screws you up, especially as a younger kid. 

And for some adults who are LGBTQ plus, they don't let it go. And so that kind of keeps going through with all those those kind of behaviors. So that's definitely an important thing to talk about. 

Yeah, I think it's, well, I guess I'm in the elder millennial category. And I don't really work much with Gen Z. And I do feel like maybe they have a slightly different experience. But I mostly feel like it's unavoidable. 

Because it's so soaked into our culture that being queer is being unacceptable as being unsafe is internal damnation. That if you hear it during your identity formation, there's always going to be a piece of shame in you that says, I need to earn my place, I need to earn safety. And I think there's fun at a high level, there's nothing wrong with masking and playing the game. 

The problem is when you identify with the mask, when the mask is your means at which you feel like you have worth or value or safety, and you are detached from the fundamental basis of just by existing. As a human, you have value, and people will see it if you are in the right spaces in the safe spaces, the people who are meant to see you. Yeah. 

And at what point do LGBTQ plus adults realize they're playing this game rather than just being themselves? Really any time, right? I don't even know if I think most people realize they're playing a game at first. I think they realize that they've done everything right, or they've done everything in the way they were told should get them the reward. And it doesn't feel rewarding. 

And then the first thing they feel usually is broken. What is wrong with me for not feeling satisfied when I got everything I set out to get? And then it takes a long time from there to start asking the question, well, did you actually want any of this at all in the first place? But that really can happen at all ages. That's a hard one. 

It's definitely a hard one. And everybody would have a different response as well. So they're not all going to have the same kind of response to when they realize that they have been playing this game.

And what can some of those realizations be? Is there a certain trigger or is there just a point where they're like, I've been playing a game? I mean, there are some common realizations that come, like people hit a breakup or a near breakup. They hit a trigger point in their career. They lose someone there. 

These are all kind of like crisis of faith moments that can just trigger the beginning of introspection. But I think it takes a long time to realize that they're playing a game, although I think we're in a very strange energetic moment in January and February where a lot of people are realizing it at the same time. And there's a collapsing of ego. 

And it's very frightening to walk outside because nervous systems are afraid and seeing it in a really clean way, in a way I don't think I've ever seen collectively before. But our egos are designed to not see it like this. Like we have this self formation, but then we have a lower brain section that tells us that identity is necessary for our physical safety. 

And that's why we have ego defense mechanisms. And so it takes a lot of work for someone to be like, oh, none of that shit was sincere. I am playing a game. 

I was fooling myself. That is a humbling experience. Sometimes it takes a long time. 

Yeah. And this whole time they've been masking, code switching, playing a game, and often those are survival tools. And they're necessary depending on whether it be their home life, their work life, or what they need to succeed. 

And can you talk a little bit about why you think they're necessary, and especially growing up queer? Oh, it is often unsafe to be queer. I am not someone who dislikes shame. I think my career focus really is shame. 

And I think shame is this profound pro social tendency towards social cohesion, to conform social norms to like try to make community happy, but shame becomes really troublesome when it collides with something that we've been told is unlovable or unworthy of existence. And that's really where it starts to come and become a survival mechanism, which is, I'm doing everything I can to make sure I am not violated, rejected, or harmed in this room. And I don't think that ever is unhelpful. 

Even if you integrate shame based pieces of yourselves, like as queer people, we will always go into spaces where we actually want to know if we're unsafe. Because none of us are resourced all the time to be the person fighting the system. Sometimes we need to go in a room and know that we need to leave it, or we want a mask in that room, and we choose it. 

And we choose it not from a place of automatic behavior or anything like that, but shame always has that value. Where it is really sticky is when we don't notice it, when we believe we are our mask, and we are not able yet to look at the fact that we're in the fundamentally believing no one could love us, or we will never be safe, because that needs to be challenged. And how do these behaviors show up day to day for LGBTQ adults who might not even realize that they are doing these masking and code switching behaviors? There are so many ways that they can come up, but I work with a lot of gay men and most of the gay male clients I get are high achievers. 

And I always think of queer perfectionism as having a rock and a hard place where they're in two communities that are at strong odds with each other. And so they're usually overachieving in society, and then they go into queer spaces, and they're overachieving on confronting society. And these have really polarizing poles. 

One side is saying you should be ashamed of all of your sex, and then sometimes they come in feeling ashamed because maybe they're not kinky enough or something like this, and they're not evolved because they're not bending gender norms in the way that the community might push. And these are really challenging poles for people. But also if I have clients who are socialized originally as women, or my autistic clients, I see more people-pleasing, good person perfectionism, where you're always of service, you're always trying to conform, you're always trying to please. 

That's my kind. But there's also the trouble child one, the person who's always chaotic, ensuring that no one will reject them because they know everyone will reject them. There are so many forms of social control and masking. 

And usually they have a little kernel of authenticity in them. That's so interesting. So if anybody's listening and you can relate to any of this, maybe just take a bit of a look and see, are you masking these behaviors? And sometimes it's okay if it's not affecting, like you were saying, every part of you. 

Because sometimes in certain jobs, you need to code switch and be this kind of person to be that professional person, but not when it impacts authenticity in who you are. So there's times and a place, but if it's starting to impact really your mental health and every other aspect of your life, that's when you need to kind of do the work, seek advice, seek help if you need to. And with masking, it can be, maybe some people do it for a short time, maybe some people do it for a very long time. 

And I was just wondering, what does long-term masking do to someone's mental health over a long time? I think it just eventually leads to burnout. Masking where you can never unmask means that you're never seen. And there's always a crash out from that. 

It looks different. Like, I'm a people pleaser, a masker, and I wore it chronically. And it turns into chronic resentment, because it's like, I'm doing right by you, and you never give me what I want. 

And then you just become a salty, bitter person. And you just feel like you're never supported. High achievers often come to me feeling hollow and confused, and then full of shame because they think they should love the life that they've built for themselves and don't understand what's so broken in them that they don't understand it, or can't find gratitude in it. 

But usually what I find, kind of like autistic burnout, you know, like one of the most high masking populations, when they realize how much of their life expense has been just trying to put on a performance to survive, what comes next, I notice a lot, is just exhaustion. Because that is a lot of energy, and very little of that energy was rewarding. And how, in your opinion and your experience, does this affect authenticity and identity, especially when someone's being rewarded for being conventional? You know, it's like, hey, you are fitting this conventional box. 

How does that then impact? And what have you seen? Oh, I've been thinking a lot this week, because I'm working on this project to try to make a bridge language translation from a game in Indic philosophy. And we tend to think of like, ego and masking and all these things as one concept. And in Sanskrit, there's like layers of identity formation. 

And the two big ones are like the ego, ahamkara, which is like the creation of the eye. And then there's the emotional attachment to it, which is mata. And that's like pride. 

And actually, like ahamkara is kind of cool, like ego is kind of fun. And when you're not emotionally tied to your masks, there's something innately playful about going in and wearing masks. The one that really is sticky for people is the emotional attachment. 

And this is usually comes down to some version of like, if I'm not doing this mask, I am not safe. I have to earn love, I have to earn it to be deserved. And it's this stickiness that stops people from having a real self concept. 

Because if they're holding the belief that they can't look at parts of themselves, because they're that unlovable, or that unsafe, they can never form a self identity, because there are parts of themselves they are unwilling to love, unwilling to look at. And that's the part that really to do the work of self identity needs to be broken, because it's about integrating yourself and then finding safe places for it to be seen. And then the masking game can be kind of fun, because you know who you are, you've played with your shadows, and you get to experiment with what version of yourself goes into a room, not because you're trying to prove your worth or prove your value, but because you're playing a game and life is weird. 

And every space is a new opportunity to do something. I love that. So you're translating a game. 

Do you want to explain that? I was a bit intrigued when you said that. I was like, what do you mean you're translating a game? So Lila is this board game that was kind of like rediscovered in India in the 1900s. But it's been around for more than 1000 years. 

It has a lot of different boards. But the most famous one is the inspiration for chutes and ladders. So most people like have seen this board at some point.

But the nature of the board game is you roll in with a question, it's kind of like therapy meets tarot. And there are 72 squares that are the different levels of consciousness and yogic thought. And you go up and down through snakes go bring you down to like problems and lower consciousness and up ladders when something's like divine and gives you a break. 

But the nature of the game is you introspect on a question, and you're playing it as a game and life is a game. And it's not linear, you're not going up, the whole point is not necessarily to like, reach an endpoint, but to just go in a circular way and constantly be seeing value and everything. And so like, you'll get to the top, you'll be at like a highest level of consciousness, and then egotism strikes because it's sneaky. 

And all of a sudden it thinks you're superior because you've been working on spirituality. And then you have to go back and remember, oh, I'm still alive. So I'm still learning. 

And this is the nature of life, you work on your shame, and then you think you've got it. And then you hit a new wall where like, oh, I found a new part of myself I hate. And you're back in the lower cycle. 

But I think that's lovely. So I'm working on this kind of translation of it, because I find it so wise and kind of hard to understand for Western audiences. And I think that's really great, because you're explaining therapy, you think you're getting there, you think you've overcome a hurdle, and then you hit a wall. 

And then you're like, oh, wait a minute, I totally didn't realize this was affecting me as much as it could. And doing something like this, especially for the kind of a taster of like, okay, well, is this kind of like what I'm going to experience? And sometimes people prefer games to get them into something. So it's really interesting that you're doing that. 

That's really cool. So are you going to try to have people be able to access that? Or is it just for your own entertainment? Right now, like one of my little side hobbies is that people can pay and I'll facilitate a game for a person or a group. But our hope is to launch a Kickstarter at the end of the year, we have like a new book, trying to bridge the language. 

And my partner, she's designed a new board for it, because the original board is so simple. And so we've made like this really artistic version of it, just trying to add more beauty to it. So the goal is maybe like September, we'll launch the Kickstarter.

It does sound like something that you could play with friends who you're close to, and then you can help bond as well. Or you could play it by yourself. You can do either. 

And we are, so I think it's best when you have a group, because one of the natures of compassion is if you can see shared humanity, or we remember that you're not alone that confronts shame, just by nature. But we're working on other ways to kind of make it short of a game because the games can run for hours, even if you're just playing by yourself. So we're making an Oracle deck and experimenting with a journal and just thinking about like, how do you get the nuggets out without needing to like have the full commitment. 

And so we're still kind of processing that. But yeah, it's really a ego has been on my mind a lot this week, because I've been trying to work on the ego scores. And I'm having my own kind of like death of hubris this week, because I my two months out from a very, like very bad breakup.

And I realized that one thing I did, I've always been like kind of the good boy, like earning my worth by being the good boy. And I did a version of this with my spirituality, which was, if I meditate enough, and I feel like I'm aligned with my path, and I'm doing something, I think I'm making a bargain with God, or the divine or whatever I am calling it at that moment, that they will return me abundance, and they did not. And then I was like, Oh, this was also a false bargain. 

I was the same manipulative strategy I've done my whole life. But this time, I tried to do it with God, the universe or karma, whatever the word is. I was like, Okay, well, we've got to go back to the drawing board. 

And remember that like, I cannot control life. You can only control what you do. And you can only control the way that you react.

That's pretty much it. You really can't control any other aspect, even though some people love to control as much as they can. At the end of the day, you still can't control someone's reaction, you can't control how a job is going to go. 

And so a lot of it is about yourself and where you see yourself in the universe and how you deal with that. So it's quite interesting that you're talking about ego. Do you find that with the ego? Do some people not realize that they do have the sense of ego? Do you have to kind of explain that to some of your clients? Oh, ego is sneaky. 

So I think a nature of its existence that tries to make sure it's not seen. Most people I think are familiar with the concept of ego, but I think most people are really averse to the idea that we are less evolved than we would like to be. You know, there are these studies on ego that we make our decisions, and then it gets sent to another part of our brain to form the reason we did it. 

We make a decision, and then afterwards, our ego compiles the reason. So it's actually much more reliable to just think of us as creatures that are acting like we're animals. But I think it's really ingrained in us that this is just like we are not animals. 

No part of us is animals. We have free will, we are thoughtful, we are doing this. And I don't think people take it lightly or quickly that actually most of what is happening in our life is just being witnessed by us and not necessarily being like ego chosen or like actually being thought through in the ways that we're thinking it.

Yeah, that's quite interesting. And with people coming to the realisation that they're masking and that they've been playing a version of themselves and they're not authentic, the pressure to mask in the first place, do you think it comes mainly from workplaces, families, queer space? Because people don't realise as well that you can be LGBTQ plus and be masking in a queer space as well, which is quite interesting. Do you think that it's one of those or it's a combination of all of them? I think it's all of them. 

I do tend to think as queer people, because we're kind of like born randomly into non-queer families, it doesn't drop down like nationality or race. A lot of it comes from birth and family, the nature of our adaptations. And then we form new challenges within queer spaces. 

This might be like kind of a trite example, but I was trying to think about like queer perfectionism when I was getting ready for this. And then I'm kind of a witchy person and deep in the woo woo. And I was at this witchy conference in October and I went to this workshop called Queering the Tarot. 

And I'm gonna be honest, I hated it because we were just going through the deck and trying to remove the concept of gender from it. And there were all these things. And I read tarot not as like truly gendered, but as like archetypal or defined masculine, feminine or like yin yang. 

I don't necessarily read it like that. And without keeping this kind of division that's existed in practices throughout the world, something gets lost. But I remember life path numbers came up and this one guy at the table just did not identify with his life path. 

And the facilitator was like really stubborn and was just like, you know what? Like, you might come to see this later. And I find this kind of interesting that like we're a space bonded by being counterculture, by questioning social norms. And then here we are kind of saying that like, actually, you could not have a trans identity for your star sign or your year number. 

And I watched this person in the room have shame because he didn't identify with something based on his year of birth. And I thought it was very odd, given that like the nature of the room was one questioning gender norms. But then here, there's this other thing that we were being really rigid to and creating shame on. 

And I think this is kind of like a really, really small example. But I do think this pervades queer spaces, because we can have a shame based rigidity around what it means to be evolved or to be a good queer person, or to be like sufficiently full of activism or resistance. And whatever adaptation we took from our family plays out in these spaces. 

I can relate to that personally, in different ways, if we're looking at all those different spaces. So when I grew up, obviously, I grew up in a Catholic household that was, you know, it's man, it's woman, that's it, that kind of thing. And then I went to a Catholic school. 

And so then I was masking and code switching and try to be like, as female assigned at birth, it was like, okay, you need to like the boy, you need to look this way, you need to wear the school dresses. And so I was very exhausted as a kid. And it was constantly going through the motions of I'm playing a role. 

That's why I kind of love drama, because in drama class, I played the male characters. And it's almost like my real authentic version was allowed to come out. I lived in a small town, which also doesn't help, because everybody knows you're everybody's business, moved to the city. 

And then what was interesting is every time I went back to the small town, I had to code switch of who I really was, because I was starting to find my identity in the city and find, okay, maybe I'm not straight, which I knew I wasn't straight, come on. But you know, all those kinds of things, you're telling yourself, yeah, you're straight, you're straight. But then you're having these internal arguments with yourself constantly in the late at night, when you're like, what's going on in the world? What's wrong with me? I was constantly code switching when I went back or when I saw my family, gets exhausting. 

And then you start to get confused about who you are. And it definitely is a lot of work. And so, you know, people who are doing the work, well done. 

And some people who are listening, maybe think, oh, I might need to do the work. And for those who are listening and just be realizing they've been masking for years or code switching for years, where do they even start? So hard, right? I think maybe the starting thought that I would like to offer anyone who's having this realization is that you should not have any shame or judgment that you've been code switching for years, because we are always doing the exact adaptation that we need to be doing in the moment. And there's no right time or right transition. 

And all of us who have gone down the path, I think eventually look back and love all the old versions of ourselves, even if we're embarrassed by them, because we know that they were there for a reason, and they were doing what they needed. And the last thing that helps moving shame is to layer shame on top of it. So just loving that you were honoring your needs and your safety and doing the best you could to keep yourself alive and in the best connection that you could tolerate or thought was possible.

Yeah, that's beautiful. And I think as well, if I wouldn't be the person I am today, without that shame, without those moments that I had to go through, and it's made me the person that I am. And I always think about what if this was done differently, I wouldn't be the person I am today.

And I'm pretty proud about the person I am today and the work that I've done. So it does take a lot. There's definitely avenues for those who are listening. 

And sometimes you can do it by yourself. But sometimes you need help. And there is help out there if you do need to seek that help.

So don't be scared to reach out. And it may be a licensed therapist. It may be a wellness coach.

It may be your friends. There's always someone out there to help. And I think that's very important.

People listening today, and you want them to take away one thing, just one thing from this conversation. What do you hope it is? I think along the lines of what I just said, masking has a real adaptive purpose. And we will mask our entire lives. 

And that is part of being human. It's part of the game. And it can actually be really fun if you're doing it with love for yourself and consciousness, because you're experimenting. 

And experimenting brings you to pleasure. Experimenting brings you to knowing yourself. So part of masking is play. 

The question is, are there enough spaces in your life where you feel adequately seen, or enough space where you adequately see yourself, your life feels nourished, that you're not fighting to be understood. And if not, I want to just put it out there that you deserve it. By nature of being human, we all deserve to be seen, to be loved, to be here. 

And I think we all deserve to come to a place where we feel that about ourselves. That's a beautiful way to end the episode. That's a nice little message to finish and a little bit of a positive as well. 

It's been very interesting to sit here as you're listening and work through all this stuff. And I was like, yeah, I can relate to that. And I'm sure people at home are also doing the same thing. 

And if anybody did want to reach out to you, how can people find you? I am a little old school with my tech, but I'm making a commitment to be better. But my website is findyourmeaning.coach. If you scroll down, I have a newsletter I send out about once a month. And my commitment this year is to really learn how to use social media. 

So that's devinscott.nyc. So if you follow me there, I'm putting it in. The promise is there. I'm learning how to do it.

I'll put the links in our show notes so that people can find you. Thank you so much. This is such an important topic and I think a topic that most LGBTQ plus people can relate to, but they don't really talk about. 

So thank you so much for coming on. If you like this episode, don't forget you can rate, review and subscribe, and you can follow Devin. Check out the links to the website as well. 

So thank you so much for listening to this episode. And until next time, I hope that we have been perfectly queer.