36. Coming Out at Work
Today’s episode centers around a very personal topic, which may be relevant for some of y’all. And even if this isn’t exactly relevant to your personal experience, I invite you to listen along because, like with all things coaching, there will be something useful in here for you, too, and sometimes the very best coaching we ever hear is on a topic different from our own lived experience.
Also: I’ve planned on creating this episode since the podcast launched, but I always found a reason not to: I wanted to research it more, I didn’t want to mess it up, I was secretly afraid people might be upset about the way I handle the subject matter, etc (hello perfectionism!). But this topic is too important not to talk about, so I coached myself about my fear and perfectionism so that I could have this conversation with you.
Join me on the podcast this week as I share my own story of coming out at work and my emotional and mental experience at the time. I’m sharing why deciding to come out to the people you work with is totally your decision to make, and I’m giving you some of the coaching tools and mindset work that can improve your experience if this is something you want to choose.
If you love the podcast and want to take this work deeper, I have great news! I have space for new one-to-one coaching clients starting this month, so click here to schedule a call with me and we’ll see if we’re a good fit to start working together!
If there are topics y’all want me to teach and talk about on the podcast, feel free to write in and let me know by clicking here! I’d love to hear from you!
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:
Why we’re missing out when we only look for coaching topics that are relevant to what we’re going through personally.
My own story of coming out at work.
How internalized heteronormativity led to me coming out later in life than a lot of people do.
The ways that social conditioning affects our brains and keeps us stuck in patterns and identities we don’t prefer.
How to decide if you want to come out at work (and how to love yourself no matter which option you choose).
Tools to help you come out, if that’s what you want to do.
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE:
FEATURED ON THE SHOW:
If you’re enjoying the show, please leave me a rating and review on Apple Podcasts!
Feel free to ask me any questions over on Instagram!
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
This week we’re talking about coming out at work.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hey y'all, this week we are talking about what is for me a very personal topic. Something that I have experienced and some of you may be experiencing. For others of you, this may not be exactly relevant in like a one to one way.
This might not be an experience for you, but I invite you to listen along because like with all ‘s coaching, there's always something useful in there, even if the coaching is directed towards someone who's having a very different life experience than you are.
When I was in Kara Loewentheil’s old small group coaching program that no longer exists there were many other people in that program with me who had really different life experiences than I did. But one thing that I noticed was we had very similar thought patterns.
So I distinctly remember listening to a woman get coached about parenting. And she had two kids, I have no kids unless you count the cat and the dog. And I was amazed by how much value I still got out of listening to that coaching. And how much it applied to me, my brain, and my life even though our life circumstances were completely different. And I had never experienced exactly what she was going through. And I will never experience exactly what she was going through because I don't plan on having kids.
So I say that because I think sometimes people look for the coaching that is topic relevant to what they're going through. But sometimes the best coaching isn't topic relevant for you. Sometimes the best coaching, it's more about the underlying thought pattern that you may have in a completely different area of your life.
So, yeah, have a listen and then come and post on one of my Instagram posts about this week's podcast and let me know what you learned, how it applies to you, and how you're going to use this week's teaching to create more of what you want at work and in life.
Okay, so before we get started, I just want to tell you all, I love sharing with you all the ways in which I'm still a human. Even though I'm a coach who knows some exceptionally powerful tools. And I have a great example of that for this week, which is that I have been procrastinating this episode for approximately a million years.
So, almost since the podcast was brand new, I've known I wanted to record this episode and I have been just putting it off. And I've been doing it in this like really sneaky way. I'm sure you experience this too with your brain, where it seemed like I was putting it off for a really good reason.
I was like, “Well, I want to do some research. And I want to make sure I really get this right. And the LGBTQ community is a community I really care about.” And I was afraid of recording and releasing this podcast and getting it wrong. I was afraid that it wouldn't be good enough, right, which is just one of those classic thought patterns that I talk about all the time.
And like I teach, and as we can see, did that lead to me doing research? I can tell you right now, no, the fuck it did not. Here's what it led to, me doing nothing. Well, what I did do was I wrote “coming out podcast” on a list of potential future podcasts. And then I did nothing.
And every time I thought about recording this podcast, I was like, “Oh yeah, I really want to talk about that later.” And again, I wasn't researching. I wasn't planning, I wasn't like, “Let me sit down and just draft what I think are like my general thoughts on this topic.”
I was like, “That's so juicy and good. That's so needed. People really want to have that conversation. It's so important. But what if I fuck it up? What if it's terrible? What if everyone hates me? What if I do it wrong and I get canceled?”
I had so much fear there that I wasn't really paying attention to or addressing and so it did what fear does, which is it shut me down. And I'm sure you've experienced this in your own life at work and in other areas where you really want to do something but that critical voice in your head that's like, “What if you fuck it up?” Kind of just blocks you and keeps you stuck in this procrastination loop where you're always thinking about how like, “Well, I'll do a really good job on that later. And I'll do such a good job, that then I'll feel really safe, and I won't be afraid to like put my ideas out there.”
And definitely some people would actually have been doing that research because research can also be a way of avoiding. But for me I wasn't doing any of that. And even if I had been no amount of research is going to create emotional safety for me to have this conversation with you.
And people probably will disagree. Some people in the world will disagree with what I'm about to tell you. That's pretty much a given talking about anything, because there are what, 7 billion people in the world? We all have a lot of different opinions and beliefs. And quite frankly, I want some of those people to disagree with me.
Like as much as us humans are like, “I want universal approval.” I really don't because there's a lot of people who have really different ideas than mine about sexuality and revealing your sexuality at work if you happen to be not a heterosexual person. And yeah, they might be upset.
And there may also equally be people inside of the queer community, the LGBTQ or LGBTQIA community who also don't like the way I'm teaching it. And that's okay too because everyone else is allowed to have their opinions. And it's okay, even within a smaller group, if we don't all agree.
But I want to share with you today my experience and some coaching teachings that I think are relevant if this is something that you are thinking about, or want to do, or anything like that.
Okay, so first I want to tell you about my own coming out story. Which is interesting because I think this also relates to part of why my brain has a lot of fear around talking about my experience or talking as an expert about this is because I did not have what I consider to be like the normal queer experience. And what does that even mean, right? What does that even mean? Is there a normal queer experience?
But a lot of the people that I know who identify as queer or as lesbians have identified that way for a long time and knew that about themselves for a long time. And they came out in a very different time in the world than I did because they came out much younger.
I didn't come out until I was in my 30s. I'm still in my 30s, this was only a few years ago. So I had a much different experience, because I wasn't like a teenager or in my 20s. And I also had a much different experience because the world changed a lot between when I was a teenager and when I was in my 30s.
Also, geography matters, like I grew up in a small town in Ohio. And by the time I came out I was in Seattle, Washington, which is a very queer friendly place.
And I'm just going to say right now, sometimes I say LGBTQ, sometimes I say LGBTQIA, but for my shorthand I'm going to use the word queer, because that's how I personally identify. I will sometimes use the word like lesbian or gay also, it's like kind of a cornucopia of words for me. But when it really comes down to it, queer is the one that I identify with the most. So that's the one I will use as a shorthand.
And one more thing I want to speak to. So I also think part of the reason why I came out so much later, is because of internalized heteronormativity. So we talk a lot, like we generally, talk a lot about internalized homophobia and I do think that's very real. I think there's a lot of homophobia in our culture and it can get internalized.
Like we talked about, I think it was last week, about the sponge brain or maybe a few weeks ago. Your brain is like a sponge, it absorbs whatever is around it. So if you grew up somewhere where there was a lot of homophobia, you're going to absorb that into your sponge brain whether you meant to or not. Whether it agrees with your chosen values or not. The same thing with white supremacy. The same thing with Puritan work ethic. All kinds of different things, ableism, your brain will absorb whatever is around it.
And when we're children our brain is not like this, “Does this seem like a good idea to upload?” It just sort of uploads everything and then as adults we often have to sort of go back through and be like, “Do I want to keep this?” And if we don't, we have to do the work of deprogramming that, it is effort. Coaching is like a miracle and the things you can do with it are incredible. But there is effort involved, it's not just magic.
Okay, so there's that. But what I think I had more of was internalized heteronormativity. And what I mean when I say that, and this is like also the part where I'm like, “Oh, I don't have like the academic standing to say this, but I have my personal experience.”
So I'm speaking from my personal experience. And my lay person’s ideas, like I'm sure there are people with PhDs in this who would be able to have a much more like nuanced conversation in an academic way. But that's not what we're here to do. We're here to have a coaching conversation.
So when I finally was like, “I am not straight.” Which, by the way, is how I identified for a long time because I didn't know what I was. I knew what I wasn't. And by the time I got to that decision I had had sex with multiple women, y'all. I had made out with multiple, multiple women.
There were all these things in my life that looking back I was like, “These are all very strong pointers, and evidence, and cues, and clues. And I missed all of them.” And by I missed them, it's not like I didn't notice them, I was present when I did the things I did. But I used my confirmation bias to explain them away.
Here's what this looked like, so even though I had had sex with women on purpose and enjoyed it and was like, “Yes, that's a thing I would like to do more of.” I was so deeply believing in my own heterosexuality and in heteronormativity that I somehow managed to categorize that as like part of me being straight. Which doesn't make any fucking sense, but that is the brain on social conditioning.
So here's a thing that happened too, we have this messaging in our culture that if a woman wants to make out with or have sex with other women, like she's doing it for attention. And I totally bought into that idea. Not like consciously, subconsciously, right? That's the social conditioning piece. So even when I would do these things, I would be like, “Oh, do I really mean it? Am I just trying to get attention? Like, am I just bored?”
One of my strongest narratives was, “Oh, I'm just adventurous.” Which is interesting, because honestly, I don't know that I'm actually the most adventurous person. But that was the way my brain categorized my forays into queerness basically.
I was like, “Oh, yeah, I'm a straight girl but I'm wild. Or I'm a straight girl but I'm adventurous.” I did go through a brief period when I first moved to Seattle where I was like, “Oh, I'm pansexual.” But again, I questioned myself about that so much. Again, even though I'd already had multiple sexual experiences with women. Most of them just with women, not even with like men and women.
I'm really like letting it all hang out on this episode, y'all. But I think this is an important conversation and I'm willing to like, share my personal history with you to have this conversation. All of the evidence pointed to Kori is not a straight person. And yet my brain took all that evidence and took its little confirmation bias and was like, “Oh, I'm probably actually a straight person who's just adventurous and wants attention.”
And so I just want you to see how dismissive that is. Not on purpose, but subconsciously I was so dismissive of my own sexuality that I couldn't even see it for years. Maybe 10, more? I don't know, math is not what we're doing here on this podcast, we're doing coaching. So I don't know what the math is.
The point is, I second guessed the shit out of myself, and I don't think it's because I'm naturally a second guessing person. I think, first of all, because as women we are socially conditioned to second guess ourselves. But second of all, because of that internalized heteronormativity.
Here's what's also interesting, while I did grow up in Ohio in a small town, and that small town was probably not progressive in a lot of ways, my parents were incredibly progressive. And so I had instilled in me from a young age that like – I don't think they ever came right out and said it's totally okay to be queer.
I mean, first of all, at that time, in Ohio, queer would have been considered a slur. But by the time I was like, really questioning my sexuality, it's like I was totally like, “It's okay and wonderful to be queer.” I had a lot of queer friends. I had even been raised with very liberal politics.
I feel really grateful that my parents have the values that they had. We haven't always agreed on everything but when I was coming out to them it never even occurred to me that they would be upset. I was like so solid in this will not be a problem that I was just like, [inaudible].
I think it's so fascinating that the biggest blocker to me accepting myself and my own sexuality was actually my own thoughts that I didn't even choose on purpose about what was normal. And about who I was and the way that the culture defined me. Both defining all of us as like heterosexual by default, which I don't think is accurate, obviously, at all. But also because I'm a feminine presenting person. And because I'm a vivacious person, people really didn't take it seriously.
Even some of my friends in the queer community didn't take it seriously when I first was like, “I think maybe I'm not straight.” Some people said, “Oh, it's not easier to date women.” As though that would be the reason that I would be doing it, is that it would be easier. Or like literally people were like, “You just want attention.”
And I don't want to blame them at all for that, right? Because they absorbed the same social conditioning that I did. They were saying externally what I was saying internally. And because I believed it internally, I was believing it externally. If I had been like, “No, I'm not just doing it for attention, I'm totally solid in it.” I might not have enjoyed them saying that, but I wouldn't have believed them in the same way.
Okay, so this is all just to set the tone here for like, there is more going on with our social conditioning than just internalized homophobia. And I think the internalized heteronormativity can be a lot sneakier, because it's less about is it wrong or not? Am I afraid of it or not? Because that's kind of more obvious sometimes.
The internalized heteronormativity from my point of view is so much more subtle because it's just like, “Oh, no, none of that counts. No, you're really straight. You're just a teenager. Or you're just in an exploratory phase, or you're just curious, or you just want attention.” It's so dismissive just of our actual experience and so dismissive of anything that's not the straight, the heteronormative experience.
Okay, so that's all of that. That's all the pre stuff from my personal experience. And I think that matters for how I came out at work because again, I'm feminine presenting. So sometimes if you present as more like nonbinary or more masculine if you're a woman, or there's different kinds of like presentations also in the male spectrum of homosexuality, where it's like- I know more about the female experience, obviously.
But there is this idea that femmes have to always come out of the closet again and again because when people look at us, they don't assume we're queer. Whereas there are certain people where when people look at them, they assume they're queer. There are also, of course, heterosexual people that people look at and assume they're queer and they're wrong. So that's all of that.
But for me, in my experience, I felt really awkward coming out at work. And I think it's different than what a lot of people went through. Because for me, I wasn't worried that people wouldn't accept me because I was queer. I was worried that people would judge me because I had talked about dating men and then I was talking about dating women. And I didn't want to have to explain any of it.
So I kind of did this thing where I just didn't address it. Like I had talked about having a boyfriend and then I just talked about having a girlfriend. And then I like quietly, surreptitiously just like looked around to see what would happen. I think it's really interesting.
And again, I think this is more that I was afraid of being judged as a person. Like people thinking I was just doing it for attention, versus what I think is the much more common experience of being afraid of being unsafe.
I was not afraid of being unsafe. So if you are, that's a totally valid experience. It's just not what mine was. And it's not what my particular self-judgmental thoughts related to. So if you want to come out at work or not, and, honestly, my vote on that is do whatever the fuck you want for whatever reasons you want.
Like, I would look back to the episode on like, should I leave my job or not? I think this is a very similar thing. A lot of people think if you're queer, you should come out. I don't agree with that. I think it's a personal choice. I think if you want to, it's available, coaching tools can help. And if you don't want to, you're allowed to not do that.
And I'm talking about sexuality, but there's all kinds of different stuff, right? Sometimes we have parts of ourselves that we don't want to share at work. And my clients and other people will be like, “Oh, am I like being dishonest by not sharing this? Am I lying to people?” And my take on that is you get to choose how much of yourself you share with people. And my question is, do you know your reasons? And do you like them? So that's that.
So whatever you choose to do, that's up to you. Right? I think it has to be up to you. And even if I told you what to do, it would still be up to you whether you want to listen or not. But I'm never going to tell you what to do, especially not about that.
So whether you want to or not, totally your choice. But if you do want to, I think a question to ask yourself and to help you guide yourself through this process is, what am I the most worried about?
So for me, what I was the most worried about was people judging me and someone coming right out saying, “But you were dating a dude like two weeks ago, or like two months ago. And you're dating a woman now? Are you bisexual? Are you gay?”
And I was worried about that because I didn't know how to answer those questions. Because where I had gotten to in my own thing was, I don't fucking know, I just know- Actually, at that point, in the very beginning I was like, “I don't know. And maybe in two months I think I'm straight.” I was so, confused I don't think is the right word, uncertain. I think I was just uncertain.
I was so uncertain about what my own feelings meant. And I was so still in that dismissive phase. Where I didn't even know how to take myself seriously that I was super afraid of other people not taking me seriously or kind of like poking holes in what I was doing. That's what I was most afraid of.
What you're most afraid of might be really different, so this is going to be a very unique experience. So get a piece of paper and write down like, first of all, do I want to do this? If yes, what are my reasons? Do I like them? If no, what are my reasons? Do I like them?
Even if you're not going to do it, I think it's still worthwhile to have the conversation with yourself of what am I the most afraid of? Because sometimes people do find out things we don't want them to find out. And if we've done the thought work ahead of time, even if we don't plan on telling people, we prepare ourselves more mentally and emotionally for that happening.
Hopefully, it never happens, but sometimes in life it does. People do get outed sometimes. And with all of coaching, we can't control the world. We can't control what other people do. We can't control if other people are homophobic. We can't control if other people are racist. We can't control if other people are ableists.
What we can do is decide on purpose, “Okay, I'm in this imperfect world, this thing happened, 12 out of 10 would not prefer it to happen. But since it did, how do I want to think, feel, and act? What do I want to create for myself inside of this container with this imperfect situation that I don't prefer?”
Okay, so going back to if you want to come out at work, or even if you don't but you want to have this exploration with yourself, what am I most afraid of? What am I most excited about? And within that, what am I most afraid of happening but also what feelings am I most afraid of feeling?
I think our brain tends to go there and just stop. It's like, “Yes, I'll just be over here catastrophizing how terrible this will be.” And that's why I think the second part is also important. What am I most excited about? What am I most excited about getting to feel?
And then I think the question is, no matter what you choose, whether you choose to come out. Whether you choose to not come out. Whether you choose to share some details but not all the details, my question for you is, how do you love yourself through it?
So if you decide, I'm not fucking telling anybody, how do you love yourself within that choice? Because what a lot of people's brains do is go, “I'm not telling anybody.” And then they second guess themselves, and they judge themselves, and they say mean things to themselves. And listen, you can do that if you want to, but I just don't think it's a super fun option.
Instead, it's like, “I'm choosing not to tell anybody for my private reasons, and I get to do whatever I want. And how do I love myself through that process?” Like when my brain starts to pipe up with like, “You're lying” what is my loving response to that? And then if you do want to tell people, how do you love yourself through that?
And I'm going to tell y'all, I don't know that I was doing a great job of what I'm inviting you to do back when I did this. Because it was before I found the coaching tools that I use now. I did know some of this stuff. I had been studying the coaching industry for a long time before I became a coach. But the particular toolkit I use now, I didn't have that one yet. And I still had so much of that internalized heteronormativity that really got in the way of me loving myself.
Now, I still muddled through. And I was really lucky because I was working in corporate IT. And through whatever miracle of the universe, I was working on a team with tons of queer women. Like bunches of them, more than would be in the normal population.
There were so many people in that space, and so I felt a lot safer. And I think maybe that's also why the internalized homophobia, which I'm sure I still did have, and the fear of being unsafe, probably didn't kick up as much for me, was because, again, living in Seattle, being on this team with just a very large amount of queer women per capita.
But when it comes to having emotionally loved myself and have my own back through that experience, I would say I only sort of did so. Because I was second guessing my own ass so much back then. I was judging myself so harshly, I was so worried about getting my own sexuality wrong and how humiliating that would be. Which I think just goes to show you where my mindset and headspace was back then that that's what I was worried about.
Whereas now I have a totally different mindset and a totally different headspace, which is really important. I would never get to where I am in my business now and where I am as a coach now if I had kept all those same thoughts. I went through some very intensive coaching programs as a client. And that's how I got to be who I am now.
So listen, it's not like you have to like love yourself perfectly through it, I clearly was not doing that, and I made it through. And I actually had a really great experience even though I felt wobbly and uncomfortable a lot of the time.
A lot of the thing that I needed actually was to be able to tolerate my own discomfort. I got very little anything back from anyone else there. And again, that's not everyone's experience, but that was mine. But I made it excruciating for myself sometimes with how I’d talk to myself about it inside my head, and how I would catastrophize and how worried I was. And really with how much I judged myself.
Now, others of you may have a really different experience. You may have very real kickback from other people. You may experience homophobia from other people or other kinds of judgment, that's possible.
Again, coaching is not going to take that away. It's not going to change everyone else in the world. But what it is going to give you is the capacity to choose on purpose whether you want to upload their shitty thoughts to your brain. And whether you want to take their feedback seriously. And whether or not you want to stay in that workplace.
You get to do whatever you want, for whatever reasons you want. And when you really know that and kind of like metabolize that into your mindset, it gives you so much more freedom. And then we don't need to control other people.
I mean, I do think it would be great to live in a culture with no homophobia, but that's not currently on offer. And so living in a culture that does have some homophobia, I think it's much more powerful for me to think about, “Okay, if that's going to happen and I might run into it, how do I want to think about that? And how do I want to feel about it? And what do I want to do? And what results do I want to create for myself?”
And sometimes that means being able to think differently when I run into a person who does like say something homophobic. And sometimes it means like choosing to live somewhere where I think I will run into less homophobia.
Now, I live in California, even in California, I could still run into homophobia. And I would still choose to manage my mind about that. But I think it is totally fine for you to do a mixture of deciding how you want to be in the world with your mindset and also deciding like what things you want to put into place on a more circumstantial level to create the life you want.
If you put the circumstantial things into place, and don't do the mindset, it doesn't really work, because the thing is, you could live in the most liberal part of the country, but if your brain still replaying something homophobic someone said 20 years ago to you in middle school, you're going to have that emotional experience now, even in the safer place.
So I don't think just changing the circumstances works. But I do think when we choose on purpose how we're going to think and feel, we do still sometimes want to change the circumstances to create more of the experience we want.
Okay, that was kind of a lot so let's review. If you want to come out at work, there are certain tools that can really help you do that and have a better experience of it. If you don't want to come out at work, that's totally your choice. My only question whether you want to come out or not is, do you know your reasons? And do you like them? And then once you're through that, the question is, what am I really afraid of here? What am I really excited about? And how can I love myself through it?
So if we're really afraid of people judging us, that very well may happen. So how do we love ourselves through that? And I would do that in advance. So it's like, imagine someone saying the thing you really hope no one says. And then ask yourself, “How do I love myself through that?” And then if it happens, you're prepared. And it may never happen, but we feel a lot less afraid of things when we've prepared for them, and we know how to take care of ourselves in the event of them.
Now, thinking through something ahead of time is not the same as catastrophizing. Don't play it over and over again in your head that you think someone's going to say that. Go through the scenario one time, decide how you'll handle it, and then begin the practicing of the handling it.
So what I'm saying here is, don't rehearse the part that’s shitty you don't like. Instead, rehearse the part that's good that you do like. Rehearse the self-nurturing. Rehearse the self-care. Rehearse the positive self-talk. Rehearse the loving yourself through it. And by the time it does happen, if you rehearse the loving yourself through it, that's going to have the muscle memory there, that you’ll could be like, “This is the part where I love myself through it, even though I totally don't prefer what this person said.”
So many of us are doing the opposite of that. We're rehearsing the shitty part we don't like. I get why you want to do that; the brain has a negativity bias. You got to tell it on purpose to do the other thing. But when you tell it on purpose to do the other thing magical things will happen. You'll feel a lot better. You're going to enjoy life a lot more. You're going to enjoy work a lot more.
Okay, y'all, this was a big topic. And like I said at the beginning, I was really nervous to do this podcast. And I'm totally open to suggestions and feedback, and questions and comments and all of it. And you can come find me on Instagram at Kori Linn, and we can have a conversation about it. I hope you'll have a lovely week.
Oh, and PS, happy Pride. That's why even though I procrastinated my motherfucking face off, I was like, “I got to get this out during June because it's pride. And this is the time to have this conversation.
And if you love what I teach, and you want some help taking things a little bit deeper and figuring out how this all applies to your own life, I've got good news for you. I've got space for a few new one on one coaching clients starting this month. So let's hop on a call. I'll give you some coaching right away to help you get going. And if it seems like a good fit, I will share with you how we can work together. Just head on over to my website and click on the work with me button and get started there.
Also bonus, my coaching offering is totally virtual so as to better serve my global audience. And yes, I do work with people who are not native English speakers and we've had great success doing that. There's even a testimonial on my website with someone in that category so you can check that out on the testimonials page. All right, y'all have a lovely week and I will talk to you next time. Bye.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We'll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you're feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hey y'all, this week we are talking about what is for me a very personal topic. Something that I have experienced and some of you may be experiencing. For others of you, this may not be exactly relevant in like a one to one way.
This might not be an experience for you, but I invite you to listen along because like with all ‘s coaching, there's always something useful in there, even if the coaching is directed towards someone who's having a very different life experience than you are.
When I was in Kara Loewentheil’s old small group coaching program that no longer exists there were many other people in that program with me who had really different life experiences than I did. But one thing that I noticed was we had very similar thought patterns.
So I distinctly remember listening to a woman get coached about parenting. And she had two kids, I have no kids unless you count the cat and the dog. And I was amazed by how much value I still got out of listening to that coaching. And how much it applied to me, my brain, and my life even though our life circumstances were completely different. And I had never experienced exactly what she was going through. And I will never experience exactly what she was going through because I don't plan on having kids.
So I say that because I think sometimes people look for the coaching that is topic relevant to what they're going through. But sometimes the best coaching isn't topic relevant for you. Sometimes the best coaching, it's more about the underlying thought pattern that you may have in a completely different area of your life.
So, yeah, have a listen and then come and post on one of my Instagram posts about this week's podcast and let me know what you learned, how it applies to you, and how you're going to use this week's teaching to create more of what you want at work and in life.
Okay, so before we get started, I just want to tell you all, I love sharing with you all the ways in which I'm still a human. Even though I'm a coach who knows some exceptionally powerful tools. And I have a great example of that for this week, which is that I have been procrastinating this episode for approximately a million years.
So, almost since the podcast was brand new, I've known I wanted to record this episode and I have been just putting it off. And I've been doing it in this like really sneaky way. I'm sure you experience this too with your brain, where it seemed like I was putting it off for a really good reason.
I was like, “Well, I want to do some research. And I want to make sure I really get this right. And the LGBTQ community is a community I really care about.” And I was afraid of recording and releasing this podcast and getting it wrong. I was afraid that it wouldn't be good enough, right, which is just one of those classic thought patterns that I talk about all the time.
And like I teach, and as we can see, did that lead to me doing research? I can tell you right now, no, the fuck it did not. Here's what it led to, me doing nothing. Well, what I did do was I wrote “coming out podcast” on a list of potential future podcasts. And then I did nothing.
And every time I thought about recording this podcast, I was like, “Oh yeah, I really want to talk about that later.” And again, I wasn't researching. I wasn't planning, I wasn't like, “Let me sit down and just draft what I think are like my general thoughts on this topic.”
I was like, “That's so juicy and good. That's so needed. People really want to have that conversation. It's so important. But what if I fuck it up? What if it's terrible? What if everyone hates me? What if I do it wrong and I get canceled?”
I had so much fear there that I wasn't really paying attention to or addressing and so it did what fear does, which is it shut me down. And I'm sure you've experienced this in your own life at work and in other areas where you really want to do something but that critical voice in your head that's like, “What if you fuck it up?” Kind of just blocks you and keeps you stuck in this procrastination loop where you're always thinking about how like, “Well, I'll do a really good job on that later. And I'll do such a good job, that then I'll feel really safe, and I won't be afraid to like put my ideas out there.”
And definitely some people would actually have been doing that research because research can also be a way of avoiding. But for me I wasn't doing any of that. And even if I had been no amount of research is going to create emotional safety for me to have this conversation with you.
And people probably will disagree. Some people in the world will disagree with what I'm about to tell you. That's pretty much a given talking about anything, because there are what, 7 billion people in the world? We all have a lot of different opinions and beliefs. And quite frankly, I want some of those people to disagree with me.
Like as much as us humans are like, “I want universal approval.” I really don't because there's a lot of people who have really different ideas than mine about sexuality and revealing your sexuality at work if you happen to be not a heterosexual person. And yeah, they might be upset.
And there may also equally be people inside of the queer community, the LGBTQ or LGBTQIA community who also don't like the way I'm teaching it. And that's okay too because everyone else is allowed to have their opinions. And it's okay, even within a smaller group, if we don't all agree.
But I want to share with you today my experience and some coaching teachings that I think are relevant if this is something that you are thinking about, or want to do, or anything like that.
Okay, so first I want to tell you about my own coming out story. Which is interesting because I think this also relates to part of why my brain has a lot of fear around talking about my experience or talking as an expert about this is because I did not have what I consider to be like the normal queer experience. And what does that even mean, right? What does that even mean? Is there a normal queer experience?
But a lot of the people that I know who identify as queer or as lesbians have identified that way for a long time and knew that about themselves for a long time. And they came out in a very different time in the world than I did because they came out much younger.
I didn't come out until I was in my 30s. I'm still in my 30s, this was only a few years ago. So I had a much different experience, because I wasn't like a teenager or in my 20s. And I also had a much different experience because the world changed a lot between when I was a teenager and when I was in my 30s.
Also, geography matters, like I grew up in a small town in Ohio. And by the time I came out I was in Seattle, Washington, which is a very queer friendly place.
And I'm just going to say right now, sometimes I say LGBTQ, sometimes I say LGBTQIA, but for my shorthand I'm going to use the word queer, because that's how I personally identify. I will sometimes use the word like lesbian or gay also, it's like kind of a cornucopia of words for me. But when it really comes down to it, queer is the one that I identify with the most. So that's the one I will use as a shorthand.
And one more thing I want to speak to. So I also think part of the reason why I came out so much later, is because of internalized heteronormativity. So we talk a lot, like we generally, talk a lot about internalized homophobia and I do think that's very real. I think there's a lot of homophobia in our culture and it can get internalized.
Like we talked about, I think it was last week, about the sponge brain or maybe a few weeks ago. Your brain is like a sponge, it absorbs whatever is around it. So if you grew up somewhere where there was a lot of homophobia, you're going to absorb that into your sponge brain whether you meant to or not. Whether it agrees with your chosen values or not. The same thing with white supremacy. The same thing with Puritan work ethic. All kinds of different things, ableism, your brain will absorb whatever is around it.
And when we're children our brain is not like this, “Does this seem like a good idea to upload?” It just sort of uploads everything and then as adults we often have to sort of go back through and be like, “Do I want to keep this?” And if we don't, we have to do the work of deprogramming that, it is effort. Coaching is like a miracle and the things you can do with it are incredible. But there is effort involved, it's not just magic.
Okay, so there's that. But what I think I had more of was internalized heteronormativity. And what I mean when I say that, and this is like also the part where I'm like, “Oh, I don't have like the academic standing to say this, but I have my personal experience.”
So I'm speaking from my personal experience. And my lay person’s ideas, like I'm sure there are people with PhDs in this who would be able to have a much more like nuanced conversation in an academic way. But that's not what we're here to do. We're here to have a coaching conversation.
So when I finally was like, “I am not straight.” Which, by the way, is how I identified for a long time because I didn't know what I was. I knew what I wasn't. And by the time I got to that decision I had had sex with multiple women, y'all. I had made out with multiple, multiple women.
There were all these things in my life that looking back I was like, “These are all very strong pointers, and evidence, and cues, and clues. And I missed all of them.” And by I missed them, it's not like I didn't notice them, I was present when I did the things I did. But I used my confirmation bias to explain them away.
Here's what this looked like, so even though I had had sex with women on purpose and enjoyed it and was like, “Yes, that's a thing I would like to do more of.” I was so deeply believing in my own heterosexuality and in heteronormativity that I somehow managed to categorize that as like part of me being straight. Which doesn't make any fucking sense, but that is the brain on social conditioning.
So here's a thing that happened too, we have this messaging in our culture that if a woman wants to make out with or have sex with other women, like she's doing it for attention. And I totally bought into that idea. Not like consciously, subconsciously, right? That's the social conditioning piece. So even when I would do these things, I would be like, “Oh, do I really mean it? Am I just trying to get attention? Like, am I just bored?”
One of my strongest narratives was, “Oh, I'm just adventurous.” Which is interesting, because honestly, I don't know that I'm actually the most adventurous person. But that was the way my brain categorized my forays into queerness basically.
I was like, “Oh, yeah, I'm a straight girl but I'm wild. Or I'm a straight girl but I'm adventurous.” I did go through a brief period when I first moved to Seattle where I was like, “Oh, I'm pansexual.” But again, I questioned myself about that so much. Again, even though I'd already had multiple sexual experiences with women. Most of them just with women, not even with like men and women.
I'm really like letting it all hang out on this episode, y'all. But I think this is an important conversation and I'm willing to like, share my personal history with you to have this conversation. All of the evidence pointed to Kori is not a straight person. And yet my brain took all that evidence and took its little confirmation bias and was like, “Oh, I'm probably actually a straight person who's just adventurous and wants attention.”
And so I just want you to see how dismissive that is. Not on purpose, but subconsciously I was so dismissive of my own sexuality that I couldn't even see it for years. Maybe 10, more? I don't know, math is not what we're doing here on this podcast, we're doing coaching. So I don't know what the math is.
The point is, I second guessed the shit out of myself, and I don't think it's because I'm naturally a second guessing person. I think, first of all, because as women we are socially conditioned to second guess ourselves. But second of all, because of that internalized heteronormativity.
Here's what's also interesting, while I did grow up in Ohio in a small town, and that small town was probably not progressive in a lot of ways, my parents were incredibly progressive. And so I had instilled in me from a young age that like – I don't think they ever came right out and said it's totally okay to be queer.
I mean, first of all, at that time, in Ohio, queer would have been considered a slur. But by the time I was like, really questioning my sexuality, it's like I was totally like, “It's okay and wonderful to be queer.” I had a lot of queer friends. I had even been raised with very liberal politics.
I feel really grateful that my parents have the values that they had. We haven't always agreed on everything but when I was coming out to them it never even occurred to me that they would be upset. I was like so solid in this will not be a problem that I was just like, [inaudible].
I think it's so fascinating that the biggest blocker to me accepting myself and my own sexuality was actually my own thoughts that I didn't even choose on purpose about what was normal. And about who I was and the way that the culture defined me. Both defining all of us as like heterosexual by default, which I don't think is accurate, obviously, at all. But also because I'm a feminine presenting person. And because I'm a vivacious person, people really didn't take it seriously.
Even some of my friends in the queer community didn't take it seriously when I first was like, “I think maybe I'm not straight.” Some people said, “Oh, it's not easier to date women.” As though that would be the reason that I would be doing it, is that it would be easier. Or like literally people were like, “You just want attention.”
And I don't want to blame them at all for that, right? Because they absorbed the same social conditioning that I did. They were saying externally what I was saying internally. And because I believed it internally, I was believing it externally. If I had been like, “No, I'm not just doing it for attention, I'm totally solid in it.” I might not have enjoyed them saying that, but I wouldn't have believed them in the same way.
Okay, so this is all just to set the tone here for like, there is more going on with our social conditioning than just internalized homophobia. And I think the internalized heteronormativity can be a lot sneakier, because it's less about is it wrong or not? Am I afraid of it or not? Because that's kind of more obvious sometimes.
The internalized heteronormativity from my point of view is so much more subtle because it's just like, “Oh, no, none of that counts. No, you're really straight. You're just a teenager. Or you're just in an exploratory phase, or you're just curious, or you just want attention.” It's so dismissive just of our actual experience and so dismissive of anything that's not the straight, the heteronormative experience.
Okay, so that's all of that. That's all the pre stuff from my personal experience. And I think that matters for how I came out at work because again, I'm feminine presenting. So sometimes if you present as more like nonbinary or more masculine if you're a woman, or there's different kinds of like presentations also in the male spectrum of homosexuality, where it's like- I know more about the female experience, obviously.
But there is this idea that femmes have to always come out of the closet again and again because when people look at us, they don't assume we're queer. Whereas there are certain people where when people look at them, they assume they're queer. There are also, of course, heterosexual people that people look at and assume they're queer and they're wrong. So that's all of that.
But for me, in my experience, I felt really awkward coming out at work. And I think it's different than what a lot of people went through. Because for me, I wasn't worried that people wouldn't accept me because I was queer. I was worried that people would judge me because I had talked about dating men and then I was talking about dating women. And I didn't want to have to explain any of it.
So I kind of did this thing where I just didn't address it. Like I had talked about having a boyfriend and then I just talked about having a girlfriend. And then I like quietly, surreptitiously just like looked around to see what would happen. I think it's really interesting.
And again, I think this is more that I was afraid of being judged as a person. Like people thinking I was just doing it for attention, versus what I think is the much more common experience of being afraid of being unsafe.
I was not afraid of being unsafe. So if you are, that's a totally valid experience. It's just not what mine was. And it's not what my particular self-judgmental thoughts related to. So if you want to come out at work or not, and, honestly, my vote on that is do whatever the fuck you want for whatever reasons you want.
Like, I would look back to the episode on like, should I leave my job or not? I think this is a very similar thing. A lot of people think if you're queer, you should come out. I don't agree with that. I think it's a personal choice. I think if you want to, it's available, coaching tools can help. And if you don't want to, you're allowed to not do that.
And I'm talking about sexuality, but there's all kinds of different stuff, right? Sometimes we have parts of ourselves that we don't want to share at work. And my clients and other people will be like, “Oh, am I like being dishonest by not sharing this? Am I lying to people?” And my take on that is you get to choose how much of yourself you share with people. And my question is, do you know your reasons? And do you like them? So that's that.
So whatever you choose to do, that's up to you. Right? I think it has to be up to you. And even if I told you what to do, it would still be up to you whether you want to listen or not. But I'm never going to tell you what to do, especially not about that.
So whether you want to or not, totally your choice. But if you do want to, I think a question to ask yourself and to help you guide yourself through this process is, what am I the most worried about?
So for me, what I was the most worried about was people judging me and someone coming right out saying, “But you were dating a dude like two weeks ago, or like two months ago. And you're dating a woman now? Are you bisexual? Are you gay?”
And I was worried about that because I didn't know how to answer those questions. Because where I had gotten to in my own thing was, I don't fucking know, I just know- Actually, at that point, in the very beginning I was like, “I don't know. And maybe in two months I think I'm straight.” I was so, confused I don't think is the right word, uncertain. I think I was just uncertain.
I was so uncertain about what my own feelings meant. And I was so still in that dismissive phase. Where I didn't even know how to take myself seriously that I was super afraid of other people not taking me seriously or kind of like poking holes in what I was doing. That's what I was most afraid of.
What you're most afraid of might be really different, so this is going to be a very unique experience. So get a piece of paper and write down like, first of all, do I want to do this? If yes, what are my reasons? Do I like them? If no, what are my reasons? Do I like them?
Even if you're not going to do it, I think it's still worthwhile to have the conversation with yourself of what am I the most afraid of? Because sometimes people do find out things we don't want them to find out. And if we've done the thought work ahead of time, even if we don't plan on telling people, we prepare ourselves more mentally and emotionally for that happening.
Hopefully, it never happens, but sometimes in life it does. People do get outed sometimes. And with all of coaching, we can't control the world. We can't control what other people do. We can't control if other people are homophobic. We can't control if other people are racist. We can't control if other people are ableists.
What we can do is decide on purpose, “Okay, I'm in this imperfect world, this thing happened, 12 out of 10 would not prefer it to happen. But since it did, how do I want to think, feel, and act? What do I want to create for myself inside of this container with this imperfect situation that I don't prefer?”
Okay, so going back to if you want to come out at work, or even if you don't but you want to have this exploration with yourself, what am I most afraid of? What am I most excited about? And within that, what am I most afraid of happening but also what feelings am I most afraid of feeling?
I think our brain tends to go there and just stop. It's like, “Yes, I'll just be over here catastrophizing how terrible this will be.” And that's why I think the second part is also important. What am I most excited about? What am I most excited about getting to feel?
And then I think the question is, no matter what you choose, whether you choose to come out. Whether you choose to not come out. Whether you choose to share some details but not all the details, my question for you is, how do you love yourself through it?
So if you decide, I'm not fucking telling anybody, how do you love yourself within that choice? Because what a lot of people's brains do is go, “I'm not telling anybody.” And then they second guess themselves, and they judge themselves, and they say mean things to themselves. And listen, you can do that if you want to, but I just don't think it's a super fun option.
Instead, it's like, “I'm choosing not to tell anybody for my private reasons, and I get to do whatever I want. And how do I love myself through that process?” Like when my brain starts to pipe up with like, “You're lying” what is my loving response to that? And then if you do want to tell people, how do you love yourself through that?
And I'm going to tell y'all, I don't know that I was doing a great job of what I'm inviting you to do back when I did this. Because it was before I found the coaching tools that I use now. I did know some of this stuff. I had been studying the coaching industry for a long time before I became a coach. But the particular toolkit I use now, I didn't have that one yet. And I still had so much of that internalized heteronormativity that really got in the way of me loving myself.
Now, I still muddled through. And I was really lucky because I was working in corporate IT. And through whatever miracle of the universe, I was working on a team with tons of queer women. Like bunches of them, more than would be in the normal population.
There were so many people in that space, and so I felt a lot safer. And I think maybe that's also why the internalized homophobia, which I'm sure I still did have, and the fear of being unsafe, probably didn't kick up as much for me, was because, again, living in Seattle, being on this team with just a very large amount of queer women per capita.
But when it comes to having emotionally loved myself and have my own back through that experience, I would say I only sort of did so. Because I was second guessing my own ass so much back then. I was judging myself so harshly, I was so worried about getting my own sexuality wrong and how humiliating that would be. Which I think just goes to show you where my mindset and headspace was back then that that's what I was worried about.
Whereas now I have a totally different mindset and a totally different headspace, which is really important. I would never get to where I am in my business now and where I am as a coach now if I had kept all those same thoughts. I went through some very intensive coaching programs as a client. And that's how I got to be who I am now.
So listen, it's not like you have to like love yourself perfectly through it, I clearly was not doing that, and I made it through. And I actually had a really great experience even though I felt wobbly and uncomfortable a lot of the time.
A lot of the thing that I needed actually was to be able to tolerate my own discomfort. I got very little anything back from anyone else there. And again, that's not everyone's experience, but that was mine. But I made it excruciating for myself sometimes with how I’d talk to myself about it inside my head, and how I would catastrophize and how worried I was. And really with how much I judged myself.
Now, others of you may have a really different experience. You may have very real kickback from other people. You may experience homophobia from other people or other kinds of judgment, that's possible.
Again, coaching is not going to take that away. It's not going to change everyone else in the world. But what it is going to give you is the capacity to choose on purpose whether you want to upload their shitty thoughts to your brain. And whether you want to take their feedback seriously. And whether or not you want to stay in that workplace.
You get to do whatever you want, for whatever reasons you want. And when you really know that and kind of like metabolize that into your mindset, it gives you so much more freedom. And then we don't need to control other people.
I mean, I do think it would be great to live in a culture with no homophobia, but that's not currently on offer. And so living in a culture that does have some homophobia, I think it's much more powerful for me to think about, “Okay, if that's going to happen and I might run into it, how do I want to think about that? And how do I want to feel about it? And what do I want to do? And what results do I want to create for myself?”
And sometimes that means being able to think differently when I run into a person who does like say something homophobic. And sometimes it means like choosing to live somewhere where I think I will run into less homophobia.
Now, I live in California, even in California, I could still run into homophobia. And I would still choose to manage my mind about that. But I think it is totally fine for you to do a mixture of deciding how you want to be in the world with your mindset and also deciding like what things you want to put into place on a more circumstantial level to create the life you want.
If you put the circumstantial things into place, and don't do the mindset, it doesn't really work, because the thing is, you could live in the most liberal part of the country, but if your brain still replaying something homophobic someone said 20 years ago to you in middle school, you're going to have that emotional experience now, even in the safer place.
So I don't think just changing the circumstances works. But I do think when we choose on purpose how we're going to think and feel, we do still sometimes want to change the circumstances to create more of the experience we want.
Okay, that was kind of a lot so let's review. If you want to come out at work, there are certain tools that can really help you do that and have a better experience of it. If you don't want to come out at work, that's totally your choice. My only question whether you want to come out or not is, do you know your reasons? And do you like them? And then once you're through that, the question is, what am I really afraid of here? What am I really excited about? And how can I love myself through it?
So if we're really afraid of people judging us, that very well may happen. So how do we love ourselves through that? And I would do that in advance. So it's like, imagine someone saying the thing you really hope no one says. And then ask yourself, “How do I love myself through that?” And then if it happens, you're prepared. And it may never happen, but we feel a lot less afraid of things when we've prepared for them, and we know how to take care of ourselves in the event of them.
Now, thinking through something ahead of time is not the same as catastrophizing. Don't play it over and over again in your head that you think someone's going to say that. Go through the scenario one time, decide how you'll handle it, and then begin the practicing of the handling it.
So what I'm saying here is, don't rehearse the part that’s shitty you don't like. Instead, rehearse the part that's good that you do like. Rehearse the self-nurturing. Rehearse the self-care. Rehearse the positive self-talk. Rehearse the loving yourself through it. And by the time it does happen, if you rehearse the loving yourself through it, that's going to have the muscle memory there, that you’ll could be like, “This is the part where I love myself through it, even though I totally don't prefer what this person said.”
So many of us are doing the opposite of that. We're rehearsing the shitty part we don't like. I get why you want to do that; the brain has a negativity bias. You got to tell it on purpose to do the other thing. But when you tell it on purpose to do the other thing magical things will happen. You'll feel a lot better. You're going to enjoy life a lot more. You're going to enjoy work a lot more.
Okay, y'all, this was a big topic. And like I said at the beginning, I was really nervous to do this podcast. And I'm totally open to suggestions and feedback, and questions and comments and all of it. And you can come find me on Instagram at Kori Linn, and we can have a conversation about it. I hope you'll have a lovely week.
Oh, and PS, happy Pride. That's why even though I procrastinated my motherfucking face off, I was like, “I got to get this out during June because it's pride. And this is the time to have this conversation.
And if you love what I teach, and you want some help taking things a little bit deeper and figuring out how this all applies to your own life, I've got good news for you. I've got space for a few new one on one coaching clients starting this month. So let's hop on a call. I'll give you some coaching right away to help you get going. And if it seems like a good fit, I will share with you how we can work together. Just head on over to my website and click on the work with me button and get started there.
Also bonus, my coaching offering is totally virtual so as to better serve my global audience. And yes, I do work with people who are not native English speakers and we've had great success doing that. There's even a testimonial on my website with someone in that category so you can check that out on the testimonials page. All right, y'all have a lovely week and I will talk to you next time. Bye.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We'll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you're feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
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