If the Last Few Years Have Been Hellish: What Parents of LGBTQ Kids in Crisis Need to Hear Right Now

For you, the past few months or even years have been hellish. This episode will confront the crisis you've been white-knuckling through all alone. Welcome to More Human, More Kind, the podcast helping parents of LGBTQ+ kids move from fear to fierce allyship and feel less alone and more informed so you can protect what matters, raise brave kids, and spark collective change. I'm Heather Hester. Let's get started. Let's start by saying this out loud: you are not dramatic. You are not overreacting. If you would describe the past few years of your life as hellish, I believe you. For some of you, this hasn't been and isn't just a rough patch. It's not a hard year. It's been perhaps visits to the ER, 3:00 AM panic, she's missing again texts, late night searches, yet another conversation about online safety, meetings with professional after professional. Safety plans, and so on. You've been living in survival mode for so long that you barely remember what a normal Tuesday looks like. This episode is where we stop minimizing that. We stop calling it a phase and we start telling the truth about what crisis does to your child, to you, and to your whole family. Naming where you are right now is essential to being able to move forward. So listen to the following scenarios and just think about if any of them resonate with you. Most days your child is hurting themselves or putting themselves in dangerous situations. They're in and out of intensive mental health care and nothing seems to be getting better. You've watched them pick up coping skills that are actually harming them, like self-harm, disordered eating, substance use and abuse, risky behavior. And whether or not these resonate, you feel helpless. Perhaps terrified, and probably exhausted. You may even feel angry at times, which ultimately adds just another layer of shame. So what does it mean to be in and out of intensive mental health care? It means residential, IOP, PHP, New therapists, new psychiatrists, new meds, new diagnoses. You probably have a color-coded calendar of appointments, and yet no one seems to be handing you a real roadmap. Calling your experience hellish isn't an exaggeration. Inviting someone into your home to paint is a big deal. You want people you can trust, people who show up on time, respect your space, and do the job right the first time. That's exactly what we do at Heather Hester Painting and Decorating. With over 58 years of experience and a commitment to true craftsmanship, we treat your home like it's our own, creating masterpieces one wall at a time. To schedule a consultation, go to go hesterdecorating.com/mhmk. That's go.hesterdecorating.com/mhmk. It's what it feels like when your nervous system has been locked in fight or flight for years. Your body can't tell the difference between being chased by a lion and waiting for the next, "We need to talk about your child" call. You're living in that constant tug of war between wanting to keep them safe and wanting them to have a life, all the while not knowing where that line is anymore. Every day you wake up wondering if today's the day you get that call. Maybe you sleep, but it's not rest. It's hovering. It's checking your phone in the middle of the night. It's listening for footsteps. It's bracing for the police, a hospital, school, or a neighbor to be on the other end of the line. And you're becoming numb to the crises because They're constant. I want you to hear this because it is so, so important. You're not cold. You're not heartless. You're overloaded. When crisis becomes your normal, your brain starts to protect you by numbing out. You stop reacting to self-harm disclosures with the same intensity. Not because you don't care, but because you're at capacity. And that numbness can feel terrifying. If you have other children, they may be being neglected because one child is in, in constant emergency mode. I completely remember trying to balance this one, and I know how impossible and overwhelming it can feel. You love all of your kids, yet you're painfully aware that the others are getting the leftovers of you, the tired version of you, the distracted version, the "I'm sorry, I have to take this call" version. And the guilt of that is its own kind of heartbreak. Do you feel like you've normalized living in terror or in crisis mode? That's not sustainable. And while your baseline is likely terror, your nervous system is completely fried. Your relationships are probably strained. You keep pushing through because What's the alternative? But inside, inside, a part of you knows, I cannot go on like this. So here is the belief that's limiting you. We just need to get through this phase and things will settle down. I get that this belief makes sense. I've been there. Hope is a survival strategy. It's how you've made it this far. But at a certain point, maybe tomorrow will be better turns into I'm passively waiting while everything continues to get worse. Please hear me when I say this: crisis doesn't resolve on its own. It escalates until someone intervenes. With self-harm, suicidality, and high-risk behaviors, doing nothing or doing the same thing over and over is not neutral. It's escalation by default. Crisis is like a fire. If you don't actively address it, It doesn't quietly burn out. It spreads. The longer you wait, the more trauma accumulates for everyone. For your child, for you, for your partner, for all of your other children. Trauma is not just what happened. It's also what didn't happen. The support that wasn't there. The conversations that never came. The tools no one handed you. Your child needs you to be the adult who says, this ends now and gets real help. And I want to be clear, real help doesn't mean you magically fixing everything. It means admitting we are over our heads. We need expertise, tools, and support. This is not you failing as a parent. This is you stepping into your power as one. So look, if hellish feels like an accurate description of your most recent months or years. If your child is hurting themselves and you're terrified you're going to lose them, and you've realized you are so in over your head and don't know the extent of support they need or you need, and what you really want is to finally see them safe and stable. To wake up without dread, and to have a roadmap that actually works? That's why I wrote Parenting with Pride and created my private coaching program. My book and my program exist because families like yours deserve more than piecemeal advice and late-night Google spirals. You deserve a path. You deserve someone who understands this terrain. If this is resonating for you, go to the show notes or visit morehumanmorekind.com/discovery to schedule a quick call. You do not have to white-knuckle it through another year like this. Until next time, remember, You are not alone.