Queer Attachment: Expanding Paths to Connection and Belonging

Queering Mental Health: The First Step Toward Queer Attachment

Part One | Part Two | Part Three

Two people laugh and smile while holding green mugs and sitting at a brown wooden picnic table.

At Our Landing Place, our mission is to provide queer-centered mental health support and education that challenges norms, embraces multiplicity, and honors the diverse experiences of the Queer community. In this blog series, we'll explore queer attachment, beginning with how we approach queering mental health—a foundational step before diving into attachment theories through a queer lens. Our work starts by recognizing that the human experience, especially for Queer folks, resists rigid categorization. As Tilsen (2013) writes,

“To queer something is an emergent process of disrupting expected norms in such a way that new possibilities emerge, and standard unquestioned practices become open for interrogation.”

This disruption offers new ways of being and belonging, which are essential in mental health and relational work.

Queering Normativity: Expanding Possibilities

To queer something is to challenge the rigidity of what is expected and what is assumed to be “normal.” The term “normative” refers to what is usual and expected simply because it’s usual. Queering mental health means not only challenging heteronormativity but also examining the subtle ways in which queer people are expected to conform to a different set of norms—often in ways that replicate rigid binaries.

Queering is an invitation to hold multiple truths at once, to embrace complexity and fluidity in identity. It’s a rejection of rigidity in favor of an expansive understanding of human experience (Maeder, 2020). Queer people have long been experts at navigating contradictions—holding love and pain, resistance and belonging, in ways that challenge societal expectations. As we continue to explore queer attachment in this series, we’ll build on this foundation of queering normativity, asking how these expansive possibilities play out in relationships and emotional bonds.

What Does It Mean to “Queer” Mental Health?

Queering is more than simply opposing the norm—it’s about expanding human possibilities and experiences. We reject fixed categories of identity and behavior that limit how we see ourselves and others. Tilsen and Nylund (2010) describe queerness as a term for individuals who resist norms related to sex, gender, and relationships. but it is also a political approach rooted in queer theory. This approach encourages us to question heteronormativity, homonormativity, and transnormativity—the systems that rely on rigid, naturalized identities to sustain societal expectations.

For many, norms provide a sense of safety and belonging. As Hammoud-Beckett (2007) notes, concepts like “born this way,” “born in the wrong body,” or “coming out” have become dominant narratives through which queer individuals gain a sense of legitimacy. While these discourses aren't inherently problematic, their dominance can force compliance, particularly for those who want to access community, belonging, or legal protection. But what happens when these norms don’t align with someone’s lived experience? What if coming out isn't the only way to live a true Queer life? What if dysphoria isn’t the only or primary way a trans person understands their gender? By queering mental health, we move beyond rigid frameworks and open up space for deeper, more authentic exploration.

The Role of Narratives in Queer-Centered Care

Attachment theory and narratives are deeply intertwined, as the stories we tell about ourselves and our relationships often reflect the foundational bonds we’ve formed throughout our lives. By understanding these narratives, we can gain insight into how attachment shapes our sense of self, security, and connection.

Narratives are the stories we tell about ourselves (about our identities, our relationships, and our struggles), are shaped by larger sociocultural narratives, and are a relational process. We are always in relationship to others, to broader cultural narratives, and how we learn and grow through each other. This also aligns with queer theory’s understanding that identity is not a fixed or individualistic entity, but something co-constructed with others. This perspective is crucial in queer-centered care, where many of our struggles stem from sociocultural oppression, rigid binaries, and exclusionary norms.

Through deconstructing conversations and questions that reveal how relational dynamics co-construct a person’s sense of self, we open up possibilities to rewrite our stories and experiences beyond societal prescriptions of identity and attachment formations.

Collectivistic Identities and Queer Communities

Western psychology tends to focus on individualism—how a person can improve, overcome, or manage their own struggles. Yet, for many queer folks, particularly those from racialized backgrounds, community and collectivism are crucial to identity and healing.

Collectivism can play a role in queer identities as noted above, but collectivistic approaches can also include support systems that resist the isolation so often imposed by heteronormative frameworks and strengthen these connections. When possible, this can include collaborating with loved ones to rewire the attachment that was impacted by normative narratives. This can also help queer people build relational networks that affirm rather than invalidate their relational attachments—with others as well as ourselves.

Looking Ahead: Queer Attachment

As we move forward in this blog series, our next post will dive into the concept of “attachment.” Attachment theory focuses on how early childhood relationships with caregivers shape our ability to form secure or insecure attachments later in life. While valuable, this theory often assumes a normative framework that doesn’t fully account for the lived experiences of queer individuals.

In our next post, we’ll explore how queer attachment disrupts these normative assumptions, focusing instead on how queer people form unique relational bonds, often outside of the traditional family structure. We’ll also examine how queering attachment theory opens up new ways of understanding emotional intimacy, security, and belonging in a world that often seeks to exclude queer identities from these experiences.

At Our Landing Place, we are here to disrupt, expand, and invite new possibilities. Stay tuned as we continue to queer the way we think about mental health, relationships, and attachment.