2 - (SYM 58) How Do Queer and Trans Young Adults Develop Emotion-response Styles? Influences of Caregiver Emotion Socialization on Emotion Beliefs and Coping

Introduction: Greater exposure to adverse childhood events has been associated with poorer mental health in sexual and gender minority (SGM) people (Schnarrs et al., 2019), and emotion-related mechanisms (e.g., emotional awareness, emotion regulation) appear to play a significant role in these outcomes. However, the impact of emotion socialization on SGMs’ abilities to identify, understand, and cope with emotions has yet to be investigated. This mixed method study presents preliminary qualitative findings on early emotion socialization, emotion clarity, and emotion regulation in a sample of SGM young adults.

Method: A purposive community sample of 28 SGM young adults (M_age = 26.3, SD_age = 1.93) endorsing histories of invalidation and/or minority stress completed semi-structured qualitative interviews evaluating early caregiver emotion socialization, emotion beliefs, and coping patterns. They also completed a demographic questionnaire and measures of alexithymia and early caregiver invalidation. Interviews were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. Systematic qualitative coding is ongoing, and results of preliminary applied thematic analysis are presented below.

Results: Three main themes related to emotion socialization and its impacts emerged from the qualitative data. First, SGMs who described their caregivers, during childhood, as emotionally expressive and/or supportive self-identified with high emotion awareness, discussed emotions’ utility, and reported comfort with expressing emotions in current relationships. Second, SGMs describing high-conflict households or “angry” caregivers varied in emotion awareness, endorsed negative beliefs about anger, and reported either suppressing or being reactive to anger. Finally, SGMs describing caregivers as avoidant or discouraging of emotions reported low emotion awareness, aversions to guilt, shame, and anxiety, and frequent masking and suppression. Final analyses will stratify qualitative findings by the early invalidation and alexithymia measures.

Conclusions: Early emotion socialization, including caregivers’ responses to SGMs’ emotions as well as caregivers’ own emotion modeling, can influence SGMs’ emotion clarity, beliefs, and regulation strategies in young adulthood. Emotion socialization may represent a potential preventative target for SGM youth and their families, while emotion psychoeducation and identification skills may be important for SGMs struggling with mental health conditions.