Finding Your Kind of Normal: LGBTQ+ identities, difference and belonging
- Paul@DifferentKeys.Online
- Oct 21
- 7 min read
What does it mean to be 'normal' in a world that prizes conformity? In Finding Your Kind of Normal, Dr Paul Fretwell explores LGBTQ+ life, neurodiversity and coaching — finding meaning not in opposition, but in coexistence.
Finding Your Kind of Normal
A new series exploring identity, difference, and belonging
This post launches my new series, Finding Your Kind of Normal. It’s a space where I discuss what it means to be LGBTQ+ in a world where full acceptance is still the exception, and where hostility and polarisation are on the rise. However, this series isn’t only for members of the LGBTQ+ community — it’s for everyone who wants to understand their fellow human beings a little better, to connect across difference, and to reduce the damaging polarisation that continues to fragment our society.
As co-host of ADHD UK’s support group for LGBTQ+ adults, I hear every month about the challenges people face around sexuality, gender identity, and neurodivergence. Growing up LGBTQ+ in a heterosexual world remains difficult, despite progress towards equality. Legal reforms can change laws, but they don’t erase the old prejudices many of us still carry.
Research shows that neurodivergent people are significantly more likely to be LGBTQ+ than the general population. The combination can create specific challenges: did neurodivergence delay queer disclosure? Did being gay mask the signs that led to a late diagnosis? For many, there are two separate things to come out about — both polarising in the current political climate, and exhausting when you must justify your existence on two fronts.
Amid this instability, Finding Your Kind of Normal draws on theory and evidence-based research to offer understanding and direction. It’s about lived realities — relationships, work, identity, and the messy business of building a life in stormy times. But above all, it’s about getting to know yourself: understanding your nature, feeling comfortable on your own ground, and defining your normal not in relation to others’ expectations, but in relation to yourself, your body, your mind, and the ways you connect with the world around you.
Why Talk About 'Normal' At All?
Some readers may wonder why I’ve chosen such a provocatively oppositional phrase: finding your kind of normal. Shouldn’t this be about celebrating queerness, difference, and nonconformity? Isn’t ‘normal’ the very category that has so often been used to exclude us?
Writers like Nick Walker argue exactly that. In Neuroqueer Heresies (2021), Walker suggests that ‘normal’ is a harmful fiction designed to police difference. From this perspective, the task is to abolish the very idea of normality. All queering, Walker writes, is by definition oppositional — subverting, defying, and ‘fucking with’ normativity.
This approach can be thrilling — it jolts us into questioning whose interests ‘normal’ serves, and how conformity constrains us. But provocation is not the same as practice. Living day to day, subverting and defying can be exhausting. In practice, the call to ‘abolish normal’ can leave people untethered, even more alienated from themselves.
The Limits of 'Neuroqueer'
Let me be clear: I deeply respect Nick Walker’s work in giving voice to neurodivergent and queer lives. But I have concerns about the way ‘neuroqueer’ is framed. To define yourself primarily in opposition — to live always as a kind of resistance — may sound radical, but it risks keeping a narrow normativity at the centre of the story.
Take something as simple as being left-handed. To open a door with your left hand is not an act of subversion. It’s just… your way of being. Calling it a deliberate rejection of right-handed ‘normativity’ paradoxically reinforces the very hierarchy it’s trying to undo. You are forever cast as the rebel, never simply the person you are.
This, to me, feels unsustainable. It risks turning identity into a performance of opposition rather than an inhabiting of self.
What I’m advocating instead is a more dialectical understanding of difference — one that recognises contradiction without turning it into combat. Two experiences can exist side by side without either invalidating the other. The left-handed and the right-handed, the neurotypical and the neurodivergent, the straight and the gay: each expresses a way of being human, shaped by biology, culture, and context. To grant them equal value is not to blur their distinctions but to acknowledge that truth is often plural.
This is where meaning and wellbeing begin to take root — not in opposition, but in coexistence. When we stop treating difference as a threat to be resisted or a performance to be maintained, we create the space to be. It is, in many ways, an act of quiet revolution: recognising difference without hierarchy, and allowing multiple truths to coexist.
That, to me, is the essence of finding your kind of normal — not subverting the world, but inhabiting it fully, on your own terms.
Your Kind of Normal
Normal isn’t a single template to conform to, nor a cage to break out of. It’s the ground you already stand on — the rhythms, quirks, and truths of your own body and mind.
The word kind in ‘your kind of normal’ carries a few layers of meaning, all intended:
Kind, as in type or variation: this is your experience of normal, not someone else’s.
Kind of, as in almost or approximate: close enough is good enough — perfection isn’t required.
Kind, as in kin or kinship: others may experience life in ways very similar to you; they may be scattered across the world, but you are connected by an experiential bond. The internet has been transformational for such connections.
Kind, as in kindness or compassion: something we all need more of — something to nurture, promote, and protect.
So, to find your kind of normal is to know and accept yourself, to value your connections with others, and to be compassionate about difference. You are not weird, deviant, or deficient — you are you: all that you are, and all that you can be.
Why It Matters — Now More Than Ever
For LGBTQ+ people — and for those of us who are also neurodivergent — the pressure to distort ourselves into someone else’s definition of normal is relentless. We are told we are too much, or not enough; abnormal, broken, in need of fixing.
But the truth is simpler, and more radical: you are already normal. Not by some external standard, but by the measure of your own being.
Coaching helps you find and inhabit that truth. It’s about building habits, cultivating strengths, and shaping a life that feels both authentic and sustainable.
It begins, as ever, with knowing yourself. The Delphic Oracle instructed all visitors to “Know thyself.” A few thousand years later, Gloria Gaynor showed us how to know ourselves and be proud about it in the biggest gay dance floor anthem of all time. Wise words are sometimes found in the lowliest of places — ‘you are what you are — and what you are needs no excuses.’
What’s Coming Next
This post opens the door to the Finding Your Kind of Normal series. Each instalment will take a different angle on what it means to live from your own centre, especially as an LGBTQ+ person navigating a world that still struggles with difference.
Here’s a glimpse of what’s ahead:
Why LGBTQ+ Coaching Matters — Why specialist coaching is needed, and how it helps us reclaim self-worth and possibility.
Comedy, Culture and Coaching — What role-reversal in popular culture can teach us about perspective, resilience, and change.
Straight Jacket and The Velvet Rage: A Coach’s Response — Reflecting on two influential books about gay men, shame, and the challenge of moving beyond it.
Why Pride Matters More Than Ever in the Age of Algorithms and AI — How Pride has been shaped, erased, and most recently, weaponised — and why it still matters.
Together, these posts explore culture and identity while returning to one central theme: that your kind of normal is already yours to claim.
A Personal Note
I have very personal reasons for writing this series. As a gay man in my early fifties, I lived through the end of the AIDS crisis. My first boyfriend died of the disease, and it has taken others I cared deeply about. Many years later, even though HIV is no longer a death sentence thanks to treatment and prevention, gay men are still suffering. It doesn’t seem right that so many names on my contact list are no longer with us.
And I know the problem isn’t confined to gay men. Too many talented LGBTQ+ people are lost to us before their time — and this year has been especially painful for me in that regard. The reasons are never simple, but the statistics are getting worse. Charities report rising mental health difficulties and growing barriers to support.
I don’t have all the answers. But as a Mental Health First Aider, I do know this: when people feel connected — when they feel seen, understood, and accepted for who they are — that connection offers real protection against despair. So please, if you or someone you know needs help, reach out to one of the many excellent organisations in the UK that work tirelessly to support our communities (you’ll find a list on this blog).
And finally, remember to be kind — to others, because you never know what someone else might be carrying; and to yourself, because kindness allows us to feel comfortable with different truths living side by side
Get in touch
If Finding Your Kind of Normal resonates with you, and you’d like support in exploring what that means for your own life, I’d be glad to help. Coaching offers a space to reflect, refocus, and begin shaping change from a place of understanding — not judgment.
Don't forget to check out my LGBTQ+ coaching webpage!
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