Chrishell Stause, Chris Olsen and More Stars Share Their Advice for Those Struggling to Come Out

Yes, it gets better as everyone from Portia de Rossi to Laverne Cox and Neil Patrick Harris has proclaimed, the initial viral video launching a nonprofit organization aimed at helping LGBTQ+ youth struggling with fear, rejection, bullying and loneliness. 

But when you're in it, that only-up-from-here rock bottom can feel awfully scary.   

"Telling your family is a huge, huge deal," Texas-raised actor Matt Bomer told OUT Magazine of coming out to his conservative Christian family. "I really view my life as divided between the time before I told my parents, and the time after. And the decisions I made, and the life I lived, before and after, are vastly different. It's night and day."

And though the letter he sent them ("I would have lost my sense of direction if I tried to do it in person") led to "radio silence for a long, long time, at least six months," and then "the blowup that I'd always feared," he has no regrets. 

"We got that out of the way, and we got down to the business of figuring out how to love each other," he told the outlet. "I would say within a matter of years we started to figure it out. It was a struggle. It's a struggle for anybody to take their paradigms and set of beliefs and understandings and completely flip the script."

But for those looking to start a new chapter, we've got the backup. 

To mark Pride Month, we asked stars to share the best advice for those looking to live their truth and they came through. See what Andy Cohen, TikToker Chris Olsen and more celebs had to say about starting that all-important conversation. 

When having a big coming out conversation feels too daunting, Andy Cohen suggests just taking one tiny step forward. "My advice would be, find one friend that you can tell," The Daddy Diaries: The Year I Grew Up author told E! News. "All it takes is one friend that you know will be supportive. And that friend can be your island and just kind of branch out from there." 

It also helps to keep in mind that things are rarely as bad as they seem. As the Watch What Happens Live host put it, "It's always worse in your head than it's going to be." 

Find your crew, love them hard. That's the takeaway TikToker Chris Olsen has. "Surround yourself with support, whether that be your blood relatives or your chosen family," he suggested. "There are people ready to love you for who you are. Keeping those people around will create an environment where you feel safe to come out."

It's totally grool if you're still trying to sort out your life, insists Mean Girls alum Jonathan Bennett. "To every LGBTQ+ kid out there trying to figure out who they are in this world, just remember most adults don't have it figured out yet either. I still don't," said the Food Network host, who recently celebrated his second anniversary with husband Jaymes Vaughan. "But remember that just being alive and present in this moment, you are never too much, and you are always enough."

Quite simply, the real ones will always be in your corner, stressed Chrishell Stause. "If someone truly loves you, your happiness should always come before their beliefs," explained the Selling Sunset star, recently wed to singer G Flip. "Never conform to others ideas they have for your life. It's yours and you only get one."

"Be patient with yourself," advised "Be Your Man" singer G Flip. "Everything flows in waves, there will be hard times, but there will also be beautiful times. All of my most euphoric moments have been the most criticized in my life." 

The Aussie's love life now firmly in the spotlight, thanks to their romance with Selling Sunset star Stause, G Flip added, "The journey to being your authentic self is never easy with the world's judgement, but just stay true to yourself, because you're beautiful."

While Francesca Farago told E! News that living your truth is "the most liberating, freeing feeling in the whole world," the reality star's fiancé Jesse Sullivan knows it can be too much for some to handle. "If I would have came out as trans maybe, like, 10 years ago, I honestly don't think I would have been getting the hate I get now," the TikTok personality said. "I think this is a really tough time to specifically be transgender." 

Which is why, he continued, "I can't really tell a young person, 'You should just come out to your parents.' I don't think it's a safe thing to say. I think we live in a world where that could end in harm."

Instead, explained the dad to 15-year-old Arlo, he recommends navigating another universe. "We live in a world where you can literally find a community on your phone, on your laptop or on your iPad. And that's how I started," he noted. "There's communities everywhere, and there's people that will support and love you. And that's going to be the best way to come out if you don't feel like you have a safe space."

For 90 Day Fiancé: The Other Way alum Kenny Niedermeier, love, actually, is all around. "It's going to be rough at first," the reality star acknowledged, "but at the end of it you're going to feel so much better when you get that weight off you and those chains off you. Your life is yours and whoever really loves you is going to be on board. It's going to take some time for some people, but they're gonna come back around."

It can be a hard message to believe, though, even for his now-husband Armando Rubio. "When you're in the closet, you think it's not going to happen for me and you live afraid," the Mexico native told E! News. "But I truly believe when you love yourself, when you come to terms with yourself and, I think, to a certain point, when you are selfish and put yourself first, that really comes back and blesses you." 

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