Hey wonderful ladies, gents and everyone outside!
I wanted to ask if anyone else experienced something like this early on their feminising journey: I’ve recently finally shared my dramas/worries around my gender identity with my doctor (after who knows how long of the writing being on the wall and loud) and suddenly things are a bit easier, it feels like I can breathe a bit deeper, the internal strife is quieter. But within my consciousness i don’t think i feel any different? It’s almost like a silent subconscious side of me was trying to scream for years that something was wrong, and I’ve finally listened at least a bit so it’s stopped fighting me, although the “me” i experience doesn’t seem to care that much.
I ofc feel relieved (and terrified!) to have talked about it at all. But it feels deeper than that, and this deeper peace I’m experiencing is obvious to observe within myself. I’m planning to ask to speak to a specialist next appointment but that could be weeks or months away and I’d like to try to make some sense of it before then! Unfortunately I don’t have any family or friends who this topic would 100% be safe with, they’ve all shown at least yellow or orange flags of transphobia.
I’d love to hear any of your own stories or similar experiences. Also thank you for this community, i don’t think i would have opened up if it wasn’t for the tales and thoughts shared.
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Yes a similar experience for me too, I’ve ‘known’ for a long time, but repression and not really having any exposure to trans people I don’t do anything for a long time. Went to therapy for depression and low self esteem, did that for 2 years.
Finally hit my breaking point and had massive anxiety for like a week, but one night when I was trying to get to sleep, it just broke, ‘I’m trans, I want to be a womann!’ And then… peace-ish. Of course, worrying about all the stuff that entails, but the storm was over.
Thanks for sharing! I’m now quite worried that all 3 comments are indirectly telling me i’m on the path. Well worried as in smiling and feeling good for seemingly no reason.
I sure feel foolish for all the signs i excused or explained away over the years.
Girl…. Tell me about it. This Bitch used to wish on shooting stars and when blowing out birthday candles and all, but… still cis though! Smh my head!
Thankfully i am the most cis man of all time. Like yeah you calling me girl made my heart flutter a little bit but that’s definitely because i’m so ultra masculine that…. uhhhh….
yes. ❤️
Sorry for double comment, hands went stupid and I deleted the other one.
When I came out to my ex-wife, the first person I really opened up to in my life about things, I experienced something similar. It was like the real me finally got to breathe, and all the stress, the fight, went away. I didn’t feel the need to keep trying, because there was no effort needed anymore. It felt almost apathetic, in a way.
What I came to realize was, for me, that was my skin finally fitting. It wasn’t that I didn’t care so much as I was finally comfortable, and that comfort had been absent for so long, I didn’t recognize it for the first few months. I was so used to the eternal internal struggle that I felt almost empty without it.
Thanks for reading and sharing!
I can’t imagine opening up to someone that close to me, must have put my current feelings to shame!
Woah though about the feeling empty without it! Any advice if i start to experience it? I think it’s likely.
I must say i’m very excited but anxious to explore this further. So scared that this is the wrong thing, but that feeling of relief was so strong.
With the emptiness, self reflection and accepting that I had a hole to fill with positivity. I had lived so long with negative and repressive thoughts that it left a void. Reminding myself how happy I now felt, a place for the euphoria all these new experiences were bringing, positive thoughts towards myself and towards my new community. Even if you’re struggling with it being a new experience, putting your thoughts, your words into helping other fledglings can be a very big, positive step for a lot of people, including yourself.
It can help solidify your own experiences in your mind, reinforce their feelings and your own, and act as a frequent reminder to yourself as to who you really are, especially on shaky/dysphoric/low days.
And trust me, a lot of us were scared we were doing the wrong thing. That it wasn’t a good choice, that we just didn’t know what we really wanted. There’s a bit of advice that gets thrown around often in the trans community, that if you’re spending this much time thinking about it, if you’re putting in this much effort, you’re most likely on the right track about yourself, and all that negativity is the self-doubt you’ve lived with for so long.
Find things that help you feel more you. It’s different for everyone, in their own ways. A big thing for me is shaving my legs and then throwing on a pair of comfy leggings. I can’t explain why, but the whole ritual and the feeling of smoothness and softness immediately reminds me that I made the right choice because I feel so feminine, and it feels like ME.
Finding those things that help bring out the euphoria, and beyond that the sense of self, are reinforcing. They help us find who we really are, this person who has spent our lives living below the surface, and create anchor points for us to look at and be reminded. It’s also a form of self-love and care, something that I think a lot of us need. Loving yourself is accepting yourself.
That was beautiful! I’m going to think too much about that i wear pants all the time but have never shaved my legs. Did i not like shorts because they exposed my hairy legs?
Oddly enough when i tried some of those type of things (and drinking to dull the stress) i woke up very sore. I remembered that i did a lot of powerful muscle poses that evening? Embracing a feminine side actually made me more positive about my masculine side? What?
Anyways thank you again. Seeing the response here has been so wonderful.
Perhaps my own experience can be helpful. I was raised without any knowledge of what it meant to be trans or anything beyond the gender binary. I was forced so heavily into a role that I never got the opportunity to experience femininity in my childhood. When I finally learned about gender in university, something in me snapped into place and I realized I definitely wasn’t cisgender. I didn’t realize at the time that I was a woman, because I had “ruled it out” since I “wasn’t feminine enough” (flawed logic, I know, but bear with me here). I ended up identifying as agender for a time, until I finally realized that what I actually wanted was to be a woman, and to experience femininity that I’d otherwise been denied my whole life.
The point of this story is that I only identified that way because I failed to realize that things don’t just suddenly change like flicking a light switch. It takes a significant amount of time for you to find yourself, and that will involve reaching out for new experiences; things that don’t happen instantly. It’s easy to feel like nothing has changed, but perhaps the most important part in our journey has begun: we now understand that there exists an incongruence within us, and we’ve finally allowed ourselves to acknowledge that and begin the journey of discovering who we want to become.
We, as humans, are slow to change. Even when our mind is set, we can’t suddenly flip our lives upside down in the blink of an eye. We have to approach change one step at a time. So I’ll posit you a question, now that you’re beginning to understand that your gender identity is not what you’d been prescribed: what do you want to do about it? There are a million possibilities for what you could choose to explore, but where you start (and where you end up) is your own special journey to experience. What have you felt like you’ve wanted to do before, but didn’t because it didn’t align with your prescribed gender identity? What have you wondered about doing if things had been different? You likely won’t immediately know the answers to these questions, but they’re the kinds of questions that you can begin thinking about to understand where to start, and where to go next. There are so many things you can do from the safety of your own home, without requiring you to be seen by others (which can be incredibly scary at first). Start thinking about what it is you’d like to do. Change will only happen when you make it happen. The more we explore, the better we begin to understand ourselves.
Wonderfully put! Thank you.
My next step is to talk to a specialist and reach out to a support group. I may need to help someone else before i can help myself with how far i’ve gone with this issue possibly burning a hole in me. What do i want is difficult, as there’s the me on the surface then then the me deeper down who seems happy about this exploration.
I really like what @phr@discuss.tchncs.de said in her other post:
i didn’t know forever that i was a girl. i don’t know today. i’m just starting to get a sense of self. something that was shattered and buried through thorough suppression. i am putting together fragments like an archeologist. but being trans is in a way still just a working hypothesis. it’s highly plausible, but i can’t see the bigger picture yet.
decades of repression left me with a poor sense of self, and sifting through the fragments like an archaeologist is a good way of putting it
Anyway, yes - entirely normal to feel dissonance, or different and mixed feelings about transition.
I spent a long time coping with my situation by learning to not care about my identity, so it makes sense that after becoming so good at that, that I would then struggle to feel connected to that part of myself.
Here’s a “poem” I wrote about gender identity, trying to make sense of it:
Hidden from the senses
Inferred shadows
Constraining, defining, shaping
Without a trace
Like water wondering about the shape of a bowl
Thank you! I do fear how deep this has dug into me. It looks like it’s rotted part of my core it has dug so deep.
I’m going to save that poem and see how my perception of it changes as this journey continues.
yeahhhh, transitioning has made me realize there is quite a lot of damage I’ve sustained
but it’s sort of irrelevant to the decision of whether to transition, I mean - at first I remember going through immense grief and so on, and later a realization that I’ll never be whole, etc. and more grief - but you have to remember in terms of a decision about whether to transition, I was already such a fucked up person, and transitioning was a massive and unambiguous improvement for my well-being.
So give yourself space to grieve, but I wouldn’t focus too much on the negative emotions - we can’t afford to not be practical about our feelings, we have to find ways to see things that helps us survive.
i perceive this similarly. there is a person(a), that maybe never learned to talk properly, but that also isn’t separate from me. i am trying to befriend this part of me now and hopefully fix this relationship that must’ve been so hurtfull to the little one over the last years.
in a way it helps me to imagine there being a person, whith which i could interact. to me alone, i wouldn’t be that caring and patient. i feel like over the last year it helped me to regain access to my emotions and a sense of self.
i was in jungian therapy for a while and i learned to think of my dreams as manifestations of external but also internal conflicts and structures. i guess this opened a path to realise my being trans in the first place. i try to continue this conversation.
Thank you so much for your comment! The emotion behind this topic is incredible right now, a lot of excitement and stress talking about this anywhere but a room with a single trusted professional.
I like the theory that maybe it’s the two sides of the brain. I once had a dream where i was two separate people. One was adventurous, impulsive, active but didn’t talk only showing emotions. The other one was like a guardian, more slow, cautious and calculated. Oddly similar to how the hemispheres of the brain work!
There are a ton of little ways you can explore this feeling while you wait for the next steps. You don’t have to tell anyone that you don’t feel safe to tell. You’ve done a really scary thing already, which is to listen to these feelings and let them in.
For me, the little things were stuff like painting my nails, buying and wearing the cute bracelets or rings I always thought were too femme coded for me. Even just imagining how I would feel if my friends saw me as a woman and used “she/her” with me. None of this stuff has to out you to anyone. If you’re scared to do them in public you don’t have to. You’re in control.
When I tried them, these things made me feel good in a way I’d never ever felt before and I’ve just been following that feeling every since really.
That might lead you towards transitioning, it might not, both things are okay. You have time. Nobody can tell you who you are except you.
Rooting for you babes, good luck.
Thank you so much for the advice and encouragement. Unfortunately i definitely am too anxious about it to do anything long term or public, maybe i could try shaving my legs as i wear pants all the time.
I think i really need to meet some people on a similar journey.
Finding IRL friends and community is really great and it will help you figure yourself out. I don’t know what you have available near you but you might find queer and queer-friendly events nearby. They might have associated groups, meetups, socials etc. If you can find a friend or two to be open with about your journey it’ll make the whole thing much more fun. Wishing you all the best.
I didn’t think about that! That i don’t necessarily need to find just trans or gender curious people, but that the whole community would maybe be quite open to me. That’s a big relief honestly, as though people around me maybe don’t fully understand trans people, they sure are more accepting of homosexual or asexual people. Lowering the stress of being found out.
I feel really damn silly now. I’ve been purely looking for trans groups. Thanks!
<3
Yes, that’s exactly what I felt too: peace. I’d been living with feelings of “something’s missing/wrong” and “if only” that got stronger and stronger until I finally figured it out, then… silence. Just regular old me.
I was always curious what it “feels like” to be a girl, but then I realized that (presumably) everyone is “just me”, going through their lives. And since I was apparently a girl (without knowing it at first), that means I already know what it feels like: it’s how I feel.
I still struggle at times to honestly accept myself as a woman. Sure, I want to be one, and (most of) the people around me accept me as one, but there’s still that little voice that says “you’re faking it.” And quelling that voice is, for me, the hardest part of transitioning.
Thank you! Yup it totally was “something is very wrong” which made therapy almost impossible and I’ll definitely struggle with accepting myself even if everyone around me is supportive.
I like how you put it, “still me”, even this small step i took i noticed that feeling.
A little late to the party, but here I am :3
I’m actually not sure if I had a feeling like this when I was questioning. Maybe it was there, but I hadn’t really felt it, like with most emotions before accepting myself. But when I did, it hit me like a truck. I’ve felt like I was high for week, without any kind of drawback. Now that blew over a little, but I seem to be generally way more in touch my feelings and I love it.
Also know what it’s like to not get the results from therapy I’d like… There was a rather important puzzle piece missing. And there was a pretty big mislead, religious indoctrination, that I’ve used to explain myself, but I just never quiet got there.
If you feel like you’re ready, for me the Gender Dysphoria Bible was of insane help in figuring myself out. But no pressure, always proceed on your own speed!
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