So, I've never felt this way before and I was just wondering if this is normal dysphoria or a sign that I may be overwhelmed by the decisions I'm trying to make with myself or what, or even if I'm going down the wrong path or something, and if anyone else has ever felt the same way and maybe had some advice on how to deal with it. I've been coming out to myself for the past year or so, and only just recently also came out to my boyfriend about being non-binary and am still sort of growing into myself so to speak over the past 3-4 months. At first, I was feeling really good, learning how to finally pinpoint my bad feelings and accept them, and was able to curb a lot of dysphoria early on since I wasn't suppressing my fluidity any longer. I'm now able to pinpoint when I feel more like a man, woman, or neither, etc. .... However, this month I've been dealing with just a lot of stress in general, personal depression, medical scares with a close friend, etc. and I believe my general apathy is also causing me to feel foggy and apathetic about my gender as well. This general apathy leaks over and I think also causes me to be dysphoric about like, everything almost... like even if I can tell how I feel / what I want, nothing really cheers me up like it usually does. Certain clothes and words that validate me just make me feel nothing, I don't have the energy really to dress up and make myself feel better simply because of how self-conscious I get about just looking like a "tomboy" or a really masculine girl or something; it just bums me out and makes me want to hide. It feels like so much extra effort to react and adjust and have others adjust to calling me a boy or noticing my masculinity that I feel guilty that they're trying so hard and I'd rather be called a girl, but when that happens I internally cringe, but its still easier to brush off since I've been dissociating from it for years. Also, I've gently asked my boyfriend several times if on different occassions he could try referring to me as "Kipp" instead of my birthname so I can see if I like it better enough to not want to go by my birthname full/part time.....but he hasn't besides 1 or 2 times and I don't really know how to talk to him about how I feel because he doesn't really get it and I'm bad at articulating it / offering solutions since I'm unsure...also, I think it would be nice to be able to try out masculine pronouns, but I think he would struggle with this and since my feelings are more bigender, I wouldn't want to increase his confusion by wanting to switch back and forth between masc and fem pronouns. But in general, basically I think everything I usually try and do to feel better just ends up seeming like too much extra work for the payoff due to me being generally depressed and apathetic. Does anyone else deal with this? Should I just try getting past the feelings of apathy and wait out the confusion and discomfort since how I feel / my depression is interfering with my decision-making skills right now anyway (and since nothing ends up feeling right)?? Also, is this normal dysphoria? I've never experienced it this way before since I sort of thought I was "on the right track" and feeling better about what I've been changing/doing recently.
It seems like this could be the result of your current emotional state. I don't know if this would help for you but it did for me recently when I was feeling similar: maybe take some time to not think about gender and not overthink things so much, just so you're not overwhelming yourself and you can get back to your baseline feelings about your gender. Just let yourself relax for a bit. By that I don't mean ignore dysphoria, as that may not be possible, but more don't pressure yourself to analyze your gender and learn new things about it for the moment. I understand not wanting to feel like you're giving others to much work to make you feel happier and it sucks to feel that way. But they get to feel happy and it just happens to be that they can feel that way without asking others to change their habits. But that doesn't mean that you don't deserve the same. If people are having a hard time adjusting that does not mean it's not worth it, and if people judge then it's more a reflection of themselves than of what you're doing. All you're trying to do is feel happy as every person deserves. Maybe with your boyfriend when you feel ready, have another talk with him. Maybe first plan out a way to articulate all of the feelings you want him to know about and make him understand that him using Kipp and trying male pronouns means your happiness. He may mess up at first, but keep reminding him because he should do this for you, it's really not a huge thing to ask. And even if it was, he cares about you and if putting in a bit of effort to do something would make you happy then he should be willing to do that no matter what. I hope this helps and I wish you luck.
Thank you, I agree that I might just need to let things simmer for a bit and try and calm down about it all. Also, I agree though that my happiness does matter... sometimes I fear that making these changes will compromise the happiness of others, but I think since most other people are content with themselves it'll be okay, cause I'm not really in charge of that...
