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great discomfort in gender identities

Discussion in 'Gender Identity and Expression' started by claudiakay, Apr 24, 2018.

  1. claudiakay

    Regular Member

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    Location:
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    Gender:
    Female
    Gender Pronoun:
    She
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    Questioning
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    A few people
    I've been struggling with gender stuff for awhile now (about four months) and while I think about this nearly everyday, this is still a new discomfort that has come into my life and I don't know how to alleviate it.
    I remember very distinct moments as a kid when I would think things like, "I am so happy that I'm a girl". I went through a lot of phases in expression. Some years of my life I would dress rather tomboyish and other years of my life I would dress incredibly feminine. I remember some years really wishing I didn't have boobs and hated how they looked on my body, and other years really enjoying how they looked. As I reflect, I just had a moments when I switched around my presentation but have always felt at home in my female body because I wouldn't want a boy body at all. I'm 90% sure that I still feel this way.
    So, long story short, my diagnosed anxiety has gotten a lot worse, and I'm finding a discomfort in my appearance at a level that I never felt before. I think my anxiety is both linked and triggering this discomfort--it is kind of hard to sift through it. I don't feel good in anything that I wear--whether it be more masc, fem, or both--and I feel like I can never be myself/present myself in a way that makes me feel confident and whole. I've heard people refer to me as she/her pronouns and cringed in a way that never happened before. The thought of they/them pronouns feels better but doesn't feel right either because there are some days when I feel better about associating myself as a she/her.

    I just don't know what to do. I feel really uncomfortable in a way that I have never experienced before.
     
  2. SkyWinter

    Regular Member

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    So if you don't want to be male, and don't really see yourself as male then are your appearance issues just that? What if you changed your wardrobe? Do you think that would change anything? Can you imagine your ideal clothing in your mind?

    Where do you think your anxiety is coming from? You said it was diagnosed, when did it start?
     
  3. KayNB

    Full Member

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    Sometimes gender fluidity swings slow... and sometimes it doesn't swing so wide as to be fully both ways...

    also... some of this could be coming from you letting yourself feel your gender dysphoria now, whereas if you hadn't identified as trans before you probably were suppressing those feelings due to cognitive dissonance. One of the things that I find when I am not in a hiding-mode is that I recognize and experience my dysphoria moments in bigger more noticeable ways. Since I've gone back and forth between not knowing, to transitioning, to hiding, to now starting to work on a second transition I can tell you that the times when you're not thinking about it, it's still there but it's manifests itself in different ways. Rather than "I hate when people call me she" being the words you say in your mind it might come across as "why does it feel like nobody really knows who I am?"... It's better to feel those feelings in a way of being honest with yourself, and start to find ways to understand who you are and how you feel about life. Including the times where you don't feel those feelings at all.