Keeping it broad so everyone can answer. or just your feeling journey if you prefer. Is there any significant parts of your "journey" that changed your mental wellbeing? My answer: Before i questioned myself/had any idea i was not straight:I struggled (ED) but could not find a reason for my unhappiness in myself. and was unable to ever feel like i fit in despite being well liked (lol modest much). during my questioning/realisation not straight: i had fully recovered from ED and was in a happy but "something is missing" place and then i began to question/had the realisation i was not straight and it made me have a couple year long near- identity crisis, as it became clear i knew v.little about myself. Acceptance 100% not straight/pre coming out: like happiness ,excitement, anxiety , relief , guilt and shame all snowballed into one. coming out: not there yet really / have more so just "let people into my closet" post coming out: n/a things like EC have been really crucial over this period and mostly the only outlet of feelings (thanks ) wishing you all the best!
I agree in that EC has been pivotal for venting, gaining advice, and seeking community. These can help release emotional tension. I was diagnosed with clinical depression and have suffered from it since age fourteen. However, nowadays I have learned how to better navigate this. While the cause is due to a variety of factors, a big component is my identity as transgender and how this affects my life and relationships. It isn't resolved yet, but I have hope that it will be. A significant step for me was coming out to my parents. It did not go well but has given me insight into my own weaknesses, my parents' outlook, and where I should go from here. This new information is important, because before I had to came out, I was essentially guessing at what would or would not happen with little evidence to support my theories. But now I have much more certainty - wether for good or I still don't know.
I feel that it's been backwards for me. I was a little anxious when I finally realized who I was, but it was easy for me to come out. I remember telling one of my friends over MSN messenger - it wasn't that difficult. I even lost a few friends but realized "they aren't worth their weight in spit." However, as time went on things changed. As I was harassed in high school, I realized it wouldn't be that easy. Then, once I realized other gay guys were not attracted to me/weren't interested, things changed. I'd say that now I am "fine" with it. I don't date or have sex, again because I don't connect well with guys. It really has done a number on me... I think that it's just made my anxiety worse and worse over the years because nothing has ever happened.
After realisation - had a surge of self confidence, recconected with my inner tomboy and feel more whole defined as a person than i have in years. However i think i became much more prone to extreme lows and emotions. After having to deal with my mother a bit and haing my heart sorta broken i've become more anxious. But I dunno, because of recconecting with my tomboy self and my emotional self and my creative self, I just feel more whole, if more unstable. I think I'm still in a sorta identity crisis phase but I think I'm working it out and realising this is proper me coming through.
I would say I feel much better. When I didn't know that I wasn't straight I always had this feeling of not understanding why people anticipated having boyfriends it felt so wrong to me and this made me not feel great about myself- I felt quite left out. But now it feels so liberating now that I know myself better and now I can at least understand their feelings. Coming out to my mother felt even better; it felt like a giant weight was lifted off my shoulders and since I have just felt so good.
Ups and downs. Sometimes I felt like I was lying to myself or to others because I couldn't quite nail things down, and I didn't know if I wanted to commit to changing how I present myself (or in what ways). I haven't even known what changes I could realistically make at many points. Definitely, this exacerbated my shyness growing up because I was rarely comfortable in my own skin and didn't know why. Although, I've often been more troubled by other things, like my family's dysfunctional history, trying to be less of a pushover, feeling torn because the things I enjoy doing aren't actually lucrative (even if I enjoy programming, I tend to make tools to enable my own laziness at home or retro-style games as gifts, and am not the type to wind up the next big indie hit), etc. I feel like I haven't had much time to think about myself gender-wise. Gender and orientation is not something I know how to talk about, either, so it tends to remain a kind of ambiguous that thing I don't know what to do with in the background. This is made worse by the fact that gender fluidity is less known and discussed that other identities, so there's less for me to go off of in terms of my own thinking and understanding of how to word things. Accepting it and knowing how to react to it are two different things. tl;dr I'm doing okay, don't know what to do, gonna go make stir-fry and watch TV kthxbye.
I felt much better after realizing I'm transgender, before that my life had been pretty much hell. Thinl about all the confusion of trying to navigate through life without knowing what was wrong with me, and feeling inadequate and wrong practically 24/7. That's not a life... My orientation never bothered me that much, being quite liberal and free about sex, I saw as my right to like whomever I liked... But the question of gender poisoned every experience I had with men, and also homophobia had been there to complicate it even more... Still the struggle (which of course goes on) felt nothing compared to what I felt about my gender, specially as a teenager and young adult. Now it's just... Okay. I'm dealing with the cards I've been given, just like before, but at least I do know what is the truth, who the hell I am, and how to deal (in a healthy way) with many feelings that used to leave me angry, hurt, confused and powerless. I'm also glad I won't be hurting others by spreading my hurt any longer, or at least the chances are close to zero nowadays, and I am still sorry about the ones I hurt because I had no idea who I really was. I'm also not after killing myself anymore. At least not tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow... Things are much better now. What you don't know can and will hurt you...
I share some of photoguy's features above. I didn't have to "come out" in high school--everyone was calling me queer, etc. I realized they probably were right, at least to a significant extent. Then, in the more enlightened college years, I also found that I could not connect with guys. Here, I really mean the word "connect" to be more than what today we call "hook up." I did connect with women, so I ended up getting married to one. To this day, I feel that if men were more emotionally available, the life story would have turned out differently. Based on what I know today, I can't say I'd do anything differently in a re-run.
I can't necessarily separate my feelings regarding my non-cis or non-hetero identities from others I have/am experiencing. I have only really allowed myself to question it since my mental health has been really bad (depression, S.H, ___ ideation/partial attempts, anxiety...). As a person I am driven and focus on one thing at a time, which I continue until I 'have it sorted'. My sexuality and gender identity weren't/aren't any different. When I was/am really bad I try to distract myself by doing rather excessive research on them. I joined E.C () and did practically every quiz/test thing online, regardless of how obscure it seemed, as well as scouring the web and reading as much as I could. I guess I was and still am kind of desperate to figure 'it' out. Even though I can understand that both are fluid and that you don't need to have a 'label',I really want and, to an extent, need one in order to feel comfortable with it. I firmly believe that, for me, knowledge is power. Now, I have kind of accepted my sexuality and feel a sense of relief but also of accomplishment because, as strange as it may sound, I feel like that is one of the few things that I know about myself on which I can build upon to discover more about myself. Since accepting my sexuality I am extremely focused on 'figuring out' my gender and am extremely determined. Sorry for the long post. It makes sense in my head but trying to describe it is really hard, I hope that I, in some way, answered the question, but if I didn't I am really sorry.
If I went through my coming out and transitioning back say... 5 years ago I would have had a breakdown. Now that I found the right medicine and matured, I have been depression free for a long time and am fully functional.
I think coming to terms with and admitting to myself that I'm trans has been majorly beneficial. When I was younger I was way more subject to depressive episodes that would last for days or even weeks and even some self-harm. Not cutting but hitting things until I hurt myself. While I still have a lot of anger issues, coming to an understanding about who I am actually lessened the severity and frequency of my depressive episodes. I still get down and anxious, but within tolerable levels. I can maintain a lot. Another thing is it has immensely helped my self-confidence. Now I can put a name to all these feelings I had and I understand where my self-loathing and shame came from and I've been able to shed most if not all of those feelings. Along the way I picked up on some words of wisdom from the Dalai Lama (even though I'm an atheist, they're still helpful) about practicing to be happy. You have to exercise those muscles because you spend a lifetime strengthening the ones that feed your misery. It takes work to get stronger in this area-- being happy. It's important that you learn to love yourself and learn to be happy. Genuinely happy and self-loving, not the narcissistic kind which is just another self-defense mechanism disguising UNhappiness. That's why people can't tolerate the least little criticism and feel the need to run others down. When you become happy and learn to love yourself, you have defenses against negativity and you don't need to self-aggrandize. You'll know you've reached this state when you find yourself selflessly increasing the happiness of those around you instead of attacking them to make them unhappy because you are. That's how coming to grips with my trans self has helped me. I am learning to be happy now with who I am and I am trying to spread that to others. I don't rip on people for liking things I don't like. I do challenge beliefs that are actively harmful, though.
My mental health journey has really had 4 stages to it. Childhood to Teen- Very Blah in general. Didn't really care. Teen- Nervous and Anxious about pretty much everything. Young Adult- Paranoid and Hostile to everybody. Adult- Reserved but Confident. Feel pretty good in general. When I was a kid I didn't feel anything towards anyone. As a teen I assumed I was straight and couldn't figure out why I didn't like girls like other guys did. As a young adult I realized I was gay and thought people were judging me for it and wanted to be left alone. As an adult I found out no one really minds or if they do then I don't bother with them and I can just be myself.
It's been a complete rollercoaster. I've had anxiety issues due to family issues (not relating to my coming out) that have leaked into me questioning if I am truly gay or even my gender. I've realized though that the only reason why I ended up questioning both was due to my anxiety and that I feel like a cis male almost all the time unless I have said anxiety. within the past few months though, it's become easier and even though I still do get anxiety about both every now and then, I'm mostly happy and I don't regret coming out.
It's been here and there, but in terms of me being queer, it's been improving now that I'm in transition. The only thing that messes with me is when my general depression acts up and I get distraught over seeing how far away some milestones for me are; like top surgery and all of that. As a whole, my mental health has been pretty shitty, but if we're just talking about being LGBTqQ+ strictly, it's a breath of fresh air compared to how I was a few years ago.
I've been depressed quite alot (Being in the closet is horrible) but I get along through my acting and singing. I've also felt I've pushed people away. I've also felt I'm ugly...... Overall yeah.....just yeah.....
I've been in that hell hole of depression for many years. Pushed away all my friends except one... maybe she didn't go away. My family relationships were next to zero. That all steamed from being an outsider. I was just wanting to be acted as equal, normal not some special case. Thanks to great players of City of Heroes and Ghosts of Mistwood, I take slowly ascending journey thru being depression free-ish. There are still non LGBT related things that bothers me and put me down. One thing I realized along the way, knowing other people's stories, how hard life is for them helps me greatly. This way I overcome self pity. For me self-pity was one of the biggest obstacles standing between me and fully accepting myself. Shame/Body Shaming still provides some issues. Hate was never there for me, I hate myself for different reasons than being gay... okay actually that is not hate but huge amount of anger. Over all I am doing okay now.