Hey Terri,

It’s good to hear from you. Thank you for your advice as well. I was bullied throughout middle school into high school. I suffered from depression and anorexia which I am currently recovering from in college. There were many times when I felt ashamed of myself for being the way I was like there may have been something wrong with me because of my gender expression. But starting college, I’ve found resources to make me feel like I’m not alone. I agree that it’s not right to blame yourself for bullying and the hurtful actions of other people. There was a time when I felt that the reason why others didn’t understand me in junior year of high school (that’s when I started expressing my gender expression as a nonbinary transmale) that I was the one losing my mind. I lost many friends who I realize later when I entered college weren’t really truly my friends and I blamed myself for that. I think I felt like I was losing control of my life so the thing I could control was my weight so I became anorexic as a way to cope. I built many layers to protect myself and hoped that college would be better. Now at Ocean County College, being part of Ocean Pride LGBT group has helped me access the resources I didn’t have throughout middle school or high school and it has helped some of the false layers to fall away. Sometimes I feel like our thoughts are not really our own, but the limiting thoughts we hold are those that have been programmed into us by society and our experiences. It can be hard at times to recognize and accept those limiting beliefs and question them because at times they feel so entrenched in our being that they feel as if they are part of who we are. I’m sorry that you suffered abuse when you were little. You are a strong person and I hope things are better now. I tried to cover up the shame I felt from the sexual trauma when I was sexually harassed by a guy in seventh grade because I thought things would get better. It caused me to lose aspects of myself that I am working on getting back. I realize the more I try to hide my flaws or numb the pain, the more distant I become from myself as the layers build up and the shame becomes buried within and when it’s triggered it’s much worse. Working with my therapist, I have begun to remove some of the layers of shame and began to question my thoughts as to who I am as a person. I feel like, even though I’m still unsure of my personality, I have found some parts that I have lost and brought some of the shame out into the light for it to be released so it doesn’t control me or cause me to lose myself more.