After that really long synopsis of how I am: I hope you are well. Take your time with reading the news and I hope to hear from you. Sorry I didn’t post much over the summer and now school starts I’ve been planning lots of things with school work and being glad I can have counseling now. I hope I don’t overwhelm you with all this at once. I am glad that you reminded me that I have support on timybuddha.com. I received an email notification that there was a new reply in my forum and I am glad I saw it today because today was a hard day with my parents and I didn’t see any of my friends on campus, so I’m glad you are here. Thank you for being here for me and for reminding me that there is support for me when I feel alone.

The questions I have are:

How do I stop a negative conversation that is only wasting time and move on to a compromise or something more productive? How do I avoid being dragged into one? It seems like my parents irritate me more each day with their close-minded views and the more I distance from them the more they want to rely on me and burden me with things and they criticize the things I do saying I don’t do things right or they never understand the feelings I have beneath the surface. They never listen to the true meaning of what I have to say when they want me to talk and then they tell me that I don’t have anything of value to focus on, that I get worked up over the little things, that I can never learn what’s important in life. I cannot live with trying to make them understand who I am with the words I express because they never see beyond their close-minded views. I would love to have some advice on how to just avoid conversations with my parents all together, to remove myself when they try to attach their burdens to me and to just live with myself in peace believing who I am. I do not want to fight the people and fuel my inner critic because I’ve proven to myself who I am and that is good enough. I don’t need my parents’ and negative people validation of who I am and I don’t want to fight daily either or get irked over little things because I have more important things to do. I often do my school work at school because my parents irritate me to no end lately with every little thing. They are so judgmental, think that everything is about them- that when things go wrong others are to blame and they never seem to see different views or they don’t seem to want to learn different views. I want to be a better person than my parents will be and be open-minded to new things and not let things be run by anger or the facts that I am right or the fact that I don’t need to learn some things because they are unimportant. Yet no knowledge is unimportant, knowledge gives people power and you never know when a particular information may be useful.

How do I deal with the fear of my parents not approving of my gender identity when I’m around them without losing myself? I feel like I am becoming more knowledgeable about who I am and I don’t want to keep living as the person I truly am at school and then having to put on a false facade at home because I’m afraid of my parents. I just want to be able to express myself no matter where I am.

How do I avoid feeling overwhelmed and calm myself down in healthy ways when I feel like there is so much I have to do, like I don’t have time to do it all (sometimes this happens with school work)? Also I can become overwhelmed when people try to seek me out for counseling, but I don’t have time or energy to shoulder their burdens. I do not want their burdens and it makes me irritated when my parents try to place their stereotypes of gender on me or their burdens on me and I argue with them. I believe that I can be my gender identity as a transgender male even if my parents and some others don’t see it. I don’t want to keep feeling strained whether in fear, anger or depression because I’m not sure how people will react to me being myself. I know I have strength to achieve my goals, but I don’t want to keep being surrounded by negativity at home. One can only be strong for a while before one starts to feel frustrated, tired of battling the doubts of others which will bring back the negative inner critic that I try to dismantle time and time again. I don’t think my inner critic will fully go away when I’m living with my parents, I am tired of them saying things about me, tired of being afraid that I won’t be able to support myself if they kick me out of the house as they have said that I can’t be transgender in the house (that I don’t know enough to be transgender, that I am just being immature). These days it’s like all the sadness of the summer has turned into an intense drive, an intense will to fight for who I am. Yet, I find myself fighting so much that it can be draining and also I find that I still have a fear of my parents because I know that as a 19 year old college student I still have a lot to learn to survive in the world and having to do things alone will be hard. Here are my sentiments lately as I have become more confident in myself and feel an intense fire (that I feel like can be too intense at times and may burn me) for what I believe in. I do not care for gender stereotypes anymore and I don’t care about other’s opinions because they are not my reality. I am tired of my parents and other people who don’t understand me who try to look and judge me on the surface for who I am. This is more of what I currently believe and have discovered: Understand your worth is not the worth of the world, but the faith and value you place in yourself. The world is filled with people trying to fit themselves into societal ideals and others who try to place stereotypes on others trying to understand themselves. You don’t have to be the person the world expects you to be, just be good enough for yourself. Make yourself matter above all. Listening to the stereotypes of who you should and how you should act only strains you more and causes you to lose more of yourself until you become tired of trying, tired of trying to fit in at the cost of your true self, tired of watching life pass you by, tired of trying so hard at something and not feeling valued. The world does not give you value with it’s stereotypes, you are more than the stereotypes and labels of the world. Listen to yourself and find your own definition of who you are not what the world dictates because that rigid structure is inflexible and will never fit you. You will be left callused and bruised trying to fit into a skin that doesn’t belong to you. And over time that skin will become tight and suffocating because it’s not meant for you. Your worth so much and you have so much to give if you look within and appreciate how special you are. Our imperfections make the world beautiful by filling it with diversity and lessons for us to learn on our life’s journey-lessons of compassion for ourselves. The world is filled with stereotypes and things that try to explain who you should be one after another, it takes courage to look within and look at who you are on the inside. You cannot be happy following the stereotypes of the world and someone else’s version of how to live your life because it is your life. And stereotypes change and limit us from trying to see ourselves. I still struggle with some gender stereotypes being from a strict stereotypical Asian cultural family who is unsupportive of transgender people, but I cannot allow their views to dictate my life. If I try to fit myself into the stereotypes just to avoid being hurt, I realize that there is more hurt in me because I’m letting others control who I want to be and the pain of not being able to be me is enough to make me realize that I don’t want to fit into any stereotypes. There is no set gender stereotypes of how a male or female should behave. Men can be compassionate, artists, emotional, sensitive, healthy build (don’t need lots of muscle), strong. Women can be body builders, tool repair workers, engineers, strong, balance finances. The societal constraints that women have to be compassionate and emotional while men have to be strong, analytical and the money maker don’t need to be true. These rigid stereotypes hurt our society by causing limiting beliefs in both genders. Both feel like their is pressure on them to act as certain way because of societal stereotypes and if they don’t act that way they aren’t masculine enough or feminine enough, but that is not the case. People do not need stereotypes to tell them how they should be, to limit them and to make them feel low in self-esteem because they don’t have the traits that make them masculine or feminine like society deems. Yet, you don’t need to be muscular, breadwinner or handyman/analytical to be masculine. You don’t need to be compassionate and emotional to be feminine. These are societal constructs of gender and all they do is limit who we truly want to be. It doesn’t matter what gender you identify as because you are valid regardless of whether you fall into societal stereotypes of what it means to be a man or woman. Men and women are both special. Both can be compassionate, strong, money makers, analytical, tool repairs.

Most of my sense of conflicting emotions: sadness turned to anger to motivation/happiness which can lead to overwhelmingness because the emotions are so intense most of the time. When I feel sad, I feel empty and devoid of life and the only voice in my head is the inner critic. When I feel anger, I am tense and I will say what I believe in (I’ll think about what I’ll say and I don’t say anything offensive), but I make it clear that I want to be respected for who I am or I will turn into a fiery soul that will burn the illusions from your eyes by not giving up no matter what you say and I won’t stand for what you believe if it doesn’t make me happy. I don’t have to prove to the world that tries to put me in stereotypes of what masculinity or feminity should be, I just want to be enough for myself. So it irritates me when I’m at home and I have people who don’t see beneath the surface, who don’t hear the meaning of the words I say, who never seem to fully listen when I have something important to say, who always tell me that something I do is not right or how I can’t be this or that. Well, I know what I believe and I can and I will do whatever it takes to make me dreams of being a genetic engineer and transition to a male a reality no matter what the critics say.

Note the times I use “you” I’m referring to the negative people around me like my parents and not you. You are a great person and I am glad you are in my life, Anita.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 2 months ago by Janus.