Dear Janus, Earth Angel and Poet:

Happy New Year! Thank you for your kind words of appreciation and good wishes for me. I wish you well in this new year and new decade.

I am glad that the nutritionist in Stockton helped you healthy meal plans, including six small meals, drinking enough water, oatmeal, apple, salad, protein. Excellent. This way, like you wrote, your sugar levels and energy are stable.

Meditation has been helping you for years, and you developed an amazing ability to create vivid and elaborate visuals when meditating.  Good to read that you received cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) tips, I experienced CBT myself and believe it is very effective and helpful. I am also glad that you find some comfort wearing looser clothing, and very glad to read that you wear a chest binder that is “less tighter” some o the time.

But I do wish that you will not wear (in public) binders that are so tight that you have to “take slow, deep breaths so that my lungs get enough oxygen”- this is too stressful for the brain/ body to either not get enough oxygen, and/ or be stressed out during the day thinking: am I getting enough oxygen, being focused this way on your chest.

Maybe wearing a loose shirt in public that is made of a thick fabric that doesn’t stick to the body is good enough???

I know that you are very involved with the transgender community online, and somewhat with the LGBT community in Stockton, but keep in mind that gender dysphoria and body dysphoria are not two separate experiences. What works for body dysphoria may work for gender dysphoria as well. Maybe reading about the more general body dysphoria can help you as well.

anita