Dear Anita

Thank you so much for your wisdom. I am working on becoming more assertive of who I am. People try to put stereotypes on me, and I work on disentangling myself from them. I have started a self-reflection journal where I list the thoughts I have about myself and I work on them. I list the reasons behind my feelings and thoughts. Then, I question myself “Does this describe me or was it brought about by situations beyond my control?” Doing this with my thoughts has allowed me to figure out the stereotypes that I have allowed to hold me back and bring mental clarity to me. I realize that I cannot change other people, but can only change myself. But it is still frustrating when I’m explaining things to my parents and it feels like I’m not being heard. It makes feel bitter at times and I withdraw from them. I don’t like to waste my energy arguing with them, but at times I feel like I’m being dragged into them anyway.  On the days my thoughts feel cloudy, all I want to do is to exercise and hope it clears my thoughts at times. My inner critic often tells me that I should know more things and spend more time doing what matters. It can overwhelm me at times when I just feel like I’m losing control and the only way I can control myself is to be anorexic. By controlling my weight, I can get a better grip on my life and by exercising I can help myself clear my thoughts a bit. My parents try to put their views on many things and the more research I do to dispel certain views, the more they try to use their feelings to justify why these views are correct. They say I rely too much on research and can’t think for myself and am too easily influenced by the opinions of others. Yet, I do check the credibility of the sources by comparing them and seeing the similarities between them. I look at a variety of sources before coming to terms with a specific standpoint. There are some things I feel strongly about such as gender equality, environmental protection, science and spirituality. I love nature and wildlife and no matter what try to advocate for its well-being. I dislike how my parents think that the paths and decisions I make are not the right ones because in their eyes they deviate from society. I cannot be a wiccan because paganism hasn’t really had much popularity and I will be ostracized for being strange. But my spirituality is what makes me happy. My parents also complain that I don’t tell them things, but when I tell them things, they interject their views in, don’t listen/ understand or only see the flaws associated with my decisions. They have said I am not meant to be a scientist because I’m not technical minded and not good at analyzing changing data sets. But I love science, I can spend hours studying biology and the nature of DNA molecules without getting bored. It’s so amazing how far science has come. Of course, science has flaws as well and I am aware of them. My parents take the flaws of things too literally and complain about them too much that they start to lose the time that they could use to help improve the flaws. They believe I only see the world as black and white and don’t see the underlying grey, but I do see it.

I feel that my parents are quick to judge certain actions without taking a chance to consider what the other person may be going through. They claim that I take things at face-value, but I feel they do it more than I do. My parents have never been here for me emotionally and often never taught me how to be self-sufficient every day I try to learn more about the world. I may have to break contact with my parents soon as I find my path because it seems no matter how I explain things they see only the hurts and faults. I have explained to them countless times that my anorexia is a way of controlling my gender dysphoria and their response has always been that I am making irresponsible choices and that being anorexic doesn’t make me any less male. In many ways they make me feel undervalued because they are always criticizing me no matter what I tell them. They don’t seem to care how I exercise a lot to help calm my thoughts, the shortness of breath I have from chest-binding or the reason I cut my hair. They think I am just being irresponsible and doing these things doesn’t make me any more masculine. They think that I just have a mental problem and everything I do causes financial and emotional burdens in the family and also will make me further deviant from society. I don’t want to fit into societal stereotypes and cultural stereotypes because they limit me from being happy.  I tried my life to fit into the stereotypes of being feminine and I lost myself more and more with each passing day until I couldn’t live with myself anymore. I realized I can no longer listen to the stereotypes that hold me back and it  frustrates me more that my parents continue to put them on me. They will say males are more outgoing and should initiate relationships, that if I want to be a male I should know more about tools and repairs as well as money management. Sometimes I feel bad and wonder if I’m being selfish, but I realize that no matter what path I take I will take the one that makes me happy and not worry about what others expect of me. I am scared of losing my parents’ support but they were never there to guide me in the first place and the only thing that holds me back from seeking testosterone hormones is finances. I am more scared of living an unfulfilled life and living under a false self, when I can free my spirit that seems trapped in the wrong body than of incurring my parents’ wrath. I never meant to hurt them, but I feel at this point it seems like it’s unavoidable.  At nineteen years old and thinking about moving out, being at risk for being kicked out, having parents say you are being disrespectful and not supporting you and also dealing with a college education and planning to transition is a lot to think about. I wish I knew of a set path to take, but I’m not sure there is one. It seems like each day that passes and the more I research and meditate to find myself and be healthy, the more distant from my parents I become. My view of optimal well-being is being happy with the person you are and not letting anger make you lose control, but being aware of your feelings and using them to help live a life of vitality counting the blessings rather than seeing the faults.

The question are:

“How do I stop the negative things from giving me doubt on the person I want to be?” “How do I change myself  for the better and be more true to myself?” “How do I ground myself and remain calm when it seems like others are angry around me?”

Dear Anita:

Are there any ways to shield or release yourself of/from the anger of others if you cannot avoid it? Sometimes I feel like I am being dragged into the problems of others and there isn’t a way to escape except to close off my mind until the storm is over. However, this frustrates me because I have been working on healing myself and I feel like the negativity tries to poke a hole in the walls of my inner defenses and I don’t want to face the adverse effects on my health from another’s pain. how do I let people know that I sympathize with them, but don’t want to carry their burdens for them? The negative doubts and stereotypes other people like my parents try to knock over the structures of confidence I build and I try to rebuild them again. I find this draining on my energy when I could be using my energy for important tasks. Sometimes I wonder if I will ever achieve the goals I set for myself. Another question is How can I be sure I’m not losing myself daily to the expectations of others or that my numbing down isn’t negatively influencing me from being my true self?

I consider myself to be an idealist who always tries to do what I feel is right in my heart, but at times I doubt myself. I try not to let the negative thoughts of others prevent me from paving my way toward my dreams, but the negativity sometimes strains me of energy and makes my progress toward my goals slower. I feel it would be ideal to break contact with my parents because they often place their burdens on me. I feel my inner critic is a representation of me struggling to break free of the stereotypes of society and my parents. It consistently criticizes me for not being enough, that I don’t know enough to be self-reliant on my own. I dislike my parents’ views of certain things because sometimes I think they blow a situation out of proportion in their minds. They complain about how there are so many things wrong with the life they live, but when offered opportunities to improve they seem to think it’s too late or they don’t seem to take the chance. My main focus in life is to be true to myself and figure out how to surpass the negativity of the world. I have become more accepting of who I am and don’t mind my views differing from my parents. However, at times I wish they would understand the person I am and not try to make me into a person I don’t want to be. They seem to think if I don’t follow an outlined path, I will be deviant from society and not be accepted for who I am. I don’t really care about being accepted by society, I just want to find an acceptance of myself being me. It frustrates me that the more I learn about myself and the more I calm my inner critic through yoga and meditation, the more people like my parents will talk about the world and its burdens. I’m not always clear of the path I take, but I believe every road leads to home and I’ll work things out in the end. My parents’ criticisms have made me quite depressed and at times I consider ways to end my life. But I realize that my life is not as meaningless at it seems and at the moments when I feel like death is approaching me I realize that it was the false self that was dead and that only the shadow of my former self would be killed, but there is a light in my spirit that if I committed suicide I would extinguish and it scares me to extinguish that light that I believe when nourished will help me grow closer to my authentic self. I realize when I’m on the brink of taking my life, that I would be extinguishing this inner light within me- the light that tells me to stay true to my heart- and that if I killed that I would just be the shadow self of the world’s expectations left behind. To put it in other words, I have contemplated and tried suicide, but never caused myself to physically die. At times when I feel like I’m losing my spirit- this inner force- that I don’t want to be extinguished, I can be self-destructive because it helps me calm my mind and fears that I may be losing myself. What scares me most is losing myself in the doubts of the world and not being self-reliant enough to achieve my goals. The doubts that run through my mind about myself cause me to over-exercise at times, so I feel light-headed and it brings mental clarity. I also close my mind off at times when there are negative things around me. I enter in a lucid, numb-like state and it seems as if the words of the negativity or actions are being filtered through my ears like I’m breathing underwater and everything seems surreal. However, I realize how bad this numbing can be because it causes me to start to feel like I’m not alive at times and I sometimes question if I truly exist in this world or I’m just an immaterial being of my thoughts. Sometimes I like this feeling because I feel like I can mold myself into the person I see myself as and at other times this gives me anxiety because I feel like I’m not feeling anything but passing through life. The anxiety that stems from breaking away from my parents is the thought of whether I’m breaking away from societal standards and won’t have a place in this world because parents give a child the first solid ground and establish the roots or the fact that I am not self-reliant enough to live independently. While living with them, I don’t feel they understand who I am as a person anymore. I don’t think the path is clear-cut and that’s what makes me anxious, but being stifled from being myself gives me more anxiety and it seems like these two sides are conflicting with each other. Should I work on the path my heart chooses and risk my parents’ anger? I’m sure I would choose what makes me happy, but another question that stops me is whether I can withstand the emotional and financial costs of not having a solid foundation I’ve always thought was there. My parents have given me physical support in food, shelter, and water; but at times I don’t think they make me feel as if I belong in the family. I try to seek love and belonging elsewhere and by finding myself, but in the process, I wonder if I’ll lose the basic physical needs my parents provide and that gives me anxiety. I still try to hunt for jobs that match my interests in reading, researching, and science; but it’s hard to find jobs for a sophomore in college because there aren’t that many job openings and most require a bachelor’s degree. I often question “Am I losing myself more daily living under my parents’ roof? But would it really be worth it to sacrifice the physical comforts I have for a sense of self? How can I make myself self-reliant and achieve my goals when people keep trying to get me to conform to their expectations and I try (often feeling drained) to remove those stereotypes time and again? And when I withdraw from my parents to find myself, they think I’m not being grateful to them for helping shelter me, but I don’t think they understand the emotional self that lies beneath the surface.

Thank you for being here to listen because sometimes I feel like I’m not being heard for who I am. I love to meditate in the early hours of the morning to help relax my mind and increase my energy levels throughout the day. I find that it helps me ground myself when there is negative energy around me. I believe that I have a soul that has a specific calling to use science and spirituality to help me better understand the world. My soul is the inner light that comes out when my thoughts are clearer through my meditations and I realize that I am on the right road in life. I find that other people may make me doubt the choices I make and I admit I’m not a perfect person. But I don’t see flaws like others do, I see a person who is worth loving and has the ability to improve because of the light of their flaws. I don’t want to hide my flaws because hiding them causes them to become more entangled in my being. I hope to gain courage to face the flaws I have and release them into the light. I want to be a whole person without the judgments of others influencing what they think I should do to be happy. I don’t think my worth is determined by what the world thinks of me, but more about how I feel about myself. I am working on being confident with asserting my gender identity and not being shaken in my confidence by the negative criticisms of others. My inner light that shines is the one when I feel like when the world tells me otherwise or says I’m not going to be who I am and it doesn’t affect me because I know who I am in my heart.

I don’t want suicide to destroy that inner fire in my heart that tells me that I’m valid for being who I am even if I’m surrounded by the darkness of the world. Suicide would just bring about an energy signature of pain and sadness that I don’t want to inflict upon others or myself. Also I feel that suicide would mean I was letting the darkness consume me and the only escape would be to kill my physical being so I couldend the darkness. I don’t think ending my life or my physical being would bring an end to sadness and sorrow because it would only set the energy of my soul back to places of negative energy that I want to avoid. I don’t want to be a fragmented soul who is unhappy in the next life or leave behind problems for others to deal with. By committing suicide, I would be creating more negative energy for my soul and it wouldn’t be an escape from the pain. What I truly want in life is to follow my soul in a positive light and hope that it gets me close to my goals of transitioning my gender. The stereotypes of the world and my parents create false selves that cover the light of my being and add to my gender dysphoria. Sometimes I find myself trying to live other’s expectations of who I should be or others will judge me on who I once was and not on who I am. I am glad that I have people to listen and they don’t see who I was and the mistakes I’ve made and use them to judge who I am.

. In a way, I don’t ever want to lose  my inner light because it would mean losing touch with my soul essence- the nature and spirit of who I am. Suicide would just bring about an energy signature of darkness and it would mean I had lost my soul essence that made me me. Although,  I  do have days in which I  feel like I  don’t exist in this world and I consider suicide I often think about how it would affect the light within me and I question myself “Has all the light in the world faded or maybe I’m just blind?” Sometimes I feel like a part of me is fighting myself because there is a negative part that I want to release,  but must do it slowly because I’m not sure if I’m ready to face it in its entirety.  When you hold a negative part for so long, it becomes part of you and you wonder what will be left if you release it. But I realize that I want to release it because it blocks the inner light of my being. Sometimes I wonder if I was blind to the negativity affecting me because it seemed like a surreal memory, but I  realize upon meditation that a part of me was fighting to keep the negativity from surfacing and a part of me was gone. I started to see myself suppressing  the negativity with further meditations and realized that it was keeping me from truly living my life.  I saw the parts of the negative memories surface and I saw and felt that I needed to live and become the person I  was meant to be. I realized I  had to allow myself to release the negativity to move forward and I found myself saying to my inner self “I’m sorry for not being true to myself. I’m sorry I hurt you. I hope you take me in for whoI am and not for who I’ve been. All these things I came up with to escape the sadness of my falsr selves, I never meant to cause you pain. I’m sorry for who I used to be and I’ll open my door to be a  better person. Thank you for being you when I was blind to myself and had to do so many things to make myself fit into societal stereotypes. But now I know I will listen to who I am. I forgive myself and I’m sorry about the anorexia and depression.  I’m not a perfect person and I know I don’t like parts of myself,  but I’m okay because they don’t define who I am. I’m sorry for abandoning  you for the world’s stereotypes and now I know I’m a better person because of you. Thank you for helping me  see with my insecurities that I’ll be okay and I ‘ll find the light. Maybe not today, but soon.” I told my inner self this after a meditation today and I felt a weight lift off my chest as the voice of my inner critic lessened. I want to fully embody the light of my being and see the light in the world and not have it obscured by the negativity.

Dear Anita:

The more I meditate, the more I am able to express my feelings: the good and the bad. I am also learning how to embrace the negative parts of me and release them. I like your explanation of how the people who criticize me are the ones under water because they don’t see clearly beyond the surface. This reminds me of an analogy I would like to make: I find that the criticisms of people are like rocks thrown in a pond, they ripple the surface and create waves of disturbance on the outside, but as the rocks sink beneath the surface (as a person tries to hide them), they become buried deep in the sand and it becomes harder to remove them with time and if the current brings them up(if an event triggers them), it can cause rough waters to ensue (rough emotions to surface and the person may try to suppress thememories and bury them again).  Negativity when buried can become a part of a person’s being because they’ve held it for so long, it feels like it’s a part of who they are so when it resurfaces to be released it can be hard to release it. I am working on no longer hiding the flaws I have and bringing them to the surface. I know I’m scared of losing myself or becoming vulnerable, but if I bring my flaws to the light I will come closer to knowing my true self rather than living under the false layers.

There are days when I feel like things are moving too slowly and I become depressed. On those days, I go back to over-exercising and controlling my eating because I feel like I’m not doing enough to move things forward and want to do more, but not sure how. Meditation has helped me ground myself and remain calm in the presence of negativity around me. I dislike numbing myself because it doesn’t dull the hurt of the angry words, it just makes them seem surreal as if I’m underwater and the angry words are drums that are beating underwater. The sound of the anger is distorted and it seems as if it is rippling through me causing me to feel the ripple of the cold fury, but not be physically present but it doesn’t lessen the blow of the words. Meditation helps me shield myself by imagining a positive light around me dissolving the negative energy so I don’t have to detach from it and numb myself which makes me further lose myself. I am still working on relaxing my thoughts and taking things one at a time, but at times I wish I could do a lot more and move things quicker. I find myself feeling strained at times and at other times feeling lost. When I feel strained and know that the day was productive, I am happier but when I am strained and lost than I feel like the person I created myself to be isn’t really there. During the times I have trouble believing in me and who I am because people will tell me otherwise, I get depressed and wonder if I’ll ever build my confidence to achieve my goals. At those times of shaken confidence and doubts with whether I can be more true self, I feel intense gender dysphoria and find myself wishing I was gone from this world. my thoughts are foggy, my heart aches and I feel alone like I’ve just had all my hopes dashed when I entered a tunnel of no light. I want to live fully with myself and any time I feel like I may be losing myself, I consider suicide but at the point of carrying it out there’s always something that stops me. I start thinking about how I could kill myself when I already feel like the person that other people see me as isn’t there anymore and is dead and I stop myself. I always wonder if I killed myself, would people see the real me that hides on the inside and acknowledge it. Sometimes when I’m really depressed, I think that self-destructing myself will remove the pain and will allow others to see the person I am. If they see that I’m not the person I used to be and know that I’m struggling with myself, maybe they’ll look deeper. But that hasn’t ever happened with my parents who think my over-exercising and depression are just the results of mental illness. Yet, no matter how close I get to the edge I never fall over. There is always an inner voice that tells me that I have things to live for and killing myself would not allow me to have a chance to live my life for the better. I begin to think about how if I ended my life, I would have less of a chance to show the world my true self beneath the false layers. Although, I don’t fear death because I believe that we are energy and the energy within our bodies- our soul is reborn into other forms; I don’t think I would succeed in suicide. There is always a reason that seems to speak to me at the moment I’m on the edge that brings me back. I may not see the light at the end of the tunnel, but it makes me realize that killing myself wouldn’t solve any problems. I don’t think my parents will ever understand my gender identity and I know I will have to break contact with them. I am most scared of learning about financial matters, organizing my belongings to move out and having enough to pursue further education. I hope to get a small job soon to earn money and start saving for my therapy appointments at Robert Wood Johnson hospital in Somerset, NJ. After I finish community college and  transfer to a four year college, two more years will put me at a bachelor’s degree upon which I can get a job as a small lab assistant/researcher and earn more money as I work on my master’s degree. Since I will transfer to a four year university and live in a dorm, I might be able to seek therapy and if I have enough money saved, I could start testosterone therapy earlier than 25 years old. Once I have my master’s degree I will be able to look for many genetic researcher jobs that have higher salaries and that may help my with my transitioning surgery or moving out of the house and finding an apartment and I will use some of my earnings from the job to pursue a doctorates degree so I can become a genetic engineer which is my main career goal.

The questions are: how do I stop myself from taking one more than I can handle? When it seems like I’m doubting myself, how do I avoid being self-destructive and numbing myself and either face the pain or find a healthy way to cope with it? What are good ways to believe in myself more?

Dear Anita:

I have begun to read many books about fixing household items as well as automobile repairs and have been learning lots. I’m taking it slowly and skimming the books to learn the most important things first. I feel I have made some progress with my knowledge and I am working on learning more about financial matters. Every Thursday of the week, I submit one job application and hope for the best. I haven’t heard from the eight job applications I’ve applied to, but I will continue to submit some until I find something that’s right for me. There are days or weeks that it seems like everything is going fine on the outside, but my emotional state on the inside is in turmoil and all I want to do is disappear. The inner critic in my head is like a hammer pounding on an anvil on those days and my heart feels weak, my body feels broken, my mind is tired and restless and I can’t focus on anything.  I am working on trying to stop myself from having those days when my inner critic rages because they leave me depressed and strained. It is on those days, I feel like over-exercising and I carry on with the exercise until I am light-headed and feeling faint. When I feel like I’m out of breath and filled with adrenaline and my eyes only see light and things are all blurry then I stop the exercise. This is a way I deal with the pain of my inner critic who tells me that I’m not strong enough or thin enough or smart enough to be a man. I dislike how I am so self-criticizing of myself and feel like I need to work on appreciating myself more, but it is hard when I feel like I’m trapped in the wrong body. I have started to make peace with the negative memories that I have, but I am still shy when I’m around guys. I always wonder what they will think of me. I am also fearful that they will make fun of me or hurt me.  The memory of the time a guy sexually assaulted me is fading, but it still hurts and I thought I would have a chance to heal in high school. But junior and senior year met with guys who ridiculed me for my gender expression and a guy who was sexist to me over junior summer break and I don’t think I fully healed from the experience. I believe my parents’ cultural gender stereotypes that people have only binary genders of male and female and the roles the genders play also play a part in my psyche and prevent me from fully healing. I am quite self-conscious of my body because I know after times meditating in the mornings that I am comfortable as a man and I always wonder if I’ll ever be able to present myself as masculine. My therapist says that I should stop trying to understand and fight my body as I try to avoid societal stereotypes. She said that I need to look at myself as a whole person not just the parts I don’t like and I need to step aside and look at who I am as a person and stop judging all the thoughts as they arise. I need to stop suppressing the thoughts I want to suppress and stop judging myself and start listening to my inner self. I don’t have to fit into the stereotypes of others and I don’t have to fight my body daily to make myself appear more masculine, I just need to accept myself and know that it’ll be okay. There are times when I lose hope that I’ll ever make it out in life and those are the times when I contemplate suicide. I have come close to it many times and have danced on the edge. One time I was holding a kitchen knife in my hands and I was feeling numb inside like I didn’t exist as a person, I felt cold like there wasn’t anything alive in me anymore and my mind was just a deep hole of emptiness and I remember standing in the kitchen with the knife in my right hand and thinking about what it would be like to slash my left wrist. I made a slight scratch on my left wrist and I was surprised at the pain and then I looked at myself in the mirror and began to cry.  I thought to myself “How can I kill a person who is already dead?” And shaking, I put the knife down and just sat in my room having silent tears run down my face. During those times I’m close to taking my life, everything seems so surreal and it’s like I can feel nothing at all like everything is empty and I’m at the bottom of a hole and all I see is the mud around me and no way out. But there are times when I remind myself that suicide may give the person who has hurt me satisfaction over seeing me defeated and I’m not sure I want that. I also don’t want to ruin the chances of life that I have to improve myself by taking my life and giving myself no chances. My parents have directly stated that if I focus on the positive and ignore the negative then I will be okay, but that’s not how it works. focusing on the positive and burying the negativity makes it more painful when it is triggered again or resurfaces. They say that I think too much into things and I overwhelm myself on purpose. They believe that my emotional state is chosen by me and I can change it by focusing on other things. But it is hard to focus on other things when the negativity goes deeper into the psyche and feels like it’s a part of my being.  I didn’t choose to feel unhappy with myself and if I could choose otherwise I would gladly choose to live happily. But I can’t feel completely satisfied with myself daily as I work on finding myself and working on my gender expression and having more stereotypes of the world placed on me. It makes me want to hide from the world and at times just give up.  Sometimes the bitterness in my mind brings a question that fuels my frustration with my parents and that question is ‘Is it that hard to accept me as I choose to identify? Are you so short-sighted that you only see the flaws in me?” In my anger and irritation at them, sometimes my thoughts pound in my head and the consistent thought obscures all else as I think “All I want is to transition to be a man. I don’t think I can live with myself anymore going daily floating through life not fully living.” Sometimes I feel like being anorexic will make me skinnier and make me look more masculine and I think about what it would be like to die from anorexia and silence my inner critic’s voice. I think “What if I made myself so skinny that my chest would be extremely flat? What if I died trying to be a man, would that make me happier than the life I’m living now?” These thoughts often scare me and make me feel numb and at times I cry. I’m scared of anorexia, but I’m more scared of not living my life and looking masculine so it feels like two sides war with each other. The constant thoughts that pound in my head, the ache of my muscles as I over-exercise to escape the emotional pain and the constant feeling like I don’t exist in this world- like I’m just drifting make me wonder whether I’m really making progress in life. I do not want to lose myself and every time I feel like I’m losing myself I go to the edge. I use anorexia and depression to cover up my insecurities and no matter how I express to my parents I feel like I’m losing control at times, they say it’s a mental illness. They think I became this way because I was bullied in life and to recover, I just need to focus on the positive. They believe that the things I do to escape my insecurities show that I am an irresponsible person and that my mind has unstable thoughts and I don’t know how to make good decisions. They think that  by being anorexic and being depressed, I’m just making things worse for myself even though I’ve told them through research these are common traits that transgender people may experience. In fact transgender people have higher risks of suicide than the other lgbt people.  They think my gender dysphoria will go away if I just ignore it, but it doesn’t. They believe I can change myself and that everything I’ve done so far seems irresponsible. However, there are days or weeks when my mental headache obscures everything and all I feel like is disappearing because I can’t focus on anything but the pain that’s inside. I feel as if I may have diminished my abilities to learn many skills because I combat gender dysphoria. It can be so intense that at times when I’m trying to learn something, I can’t focus. I feel like I’m at war with myself because i want to learn the life skills I need to live independently, but at the same time my gender dysphoria gets in the way at times. I realize if I miss a day of exercise, my inner critic goes haywire and it screams at me “You’re going to be fat! You’re weak! You’re worthless and will never achieve the body you want!” When i can’t exercise, I tend to eat less than average because of my inner critic. The questions i have are: “How do I stop myself from losing hope?  How do I stop fighting myself and the world’s stereotypes and listen to my inner voice? How do i know the person my inner voice says is the right person I am because at times it feels like my inner voice is the voice of the inner critic?”

• This reply was modified 5 years, 10 months ago by Janus.

Dear Anita:

There are many times when I wonder if I could go into a monastery or nature reserve and find peace of mind. I would like to experience just one day where no one puts stereotypes on me and my inner critic is silent. Having to focus on learning life skills and going about with day to day activities struggling with my inner critic is emotionally draining. I still have customers that come into my restaurant who ask me about my gender and think I am the same person I used to be when they met me. I dislike their prying and questions about who I am and find that their judgements of who they think I am fuel my inner critic. I just want to isolate myself from the people who judge me, but it seems like the more I try to, the more they try to place themselves into my life. I don’t feel comfortable explaining my gender expression to others and I find it irritating that others will judge me based on who I was in the past or how I appear. It makes me feel more depressed and emotionally strained when I hear a person say “But you’re not masculine enough without a mustache.” I remember in middle school, there was a guy who pulled his pants down and taunted me saying thst if I didn’t have a penis to show, I would never pass as a male. There are people who are accepting and also make me laugh as well. I feel like I’m losing touch with parts of myself, like there are fragments of myself in places and some parts are gone and I’m fighting other parts that I dislike. I feel like fighting my body every day to calm my inner critic leaves me feeling emotionally drained and makes me wonder if I have a meaning in life. I feel like the more I try to be myself, the more the people around me will try to hold me back and it’s exhausting constantly having them fuel my inner critic. I feel  like I’m losing my voice at times, like I’m not sure what to say or do to be heard. Also I’m not sure who are the ones who will accept me for me. The questions I have are: When people judge me for who I once was, how do I tell them politely that it’s not who I am anymore? How do I defend myself from people who say negative comments and make me doubt myself? When I deviate from my schedule of events and miss doing something, my inner critic says “See you messed up, you are very unorganized and unproductive.” I find this leaves me flustered and then I’m not sure what to do. Do you have any advice?

Thank you for being here to listen. Talking about my feelings helps me work through them and better understand myself.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 10 months ago by Janus.