So, I’m baby trans. I’m exploring, at what feels like a glacial pace, but feel the urge to do something more. More, different clothes, idk. **But ** I think I have this fear of looking ridiculous with something and just hating myself and getting depressed, so I just don’t.
I was thinking I was “afraid of feeling dysphoric”, but today I started wondering, it’s that fear actually the dysphoria?
Bonus thought; the wanting to explore, but not knowing what to do, feels a little bit like when you have an itch on your back and try to get someone to help but they more of chase it around until you just give up. It’s like that. My gender is itchy and I can’t figure out how to scratch it 🤣
Can you give an example about the cognitive dissonance in this context? I definitely partially blame choice paralysis, but I think combined it’s a little bit of, I have a vague idea of what I want, but don’t know how to get there.
And my stupid “well if I don’t know the plan I don’t know where to start” thing 😅 I know it’s a thing and I’ve been working with my therapist on it but still
Yeah for sure. So I grew up around a bunch of people who thought tattoos were inappropriate. And because everyone said they were inappropriate, I grew up believing they were inappropriate.
It wasn’t until later in life I realized I actually thought tattoos were cool and the only reason I didn’t have any is because I never actually made a choice based on my opinion. I was living based on someone else’s.
(Or replace “tattoos” with whatever you in particular feel bad/stressed about.)
I can 100% relate to the feeling of “if I don’t know the plan I don’t know where to start”.
The conclusion I came to is that it’s impossible to know if there is a “plan”. But hypothetically if there was a plan, what would you want it to look like? For me that plan would be “I’ll do the things I think are right. I’ll do the things that make me feel good (enjoying life, helping other people enjoy their lives) and when I mess up I’ll forgive myself and have faith that others will forgive me.”
That is a really helpful idea! I mean, it is basically just take a first step and see how it goes, but the way you framed it made my brain “get it” 😅 I just gotta get an idea of the next couple steps ND then figure the rest out, then it’ll feel more like a path instead of blindly wandering one step at a time.