I think having friends who are here to listen can give you strength and help you not give up. I don’t think I would have survived this long without having support from friends like you. Thank you for helping me see there is meaning in life and for helping me be strong when things are rough. My parents make me question the validity of my gender expression daily when they misgender me and I find myself at war with myself as I try to figure out who I am as a person and who my parents want me to be. It’s like a consistent argument with myself “I hate stereotypes! But you are living in one!” And me arguing with my inner critic who says I’m a hypocrite, “It’s because safety sometimes trumps comfort!” And my inner critic will say “You say you want to live your own life, yet you are still following stereotypes!” And I will argue “I am working on finding myself underneath the stereotypes and working on not following them.” And the inner critic will say “Yeah right as you fall back into your stereotypes again. You don’t know how to be outside the gender binary.” And I will say “I a m working on finding who I am. It would be easier if I didn’t have to constantly work on believing in who I am as I battle stereotypes that say I can never be this or that.” This is me and my inner critic arguing often more prominent from criticisms and fears instilled from parents which seem to be where the inner critic gets its fuel. And the latest question is “Do I have to be a certain character to be the gender identity I want? Is what I feel like on the inside not valid in my presentation of my gender identity as masculine or do I need to adopt what society seems masculine attributes so I am valid?” I don’t think I’ll ever fit into societal stereotypes of gender, but I would like to just feel valid for being me and have my feelings acknowledged. Sometimes there doesn’t have to be a physical attributes, but just emotional ones. It just feels right for me. I don’t know how to explain this to my parents and they don’t seem to understand my emotions. And the thoughts in my mind make me wonder whether I am a real person. I am exploring who I am as a person not the stereotypes of what a man should be because I don’t fit into any of them so in my parents eyes I am not really a man. I wonder why men can’t be sensitive, artistic, creative, compassionate. Why is it in my parents’ eyes that men need to know how to fix things, manage money and not be afraid of little things? It would be great if I didn’t have to fight with my parents’ expectations of what men should be. I don’t have much interest in fixing things, I want to do what I care about not seek money and I am sensitive and have fears of things like bugs and matches. I got burned by a match when I was younger and I’ve never liked bugs. I am more open-minded about people and I agree that appearances don’t always correlate with inner personalities and stereotypes only limit us. Yet I still feel invalidated when it seems like I have to be a certain way to be seen as masculine by my parents, like the things I know and do aren’t good enough. Like having my hair short, working out, dressing in simple clothes isn’t enough. Sometimes it’s hard to be yourself when the people who raised you insist that you fit into the stereotypes that they set for you. When you go against what used to be your base and the roots that helped you grow, it can be hard because you have to rebuild your own base and your roots. I rather be my own person, but being around parents- parents are a child’s first mentor- can be hard. They always seem to know how to hurt you no matter who you become. How can I think outside the box when they won’t let me out of it? And when I transcend the box, who will I be as a person? How can I be sure the personality I have will not be the one with stereotypes? When I have to constantly struggle with my gender dysphoria around my parents and feeling like I am being invalidated, how can I believe in myself as I tell myself constantly who I am but the struggle against the stereotypes seems hard and the fear that my parents may kick me out of the house, refuse to support me financially for education or other things is a fear because they have threatened me with it. Sometimes I think my mind is filled with so many thoughts about how to understand myself and make sense of the world. I’m always trying to understand the nature beneath the surface of things and at times it can be overwhelming. I do overthink things, often planning many steps ahead of time in case one plan goes wrong. Sometimes I try something to test the waters before initiating a plan just to see if it works out. I think it’s one of the annoying things about being a scientist. I can be too analytical at many things.

Dear Anita

I am grateful to have met such an inspirational, creative and encouraging person in my life. Your words always uplift me to be more courageous and self-confident. These days, I feel like for the first time I have a sense of purpose in my life. I feel like for the first time I have value in society and that I am more than the stereotypes that try to limit me. I am still working on establishing my self-confidence, but I can feel myself start to embrace who I am as a person. I am starting to accept myself for me and not what the world wants me to be and it feels like some of the burden has lifted because I have become less interested in what the world sees in me and more of what I see in myself and this has given me a sense of purpose and self-worth. Self-worth comes from the inside and not from the outside because there are so many stereotypes of who to be. I may not be able to break free fully from the stereotypes while still living with my parents because I will still have a fear of them. I fear them because I am currently still financially dependent on them and if they revoke the financial support because of something that I’ve done that displeases them I will be left on my own.. But I can still do little things that assert who I am and not conform to what others want me to be because I don’t want to lose myself. I want to make my life worth living and be proud to be me. Thank you for helping me be that person with your encouragement. My inner critic continues to sneak into my thoughts, but I have been able to lessen its voice. I imagine the inner critic as a TV screen that drones on and on and I have the remote. I can shut the TV off or mute it or change the channel. It is not always easy at times, but I am making progress. I remember my inner critic berating me when I did poorly on my Chemistry Lab Report and also a Chemistry Quiz. The inner critic said “You are pathetic! You never know how to manage your time! You are stupid and will never pass Chemistry! Why don’t you just give up?” Recently (9/11/18), I did not do well on a Chemistry Lab Report because I did not understand the concepts of paper chromatography and how to solve for the retention factor (distance an ion moves on the paper with respect to the origin) as well as some of the terms for the lab. I tried my best to make sense of it and worked on the lab experiment Wednesday. I was disappointed to receive a 50% on my lab report. A few days later (9/14/18), I attempted Chapter 11 quiz for Chemistry and I got some problems with vapor pressure (pressure exerted by a liquid as it enters the gas phase) and some problems for the labeling of phase diagrams wrong so I received a 45% on my Chemistry quiz. My inner critic made me feel mentally strained and I was already upset over my Chemistry lab and quiz results. But I did not want to give up. I took a break with a walk out in nature feeding some of the birds in my backyard. While I was walking, my inner critic said “What are you doing? Why are you being unproductive? You should be studying! You’ll never pass Chemistry! You are a failure!” I was tired of my inner critic so I imagined a hand holding a giant eraser and I erased those thoughts from my mind and I said “Listen inner critic, I am not a perfect person! Failure is a part of life and I can learn from it! I am okay, I only failed one quiz and one lab report and the teacher drops the lowest grades. I still have more time in the semester to improve my grades. One mistake does not mean I am stupid. I will not listen to your criticisms, but find my voice of reason!” The silence in my mind that greeted these words was blissful, I felt glad to have won a battle with the inner bully. After my walk I felt more refreshed. I returned to my Chemistry work today and decided to try Chapter 11 and re-organize my notes and it makes more sense. I may not get a perfect score on the upcoming exam this Monday, but I feel much better because I understand vapor pressure much more. I still need practice reading phase diagrams, but I have hope and will not let my inner critic get in the way. I will also start Chapter 13 this weekend and review its concepts for the exam since the exam consists of Chapter 11 and 13. I will work better and harder on my next two lab reports on chemical reaction rates (working on learning the equations) and also freezing points (working on figuring out how to manipulate the data) for Wednesday.

This week has been a busy one, but it feels rewarding. I feel like I am making progress toward my goals and the more I counter the inner critic the more I can focus on my goals.  On Monday and Wednesday, my psychology professor talked about statistics and how it is used by psychologists to establish correlation coefficients that describe how likely a behavior will occur in an organism. I enjoy my psychology class because he explains topics quite well, summarizes the key points and reviews concepts that were previously taught every start of the class. Most people don’t really like statistics much and my brother said it was hard for him in college. But my psychology professor makes statistics sound interesting. He did this experiment where he said that “In a room with thirty or more people, at least two people will have the same birthdays.” It was really intriguing example of statistics that turned out to be true because there were two classmates that shared November birthdays. After a few explanations, I began to understand different terms that correspond to experiments with more clarity like independent variable, dependent variable, correlation and correlation coefficient. I felt like I understood how scientists make experiments and use statistics to report their data in numerical values of charts and graphs.

Also, after being approached by the guy three times on campus in the student center (twice on the second floor and once on the first floor) I talked with my counselor and she filed a report with a CARE team (I think it stands for Center for Access and Resources for Equality)  and now he doesn’t bother me. Before he approached me 9/17/18, 9/21/18 and 9/24/18. I saw him once yesterday on my way to my World Physical Geography class and he didn’t seem happy, but I don’t regret reporting him. I want to move on from the past memories that he tried to make me remember again with his awkward questions.  I enjoy my World Physical Geography class a lot. The professor has a great sense of humor and inspires his students to explore various parts of the environment. He shows us videos of national parks and also makes us aware about the importance of maps. Being in this class brought up a past memory of middle school when I had a history teacher who taught us how to read maps and also create our own. Although I had some difficulty mapping out the distances in maps, remembering the countries of Africa (hardest test in seventh grade history) and also drawing my own map I had lots of fun in that class. I am grateful to my World Physical Geography professor for bringing back those memories and possibly I will reawaken my ability to read maps and create them again rather that using my GPS which can shut down in remote places.  Lately, I have had flashes of past memories come to mind because of various events in the present that I didn’t know I still remembered. I welcome these memories because they provide me with more insight on who I am as a person. I think some of the memories were repressed because I was depressed this summer and now they are resurfacing. Last night I had a great dream that filled me with hope. I had a dream that I was sitting alone by an abandoned house lost in the shadows when the Buddha came by. In his hand he carried three books, I was confused at why he was showing these books to me. The Buddha said “Remember one time you asked what you should learn and read first to help you further in life? And then you waited for an answer that you didn’t think would come because you were lost in yourself? You gave up hope and that is why you sit in the shadows. Well, I am here to show you the way.” The Buddha raised his hand and there was a sprinkle of silver sparkles and my vision cleared so I could see the titles of the three books:

1. Moving Forward, Keeping Still- A Book of Quotations

2. The Journey of the Soul by Michael Newton

3.  Llewellyn’s Complete Book of Mindful Living
Awareness & Meditation Practices for Living in the Present Moment

I was confused and asked the Buddha how I would acquire these books because I don’t have much in finances. The Buddha said “Have faith, money will come to you.” I felt myself spiral out into the universe and a golden light fill my vision. I arrived in a meadow with yellow grasses. At first, there didn’t seem to be anything worthwhile in the meadow. But the Buddha appeared and said “This is the meadow of your soul. You can choose who you want to be. You can create abundance.” As understanding flooded me, I began to think of those books the Buddha had showed me that would guide me in life and I felt myself reach into my wallet and discovered I had just the right amount of money for the books. I was amazed and asked the Buddha how this was possible. And the Buddha said “What you think you become. I have cleared a path for you so you can see much clearer your goals in the distance, but you still have to travel the distance and meet some obstacles. Yet you are closer to your goal than you realize and I know you will achieve it soon.” I was filled with a warm light as my body began to glow, suddenly the meadow felt like it had a vast array of possibilities. Smiling the Buddha left and I was standing in the meadow glowing. I looked around to see where the light was and realized it was in me. I began to think of all the possibilities that could happen in my life and I realized they all could be wonderful. I was creating abundance; I had the strength to move myself toward my goals and keep my focus. And in the distance of the meadow appeared a mountain that had not been there, but I was confident and climbed it. There was a boulder that came down and tried to crush me, it missed me by a few inches and I was shaken as I was on the ground. But a hand picked me back up and I heard the rush of wings as I was carried off the ground. I felt my body dissolve in a golden light and merge with the universe and at that moment I knew I was being healed. I knew that I could overcome my obstacles and I was not alone in my path and I had power to create abundance.

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

Dear Anita

Thank you for your encouragement and wisdom. I have decided to make a schedule to organize my tasks. I learned a lot today about transferring to four year universities and I am excited about it. I am going to spend my weekend catching up on my chemistry notes and trying to understand one of the lab problems. Otherwise I don’t have any homework other than to study for Anatomy and Physiology quiz which won’t be too difficult because I still remember much of the concepts from AP Biology in high school. I will miss my college friends when I graduate after another semester and a half, but I can visit most of them since they live nearby. I hope that I can apply for some internships at my four year university and I have at least three teacher recommendations that can help me. Since I will be taking a class on campus over the summer, I will still have support and it will ease the gender dysphoria even if it is only for a portion of the summer and for only three days on campus. I am planning on using my winter break Dec. 22-January 13 to prepare some college essays for transferring. On my breaks I may also do some spring cleaning so when it comes time for four year college or to move out I don’t have lots of clutter to carry around. I will also use the time to read books from library about life skills like money management and car repairs as well as transgender resources. It’s going to be busy, but I am excited for the opportunities that lie ahead.

Dear Anita

Thank you for your response. You are great at pulling out the key points and organizing them. You can call me Earth Angel or Janus whatever feels easier for you. It is great having a person I can share my feelings with. Ocean County College has a need for more chemistry and calculus tutors this semester, but I’m not sure if I will have time to do paid volunteer peer tutor and have time for my studies and seeking resources. I am glad today that my Anatomy and Physiology Lab and my Physical Geography class both did not give class assignments so I have time to rest and also do other assignments like catching up on chemistry. Tomorrow, I have an appointment with my advisor about course plans and also possibility of graduating from community college in Spring 2021. That is the earliest I am hoping for to transfer to a four-year university where I can live in a dorm and be away from my parents and I am looking forward to it. In the mean time, I am seeking resources and have a counseling appointment at my college 9/25. I rarely see my old Ocean Pride friends from previous semesters and my new ones have course schedules that don’t match up so when one wants to hang out the other is in class. I am working on a meditation routine to help me focus more on my inner self and to make myself more confident. I hope that I can establish a good sense of confidence when summer comes. I may choose to apply for a summer job before summer rolls around because I won’t have the stress of school so I can work more flexible hours and this will give me time to be away from my parents. I am not sure of every step of the way, but I choose to live in the moment choosing to plan a little every day to get closer to my goals. I know that I don’t have to be a certain way or know certain things to be valid as my gender, I just need to find what’s right for myself at the moment. And what’s right for myself at the moment is to relieve tensions in my life, do well in school, build my knowledge and if possible see a job that works with my school schedule and if not then have one over the summer. I do not need to know everything like how to do car or house repairs and I will learn to manage money. Just because my knowledge doesn’t seem practical to my parents doesn’t mean I can’t survive in life and it certainly doesn’t mean my knowledge is useless. It is not easy trying to lessen the inner critic in my mind son I can focus on things, but I know I have people who help me build up my strength. Thank you Anita for always being here for me, always listening and helping me better understand my feelings. It’s people like you who make me realize that I am not wrong for society and give me hope to keep going for my goals. I have some questions: What are good ways to keep track of your goals? How can I be certain that what I believe in is not what others influenced me to believe? How do I break myself out of a negative habit? I feel like I can be too compassionate at times and sometimes I feel obligated to help people with their burdens. With my parents, I am obligated to help them whether I want to or not because of shelter and financial stability and I wonder if there are ways to avoid helping them in situations that cause strain and make a person have a negative habit. In my parents’ case, it is being judgmental while in my case it is being self-criticizing. I feel like my parents contribute to my bad habits and if I can’t escape from them entirely, maybe I can lessen the burden. I believe parents will always be able to place shame on their children no matter how old the child is, but that doesn’t mean I can’t lessen the shame so it controls my life. I rather incur my parents wrath and live in slight fear of going against their values if it means I can have a sense of being myself and be happy. Yet, their wrath comes with a shame that binds in which will only heal fully when I part ways with them. I do wish there was a way to be myself and not incur the shame of my parents. And the last question is Should I forgive a person who seeks forgiveness for hurting me? I know that forgiveness may help release the pain from controlling me, but the guy who sexually assaulted me in middle school (whom I saw Monday before my Ocean Pride meeting on campus) wants forgiveness and I feel like I’m not ready to trust him or let it go yet. I still need time to heal. I thought I was healed, but seeing him again brought back memories and now he wants forgiveness and I’m not sure how to act. Does it make me selfish if I don’t forgive him readily as he is asking to mend things between us? Is forgiveness truly possible? Even if I do forgive him, is it possible to truly let the pain go? I want to let myself be healed, but I still don’t trust yet so is it better to wait? Would the pain become buried deeper if I didn’t forgive and release it? There are so many conflicting thoughts in my mind and it also makes me wonder if forgiveness is possible with my parents (maybe forgiving them would allow me to release the hurts), but is it really good idea to forgive someone who has hurt you so much? Maybe with time when I’m away from them, I may forgive myself but not forgive them and I wonder if that is really forgiveness.

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.

Dear Anita

The summer months were emotionally exhausting since my parents did not accept my gender identity and did not think it necessary for me to visit the therapist. I felt alone with a raging inner critic and I would burst into tears at least twice every two weeks. I struggled with disordered eating, avoiding certain foods and at other times eating a lot because I didn’t feel full. Then I was filled with self-hatred because I felt I had lost control over my restriction with food and my body wouldn’t be masculine enough so I would work out to the extreme and eat little for days to burn off the calories. I became tired of trying to live, tired of not being recognized for who I am, just tired of doing anything not really living and seeing a meaning in life because I hated myself and thought I was wrong. My parents did not think I needed any resources to help me that I was just being an irresponsible teenager and could change my thoughts to become positive. All the times I was misgendered by people because my parents insisted on my birth sex gender when telling people who I was and all the times the people who used to know me misgendered me, I felt myself want to hurt myself. I would eat very little, exercise to the extreme and also use ace tape (constricts breathing and leaves bruises) to bind my chest along with my chest binder to make it look flatter and make myself skinnier to become more masculine. This summer was emotionally exhausting. Even though things were fine on the outside, I felt tired and empty on the inside. I felt like a shadow walking through life with each passing day like I didn’t really exist. I hated myself for being myself as it seems to me I’m not sure if I’m enough for society or even fit into society at all. However I didn’t want to fit into society, I just wanted to feel like who I am will be enough. But I didn’t think I know who that is anymore. I feel like I’m split between two people, the gender I feel on the inside which doesn’t match the biological sex on the outside and I hate my body because of it. I wish I could just forget the thoughts in my mind and be at peace just for a day so I can focus on learning new things. My mind keeps playing the same loop over and over and I find myself losing my short-term memory and losing sleep. I keep feeling like the body I have doesn’t belong to me, like who I am on the outside isn’t who I want to be and how I see myself on the inside. It seems like my mind has become a one-track mind playing the same record over and over and it makes it hard to focus on learning new things. The inner critic in my mind laughs at me saying that I’ve lost control of myself and keeps telling me that I am wrong for society to be feeling gender dysphoria. On the days I have the worst dysphoria and the inner critic rages, I feel like I am carrying the weight of the world on my chest and it’s hard to breathe. Those are the days when I know I’m truly inside myself because the emotions that I feel like I run from most of the time are really intense and it seems like I am at war with myself. Disordered eating is a way to feel in control of my body when my dysphoric thoughts were causing me to lose myself. It made things worse because I was consistently cold, tired or had aches from working out too much and eating too little, but the physical pain was easier to deal with than the emotional pain and it made me feel like I had some control over the thoughts in my head. It’s like I’m splitting my personality into two different people: one who feels masculine on The inside and one who seems forced to portray feminity The dysphoria causes me to isolate myself from my body entirely because it’s hard living two people at once and wanting so much to be seen as the person I identify as and not the lie. Since I feel like I’m becoming more disillusioned with myself daily and the memories in my mind seem all fragmented, I try to seek a different person to make up for the fragmented person I feel like I am forced to be because I want to feel whole and this has caused me to be stressed and have short-term memory fog because I’m consistently trying to present myself as a confident whole person.

And it’s hard to learn new things because all I can think about is my gender identity and it consumes my mind. It’s like I form the different versions of myself but they all play similar tapes and they loop around in my head, always the same obsessive thought that I’m trying to escape from. When I feel overwhelmed from all of it, it’s like my mental processes are sluggish and being controlled by this one loop that goes round and round and I go between different selves to placate the voice.
I feel like I have an anorexic-like self who strives to be perfect, people-pleaser self that doesn’t want to make anyone mad, an adult-child self that still holds on to childhood ideals wishing I was still a child and life was easier.

Sometimes I feel like I’m the wrong person for others, like I’m wrong for society and that the person I am will never be enough or have anything worthy to give.

I felt severely depressed and just couldn’t figure out ways to cope with my self-hatred and gender dysphoria that it made it hard to focus on the things of the moment and daily tasks.  This was how I felt in the summer months. When August came around, I had hope because school was around the corner but it was still difficult. My college friends from Ocean Pride LGBT club initiated contact with me toward the late weeks of August and I was grateful to have people to talk to, but also felt bitter because I wish they had responded sooner when I had told them I needed comfort. I did try some online therapy,  but it felt impersonal and although it did help to express my feelings I wanted to talk with someone who truly understood me because I wanted a connection that would make me feel less alone. I thought about posting on tinybuddha, but was just drained emotionally and didn’t really feel like I would have the words to express what I was feeling or the motivation. The only thing that kept me alive in the summer months was one of my spiritual friends who practices Buddhist Wicca with me. She listened to me and gave advice and it was like having a therapist in person even though it was online groupchat because she gave detailed advice and encouragement that helped me have some focus when I was lost in my inner bully. The closer the days get to school, the more I feel like myself again because I know there will be friends there for me. It’s like being in school awakens a sense of self in me and I can focus on learning new things again because I don’t always have to tell myself that I am masculine enough to make myself believe it when told otherwise. It’s like the closer school gets, the less the inner critic talks and there are times when it seems as if the inner critic is gone and there is this void that I’m not sure of how to feel because it had been occupied by the inner critic for quite a length of time. It makes me feel numb and comfused as to what I’m feeling. I think I have a lesser form of dissociation because I do experience mental fog that makes it hard to focus on daily tasks, but doesn’t really affect my memory much. I find I am still able to remember an event someone tells me, but there are some things that are hard to grasp. It’s like my mind is a filter and the dense and important thoughts are remembered while the ones that people tell me at the moment I remember for ten minutes then forget. For example, someone will tell me that I need to do the laundry and I’ll remember to do it. But I have trouble focusing on things with a structured order like grocery list items. If someone check items in stock and write a list of items needed, I can do it but when people ask me what the list says when I don’t have it in front of me I find I don’t remember clearly what I wrote even if it was just five minutes ago. I do feel like the true me is trapped in a false self and I am aware of my true self and feel like my false self doesn’t exist. Yet I am aware of reality and the distinction between the false feminine self and true masculine self. My inner critic stems from my parents’ criticisms and I’m aware of it criticizing me daily. When it seems to overwhelm me, then all I hear is the inner critic but I know the inner critic is a part of me- it’s the part that internalized the shame my parents inflicted upon me and now tries to torment me on the inside. The inner voice is the other part of me that tries to stop the inner critic from destroying who I am. I feel my emotions at a deep level and it feels like I truly inhabit my body, but since it feels wrong for me I detach myself from it to stop the inner critic from raging. Yet this makes me feel numb and depressed, yet as I go through my days I know the events that pass and am aware of them, but they seem to not hold my interest. I think what is more accurate is that I’m experiencing a severe form of depression that causes me to feel lost in my life, causing me to become detached from myself to escape the self-hatred in my head and the fact that sometimes I can’t escape it and I feel numb and like the events in life hold little interest for me. My inner critic and inner voice are part of me and they war in my head and make me want to escape the thoughts in my head. The warring thoughts make it hard to focus on reality and myself. My inner critic is a response to the negative thoughts that I try to detach from in my mind. I find it easier to focus somewhere else, to imagine me as the person I want to be rather than the person that is there and in the body that is constantly hounded by the inner critic. The inner critic sees the worst in me and it makes them worse because it is part of me. It like fighting myself and losing control because of the self-doubt the inner critic makes me believe. Which is why I became anorexic and it is hard to let it go because the inner critic seems like a part of me and the more it rages the more I feel like I’m losing myself and anorexia feels like I have some control over my body’s appearance. But anorexia is not a way of control because it makes me feel more tired and drained. One way to avoid anorexia and the inner critic is to disengage from myself. To act as if I am the person I want to be and to say to myself “their opinion, not my reality.” This detachment from the world around me at home has left me feeling tired and withdrawn into myself and like I don’t really care anymore about fighting to be recognized for who I am, I just want to believe in myself and that will be enough. I don’t want to constantly fight my own thoughts and other people’s as well so I detach from myself and act as if I am the person I want to be and it gives me a sense of self and an escape from the inner critic in my mind that tries to get me to be anorexic so I can look more masculine.

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 6 years, 5 months ago by Janus.

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.