Untangling my identity from my baggage

[iLilli]

Figure I might as well bring this up here in the hopes that I’ll get some new insight into things.

So, I’m 28 and AMAB. For the last couple of years I’ve been questioning my gender identity… although maybe “questioning” implies a more active process. My anxiety and fear of “getting things wrong” have been a major roadblock in things, of course, but there’s a specific worry that’s played a major factor in dragging things out.

There’s a lot of context that I could get into, but the short version is that I’m not sure whether the feeling of “I want to be a girl/femme nonbinary/Cisn’t” is a genuine expression of my feelings, desires, and what’s comfortable and authentic to me, or if it’s effectively a symptom or coping mechanism resulting from a moderately dysfunctional relationship with gender and sexuality caused by a variety of factors in my past.

If it’s a genuine expression of who I am, that’s fantastic, and I’d feel very encouraged to spend more time actively exploring that.
However, if it’s ultimately the result of unresolved trauma, warped expectations, internalized misandry, a misidentified expression of my sexuality, some other kind of cognitive distortion, or even something comparatively trivial or petty, then I worry that pursuing that path further will end in disappointment at best, and could potentially end up feeding or magnifying those issues.

I know that there’s no “right” or “wrong” way to be trans, and I know that there are all sorts of resources available to help people who are questioning their gender identity, but while I’m sure that many people find those resources helpful, I can’t say the same. My brain’s insistence on structure and discrete, functional, almost prescriptivist definitions and categories (as a way to feel “in control” and counteract anxiety) mean that no matter how true they may be, the near-omnipresent subjectivity that most such resources use makes them almost useless for me, especially given the negative associations I’ve developed with ambiguity in general.

If additional context on anything would help, feel free to ask.

[Latha]

Hi there, iLilli

What if you changed your guiding question to something like 'What specific behaviors/things/ways of being are interesting to me right now?'. Maybe you don't need to search for your true gender, as a thing that exists within you, separate from your traumas, expectations, sexuality etc. You're not even looking for what kind of identity feels right- though that can be a useful question, it is a bit subjective. You don't have to make any decisions. You're just exploring what feels interesting.

Are you interested in feminine clothing? If you are, you could see how it feels to exist in feminine clothing for a while- it could be just a half an hour while you're alone. You don't even have to change how you identify. After all, boys can wear skirts.

The fact of the matter is, being trans isn't some kind of exclusive club. You don't need to pass any tests or jump through any hoops or know everything for sure to engage with transness. It is okay if you are uncertain about your identity. Do you think you can try to focus instead on the relative certainty of what feels interesting or good?

Sometimes the only way to know is to live. Give yourself the space to learn about yourself. I understand that is scary, especially since you have negative associations with ambiguity and uncertainty. But I see your fear of getting things wrong, and I have to wonder, so what if you do? What will happen if you identify as a girl/femme nonbinary/Cisn’t for sometime and one day realize it isn't the right fit?

I don't think anyone will punish you for doing something wrong. I want to understand, why do you think disappointment is the best result here? Is it not possible to feel neutral or positive about having explored something?

If I may ask, do you have any friends who are comfortable with gender exploration? If you explore this while having fun with a friend, that could mitigate the discomfort that comes with trying something new. Spending time in LGBTQ oriented spaces might also help, if you aren't doing so already. Being around people who are more comfortable with gender experimentation and fluidity might normalize it for your mind.

[iLilli]

Well, in terms of IRL friends, I don't really have, um... any. I have online friends who have been extremely helpful in exploring all this, but when it comes to actually putting things into practice, the anxiety can be... overwhelming, in a lot of ways. Having so many intersecting forms of neurodivergence means that I tend to get comfortable with a very specific way of doing things, and leaving my comfort zone tends to be VERY stressful, even just from not having the certainty of built-up past experience. Even in ordinary things, I very rarely feel like I can push myself to try something new. Most of the time, it just doesn't feel worth it to risk letting go of what little comfort I've managed to put together - what if I can't get it back? What if it doesn't feel the same when I try to come back to it? It's not like my situation is actually all that bad, of course, but... I dunno. It scares me.

I guess the other challenge with experimenting with stuff is that I don't really feel confident in... my ability to identify my feelings about something, or even just my ability to HAVE consistent feelings about stuff. A lot of what I know about myself is basically assumptions based off of my observations of my own behavior, so what I "like" or "dislike" isn't really something I can intuitively recognize? Like, I actually do have some more feminine clothing, and have tried wearing it on occasion. But I don't know how to evaluate my feelings and experiences of wearing those clothes, if that makes sense. Did it feel good because I actually like wearing those clothes, or because I'm fascinated with the novelty of wearing something that I saw as unavailable to me for a long time? Did it feel bad because I genuinely don't enjoy wearing those clothes, or because my anxiety was causing me to feel like I was doing something wrong? And if I try the same thing on two different days and don't feel the same, then what?

...I guess it's sort of clear at this point that a lot of my issues with all this stem from a feeling of not wanting to "get things wrong". Not wanting to get in trouble for doing or saying or wanting or thinking something I didn't realize I wasn't supposed to do or say or want or think. To be honest, I've probably spent less time focusing on who I am as a person than I've spent trying to be whoever I need to be to not have people upset with me. It's so hard for me to let go of that constant fear that anything I decide for myself might be The Wrong Decision and that I need other people to decide for me so that it won't be My Fault if things go wrong. And when it comes to gender, that just... doesn't work.

[Sam W]

I do think that, given what you're describing, a lot of this ties back to the anxiety you're working on, and that the more you're able to address that, the more confident you might feel in some of your other emotions and identities. Too, I do think it would be worth talking with your therapist the next time you're able to see them about tools or techniques they recommend for learning to be comfortable with, or at least tolerate, ambiguity. You mentioned that's adding to your anxiety around all this, and the truth is that ambiguity is just part of life. Which is annoying as all get-out if you're someone who prefers clearly defined answers or categories, but it also means we all have to develop our own ways of dealing with it.

With that being unsure what you like or dislike, in your example it actually sounds more like you can recognize those feelings in yourself but your anxiety immediately hops in and tries to second guess your feelings. So, what if, in terms of gender stuff, you focused more on that initial feeling and less on the potential reasons behind it? What if, for now, just knowing that wearing a dress felt good in the moment is reason enough to keep wearing them?

I'll also add that I very much get the fear of Doing Something Wrong and the instinct to let other people decide things for me so I won't Do Something Wrong and face them being upset. Too, if any of the trauma you're dealing with was tied to being punished or blamed or made to feel as if you were never doing the right thing, then I can see how that's going to be an extra-hard instinct to shake.

But I wonder: what if we come at it from the angle of gender not being a thing you can get wrong? For instance, I don't actually think there's a wrong way to present as any gender identity (now, there are ways that may be safer or more accepted in a moment, but that's not about the other ways being inherently wrong). And I don't think we can be wrong about our own sense of our gender; I think we're usually doing the best we can with the information we have at that moment. That includes when we know something is off or not fitting right about the gender we're assigned or perceived as, but we're not sure what word to put to that feeling.

[iLilli]

As a matter of fact a whole lot of my trauma does revolve around feeling like I could never do The Right Thing despite trying to. When you combine ADHD, autism, and all the various other things that made me Different, on top of good old Gifted Kid Syndrome, I spent a lot of time growing up hearing or being told that I was disruptive, disrespectful, difficult, or any number of other criticisms, and being punished for it. And of course being exceptional for my age in certain areas meant that a lot of people concluded that I couldn’t possibly be legitimately struggling with anything - I was “Smart”, after all - so any misbehaviour must have been intentional on my part! My parents tried their best to help me, but it took time for them to figure it out, and the school system was… not particularly cooperative or helpful.

All this is to say that a fear of punishment, whether direct or indirect or even internalized, is arguably one of if not the primary source of my anxiety. My childhood essentially taught me that anyone around me had the ability to make my life worse at any moment, without any negative consequences for them, so the only way to survive was to try my best to not make any mistakes so they wouldn’t have any reason to punish me.

At this point it’s all very thoroughly internalized, too, so even if there’s nobody around I can’t escape that anxiety and fear that out of nowhere I’ll suddenly be held accountable for something I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to do, that nobody bothered to explain because they assumed that it would be “common sense”, as though certain facts and rules and expectations were supposed to magically appear in a person’s brain at some point.

…sorry, that was an unnecessary rant.

Oh my god. Even here and now. I don’t know whether all this was actually a mistake to talk so much about, so I apologize at the end in the hope of mitigating any judgement or disapproval. In any situation, in EVERY situation, I can never escape the fear that I’m somehow in the wrong and that judgement is imminent. Even when I know that people won’t judge or punish me for something I just can’t let go of the fact that they COULD, and that I wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.

[iLilli]

Honestly, one of my worries is just that I'm getting some wires crossed between my gender identity and my sexuality, in some ways, as well as issues with unrealistic expectations from media. It's difficult to work through, particularly because when I try to think of how to explain it all, it inevitably just seems to sound petty or selfish or tonedeaf or something like that. Trying to express how I feel about it and why is like navigating a minefield, in a weird way, because I'm hypervigilant about accidentally saying something that would make people go "It's wrong to want that" or "Feeling that way makes you a bad person" or even just "I don't think that's a healthy perspective". And, like, I KNOW that, but I don't always know exactly which feelings those are, and the idea of being corrected or shamed for admitting to wanting something for a reason that isn't justifiable or reasonable is just too scary.

[Sam W]

I'm so sorry that those experiences have basically left you with the habit of internally policing yourself to the point of such intense fear. That's an incredibly frustrating thing to deal with, and when it's tied up in trauma it can for sure be harder to unlearn or, at the very least, quiet down. I do think that therapy could help, assuming you find a therapist who's committed to helping you reshape those thought patterns, since that can be a longer process sometimes. But part of what a therapeutic space offers us is a place and a person who can help us dig out the ways of feeling about ourselves or the world that are hurting us but feel like they're so deep in our person they're never coming out.

I do also want to offer a trick--taught to me by a therapist--that has helped me when that internal voice is leaning hard on the "you're doing this WRONG oh god what if we're wrong" button. I pause and ask myself if the voice, or what it's saying, sounds like anyone in particular. And if it does, is it someone I trust, or the way someone who actually cares about me would speak to me? Or does it sound more like someone in my life who maybe I've learned isn't always trustworthy on these points. For example, if you had someone in your life who was constantly judging your choices, no matter what they were, identifying that voice as sounding like them can help you go "huh, you'd actually say that regardless of what I feel or do, so you're not a reliable measure of what's actually going on."

You know, I actually think it's common to have places where you can't tell if what you're feeling is tied to your gender, your sexuality, or both, because while those are technically separate categories, they tend to interact with and influence each other in various ways. Do you feel like those unrealistic expectations from media are influencing how you're able to understand your own gender and sexual orientation? Or is it more that you feel like you can't fit your understanding of those things into what's been presented by media?

[iLilli]

You know, I actually think it's common to have places where you can't tell if what you're feeling is tied to your gender, your sexuality, or both, because while those are technically separate categories, they tend to interact with and influence each other in various ways. Do you feel like those unrealistic expectations from media are influencing how you're able to understand your own gender and sexual orientation? Or is it more that you feel like you can't fit your understanding of those things into what's been presented by media?

Well… to put it very bluntly, it’s kind of a situation where, like… my desire to Be A Girl is sort of rooted in a flawed understanding of what that means and entails, I guess? At least partially, anyway.

Like, okay. I’m gonna basically try to un-filter myself and do a sort of stream-of-consciousness thing with my thoughts on this, and hopefully that will give you some insight into why I’m so worried that moving forward without addressing this could be a big mistake. I’m aware that plenty of these thoughts are going to be incorrect or based on false assumptions - the problem is that it’s difficult to dig up and dispel those false assumptions, because… I guess my brain recognizes that it has a vested interest in not correcting them, because the result is going to be nuanced and realistic and… disappointing. And I guess part of me wants to hold onto the idea that being a girl would be some sort of magical, wonderful, instant solution to all my problems, or at least a fair number of them. But for now let me just get on with it.

“I want to be a girl for a bunch of reasons, but a big one is that girls are way cuter and nicer. They look pretty, and seeing a cute girl makes me feel nice, so BEING a cute girl must feel nice all the time. Similarly , if you find girls attractive, being a girl yourself means there’s always a girl around who’s cool with you looking at her in the mirror! Girls can wear girly clothes, but they can also wear men’s clothes and people don’t think it’s as weird as the other way around. Being a girl means being able to make friends with other girls without feeling like I’m being a creep or doing something wrong, and most if not all of the girls I knew growing up were kinder and nicer than the boys. Girls can also express their sexuality and have it be seen as empowering, whereas being a guy means constantly worrying about whether you’re being a nuisance, or worse. People are generally comfortable with a girl being around them - and even if someone’s nervous about a girl being around them, that’s generally not because they’re mad at you or annoyed or actually scared. People in general tend to assign more inherent value to girls, both feeling more protective of a girl in danger than a guy, and with a lot of people finding girls more aesthetically pleasing, so for someone like myself who struggles with self-worth and often feels like a burden, the idea of being even somewhat attractive and having people enjoy my presence is a huge step up. A lot of modern media portrays girls as more cheerful, energetic, socially comfortable, confident, and happier in general than guys, which are all traits that I think would be pleasant to have. Girls don’t have to deal as much with the sensory issues caused by body hair and sweat, either. Girls’ clothes often use stretchier, softer fabric, and there’s more variety in their designs than in men’s clothing. And being a trans girl means not having to deal with pregnancy or menstruation, so it’s basically all upside!”

…so I think that probably puts into perspective why I’m having so much trouble with this - it’s just way, way too good to be true, and I know that it’s not actually the miracle solution that my brain wants to see it as, but lowering my expectations to a realistic level almost feels depressing - like losing the last bit of hope for things to suddenly get better. But I can’t in good conscience move forward with such a naive view of things, either - it’d just be setting myself up for disappointment. So how do I weed out the ideas that are unrealistic or wrong or harmful without making it feel like the whole thing is pointless?

[Willa]

Hi iLilli,

Thank you so much for your vulnerability and for sharing your thoughts here. I think speaking truthfully here is an amazing first step for getting to the root of what would make you most happy and preventing your negative self-thought and anxiety from halting exploration before it has even started.

What I am reading you describing here does not seem that out of the ordinary in terms of queer gender and sexuality exploration so you are not alone there. It can be difficult to parse out if you want to be with someone or be them. Feelings of attraction, jealousy, admiration, all of the above can feel very similar. And when you have been waiting for something for so long, idealization makes perfect sense. I don't think I have to tell you that no one group is 100% without its own set of struggles and issues, but that truth does not negate the plethora of positive possibilities that come with exploration. Latha's suggestion of exploring LGBTQ oriented spaces could be useful in talking with other people who may have felt similarly and how they have dealt with the challenges and the positive outcomes. Even if it starts in an online space dedicated to these types of conversations. Does that sound like something you would be interested in?

I also totally relate to the feeling of the fear of change and losing safety and comfort. One piece of advice that has helped me with my anxiety about this is understanding that nothing in life can stay exactly the same forever, so it is often better to have autonomy over the things we can control. Another realization that is helpful for me is naming and realizing even within my comfort I am often still deeply unhappy, that even if taking the chance is not what my ideal outcome might be- it is often still an improvement to my situation before. That is what I am seeing here, even if your exploration is not the complete ideal version you imagined it to be, it is still making space for positive change- even in ways you may not even be able to imagine currently.