Those days when you're not feeling trans...

[E-Brennan]

Sorry for not participating as much recently.  I've been having one of those episodes where I just don't feel trans anymore.

I know it'll turn around and I'll be feeling far more feminine soon (thank god), but these times where I just feel male through and through are upsetting rather than comforting.  Instead of thinking, "Great, I feel like a regular guy for once," I end up thinking, "I've got to find a way to be female, I've got to find a way to rekindle that spark, I've got to continue to push for transition."

Anyone else have off days (or weeks, or months) where all the trans feelings just seem to disappear?  I don't like feeling "normal"!

[MugwortPsychonaut]

Yes! I used to go through that, too! I haven't had that feeling in a while. Keeping up with things like shaving your face and removing body hair, helps. I've found that it helps to practice speaking in a more feminine voice. Gradually adapting your voice can help be a constant reminder of your femininity. Form new, good habits!

[warlockmaker]

I have those episodes especially when I present financial deals and speaking at conferences. I have to adapt to my man mode - deeper more agressive voice, and behave as an Alpha male. At the time it does not bother me but it upsets me when I'm alone at home after these events as I lose my female personna for a few days. I'm in such a mode presently and thats when I tend to reach out more to the forum which makes me feel beter.

[FilaFord]

Yes! I used to go through that, too! I haven't had that feeling in a while. Keeping up with things like shaving your face and removing body hair, helps. I've found that it helps to practice speaking in a more feminine voice. Gradually adapting your voice can help be a constant reminder of your femininity. Form new, good habits!

Good advice!  I definitely need to work on practicing my voice more, but I feel so embarrassed when I try to speak in a feminine voice because it sounds so atrocious.  Guess the only way to get better is practice practice practice!

[DuckyAlexis]

ugh i know exactly what you mean.  I go through cycles like that too, and like you, rather than feel comforted, I hate not feeling feminine.  Been somewhat like that off and on a lot lately.  Glad to know i'm not the only one that experiences this

[MugwortPsychonaut]

Good advice!  I definitely need to work on practicing my voice more, but I feel so embarrassed when I try to speak in a feminine voice because it sounds so atrocious.  Guess the only way to get better is practice practice practice!

Try not to do too much at once. Raise your natural speaking voice juuuuust a little. It's way easier to adapt that way, and it feels so much more natural, too.

[Feather]

Anyone else have off days (or weeks, or months) where all the trans feelings just seem to disappear?  I don't like feeling "normal"!

Yes..! I have periods of months where I don't feel very feminine. Sometimes I feel feminine for weeks. Then it leaves me again and I start to think it's just useless to talk about these feelings and take them seriously. But of course it will come back again. But for how long? And how strongly will it come back? Lately the rollercoaster has been going back and forth during single days! I can feel more like a man during the day but all of that can change in a matter of hours. In my mind I would prefer to have a female body, but most of the time I don't really behave like one which confuses the hell out of me. I also prefer feminine, it gives me peace.

[saint]

I have weeks when I am very content with being male and feel pretty grounded in that identity.  Then something clicks and I feel feminine and genderqueer and don't feel male at all.  It makes it hard to take definitive action.  I can't say that one of these is my 'real' identity and not the other.  It feels very confusing.  But then, other parts of my identity swing to and fro and I don't question them; some weeks I feel more introverted, some weeks more extroverted.  If I lived in a society where gender wasn't so heavily policed maybe this wouldn't be such a problem.  As it is I just try and be true to what I feel at the time.  I do find it frustrating and confusing though, I have a lot of work to do around accepting my femininity and it would be easier if things stopped moving round so much so I could get on with it!

[DiDi]

^^ You really nailed it. For me many hours are spent not thinking one way or the other. Other days I need to put my butch face on and others I just want to relax into my feminine self. It would be so much easier if I could just be myself on any given day, everyday.

[Lizzie]

I feel this way too sometimes. Sometimes it by the day or it could be by the hour. One minute I'm happy accepting myself then next I'm looking for excuses as to why I feel that way.

What's really breaks it for me is looking in the mirror, almost always destroys any since of femininity I was feeling at the time. Hopefully that should go away has I began to change.

[Taka]

i'm a little bit opposite to you in this regard. i did for a quite while feel that transness, but i kind of got used to not getting anywhere with it, and managed to settle at just being me. the times when i feel trans now, are when i have to speak, act, or dress as is expected of my gaab simply because of social norms that people won't let me break. it's really annoying, and totally reminds me of how my wrong genitalia will have me put in a most uncomfortable box until i can manage to do something about it. but those are the only times when i don't feel "right". any other times i'm just me, and am taken for that too. i don't feel trans, i'm just me. trans is what i feel when people start treating me like someone i'm not. like, can you seriously not see who i am behind this exterior???

[Katherine Strawn]

Most of the time I can't escape my baseline, mild-moderate gender dysphoria.  Sometimes it's outright torment!  Whenever my coworkers have "ladies night" I'm always included and the only "guy" present.  My stupid male coworkers always rib me for that.  I don't care what they think so it doesn't bother me.  I feel just like one of the ladies whenever we go out!  The conversation and togetherness of it and an adult beverage or two make for a very pleasant, meaningful evening.  However, when I go adventure biking with my nephews or other biker friends, I lose all thought of gender for an hour or four.  It (the feeling of being female at my core) always finds me.  There are much worse afflictions people have to endure but gender dysphoria does suck.  In short, I find it to tug at my consciousness far more often than not. 

[solexander]

I've felt that before. A lot of it for me is (TMI...) kinda sexual and relationship stuff? Mostly because I've been feeling pretty lonely since transitioning, while I was ALWAYS paid tons of attention to when I was a girl. I'm not used to not being the subject of desire for people anymore, and I kinda miss people liking me in that way. Sometimes people DO pay attention, and that helps, but it's kinda difficult to all of a sudden just be alone and have no idea how to get back into the swing of things in this new role. I'm just so bad at it that sometimes I wish I could just be a girl sometimes so that I could get people to wanna be with me again.

[JoanneB]

I've had those periods also. Some lasting for days, other times several months. They were all precipitated by a "WTF am I doing?" meltdown. In a sense I sort of forced myself out of considering considering being trans as a viable option.

The trick I used to return to normal(?) was to always remind myself "I know what does not work". Avoiding thinking about being trans did not work for 30 plus years, no reason to think it magically was going to start working. Especially after experiencing seeing my work finally work by addressing being trans

[Jess42]

Wow. I can honestly say that every GDed day there hasn't been at least one moment that I haven't felt trans. God I must really be messed up 'cause even if it isn't in the front of my mind it's always brewing and bubbling in the back of it. Wow, maybe it is time to go farther.

Seriously though, am I the only one that doesn't feel it everyday that hasn't done anything about it yet other than a gender therapist? For me it is an every day thing if not every freakin' hour or minute even.

Thanks for the post though Brenda. Its probably made me realize more about myself than even therapy.

[Skyler]

I sometimes forget im trans*..it just slips my mind because I don't go out all that much. Not sure if i like the feeling or not. Just trying to get through it all till January 31st \o/!

[goldphantom]

I think everybody has off days. The difference between cis and trans people is that cisgendered people don't freak out when it happens to them. They can have off days.

We on the other hand live in a very confusing state and each little moment of confusion sends us on a path of self doubt about who we are. Our off days remind us of our past, a past we try to escape. At least that's what happens with me. I've accepted it though, I am a girl even with all this confusion.

[Ataraxia]

I have days like that all the time. I don't feel like a girl, but the messed up thing is I don't even feel like a guy on those days either. I just feel...like I'm something less than human It's the worst kind of depression that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.

[Ms Grace]

I can guarantee you that on most days most cis women don't wake up in the morning thinking "I feel so womanly today and am going to go and do things in a womanly way that make me feel like a woman". The days I wake up and don't feel trans are great because then I just feel like myself, I don't feel a disconnect between my mind and my body, I don't need to do womanly things of to feel like a woman, I just know that I don't feel like a man. Not "he" or "she" I'm just gonna gonna be "me".

[Carrie Liz]

^Agree totally.

I'm still having days like that where I'm just not really feeling "womanly" or "feminine," I just feel like the same old person I've always been, so I'm afraid that this means that I'm having doubts.

And my therapist told me, there's no such thing as "feeling female," which implies that you're excited about doing feminine things every single day. She said that she doesn't wake up every single day thinking "I feel like a girl today!" She pretty much never even thinks about her gender. Her gender is just something incidental, something that she's only really aware of during times where it matters, like when she's in a group of guys at a work event, or when dating, or things like that. Aside from those times, she's not even really aware of being female, she's just living her life. So much of gender is just how society treats you, and how you're expected to act.

The question that I always ask myself, which has kept me going through all of transition in spite of the doubts, is, do I ever want to go back? Do I want to see a guy in the mirror again? And for me at least, the answer is always no.

By all means, stop transitioning if you ever feel like you're wishing you could see a male in the mirror again, or would rather socially be male again. But if it's just a matter of not feeling "female enough" or "womanly," despite wishing that you could, then don't worry about it. Being female isn't something that you're going to be excited about forever. It's just a matter of living your life in a gender that feels right for you, to the point that you don't have to think about it anymore.