I'm confused about my gender identity.

[perrystephens]

I go back and forth between female, male, agender, and both genders (Idk the word for that). I hear a lot of genderfluid people say their gender changes on pretty much a daily basis, but mine can stay the same for months and then I slowly start feeling different and find a new place on the gender spectrum. It's frustrating because just when I start thinking "I've figured out who I am and will always be so now I can come out" I start changing my mind again. So all this leads to a lot of questions:
Is this normal? Am I over-thinking everything? Will I eventually just pick one gender and stay? My doctors have said I have more testosterone than most females. Does that possibly have something to do with the confusion. How can I figure out my permanent gender if I'm ever going to have one?
If you could help answer any of these questions, thanks.

[Jaded Jade]

That certainly sounds gender fluid to me.

Figuring out what you want to be physically, and what you might be mentally are two different things.

Since I have accepted my GD, my mid has been incredibly fluid.  It probably always will be.  Once I learned to accept and enjoy it rather than fight and resist it, I started to really enjoy it.

You might want to consider keeping a journal.  Keep notes about how you feel about presentation, clothes, life, goals and so on in different colours.  Blue, pink, purple, and black, or whatever colours work for you.  And try to plan and plot your life's course based on what your different shifting aspects agree on.  Find a center point and orbit it.

Many genderfluid people like the physical middle point, that is the way I feel about it.  Never more than half off where I am mentally, and often a perfect fit.


- Jaded Jade

[helen2010]

Perry

Understanding your gender often requires, and always benefits from, working with a good gender therapist.  It is a process of self discovery and realisation.

You may well be gender fluid or you may not.  I have often felt that my gender is somewhat situational and changes in response to who I am engaged with etc.

Don't look for instant answers.  You may be overthinking this or you may not.  How about discarding all labels and learn to just be, to just be present, to just be authentic and to just be yourself?

Safe travels

Aisla

[Taka]

i'm going to answer part of your question with a quote from a dear friend who unfortunately took leave from these forums:

define normal.....is it normal for you? do you want it to be normal? do you want others to think it is normal?
Here in the Androgyn Forest it's not even a question. It just is.

(androgyn is the old name of our non-binary unicorn forest. and yes, it was me asking that same question, "is it normal?")

i can say that in my case, it is normal for me, i may not want it to be too normal (all people being gender fluid...?), and i want others to think it's normal (i'm not a freak! at least not in the way you are thinking).

let's suppose that you'll always be fluid.
what do you have to do in order to accommodate all components of yourself as much as possible?
giving full binary transition to one while another is protesting, could easily end in a smaller or bigger catastrophe.

can you envision a future stuck as one and only one gender for the entire rest of your (at least 90 years long) life?
how does that make you feel?

the thought terrified me. and that is the reason i am here, instead of struggling with a binary transition which i doubt would be right for me.

[Satinjoy]

Just be and feel for now, there are no easy answers, there are no easy definitions for many of us.

Gender can be elusive, it changes, it does not like to be tied up and put into a box to be displayed.  It is. 

There are fluid times and other times, it needs to be felt, to be freed, so that we can begin to fully appreciate it and how it moves and dances with our souls.

It will come in time, my dear, therapy and these threads is the beginning, it takes its own time to sort it out, and there is a richness of posts in the past in these threads that can help you greatly as you define your journey into the depths of your own gender.

Blessings

Satinjoy

[Shantel]

All of the responses here are centered around the concept of learning to just be. My cis spouse presented me with this idea several years ago when it seemed to her that I was forever on the move both physically and mentally as an outflow of that same mental anguish that comes from the continual business of self analyzation. Once I bought into that and learned to just be, much of that internal anxiety was relieved. I'm thankful for her btw because she is much smarter and intuitive than I am and she's helped me over a lot of humps in my life. There are so many things in life that we have absolutely no control over, so for me once I realized that my own core is non binary and somewhat gender fluid at times, then I was at peace with myself and the noise in my head dissipated along with the help of a little hormonal fine tuning.

[Lyric]

Your tendency to fluctuate back and forth sounds familiar to many of us here, I'm sure. When you have inclinations toward two genders and you try to confine yourself to one, the other pops out eventually and you feel the need for a period fo being entirely the other way.

There's no crime in living like that, though it can be a bit difficult to work into one's social life. Perhaps in time you'll find a way to incorporate aspects of both genders into one persona and just be a kind of "weird" person. I think most "weird" people are just people with the guts to show their inner selves in public.

[JulieBlair]

Your tendency to fluctuate back and forth sounds familiar to many of us here, I'm sure. When you have inclinations toward two genders and you try to confine yourself to one, the other pops out eventually and you feel the need for a period fo being entirely the other way.

There's no crime in living like that, though it can be a bit difficult to work into one's social life. Perhaps in time you'll find a way to incorporate aspects of both genders into one persona and just be a kind of "weird" person. I think most "weird" people are just people with the guts to show their inner selves in public.

And from Shantel
All of the responses here are centered around the concept of learning to just be. My cis spouse presented me with this idea several years ago when it seemed to her that I was forever on the move both physically and mentally as an outflow of that same mental anguish that comes from the continual business of self analyzation. Once I bought into that and learned to just be, much of that internal anxiety was relieved. I'm thankful for her btw because she is much smarter and intuitive than I am and she's helped me over a lot of humps in my life. There are so many things in life that we have absolutely no control over, so for me once I realized that my own core is non binary and somewhat gender fluid at times, then I was at peace with myself and the noise in my head dissipated along with the help of a little hormonal fine tuning.

Sums it up pretty well for me.  Present how you feel that day, boy, girl, queer, human. What this life journey to me is all about is finding my core (as Satin Joy often reminds), finding that place where I am authentic and know joy.  Where it is, for me, for today, doesn't matter very much.  The gender fluid group identifies in the trough between the binary modal humps.  Sloshing is sometimes confusing but okay 

Julie