how do you open yourself up to joy, when it can lead to pain

[immortal gypsy]

Please bear with me. This is hard

For awhile now I have been making use of the services of one of one of the counselors at the gender center. He is great, he puts up with my tangents and has made me realize that while people may look at clothing to gender. I shouldn't have to wear skirts and dresses now , just because my wardrobe has generally been one of girls tops and jeans since I could buy my own clothes.

The past three times I've been there he noticed I seem to be able to carry a lot of emotion and the same question was always asked
"What do you do with your pain?" Most answers I have lead to more questions, and for them there are no answers. He knows some about my past,  (raised to be independent from a very young age, narcissistic parents, been told I could do nothing right by my father). I talk about my emotions as if I'm observing them not experiencing them, both good and bad. I am closed of emotionally I locked down my shields good and tight when I was young to cope.

He mentioned that if I don't open myself to taking pain and sadness once and awhile I will find it hard to experience joy, as they are usually linked. Right now I get satisfaction for making goals little victories, but what will happen after I've finally had surgery if that is where my future lies right now. One can't keep fighting battles forever, sooner or later it will come to an end. What then?
How do you let people get close to you, when you can't get close to yourself.

[PinkCloud]

For some, emotion is useful. For others, emotion can ruin and even cause depression. It depends, I do not think everyone is the same. So there isn't a one way approach in dealing with this. The way I deal with it is to close myself of to emotions of others. I have to to do that, otherwise I will take on their emotion and become depressed through the emotion of others. I am too sensitive to deal with it. And why should I deal with it?

As for the pain, I avoid those who caused it. I cannot be around people who hurt me. I just can't. That's it. It is the only solution for me. When the cause is away, I create my own joy and just forget about the pain. I do not believe in reliving emotions, memories or pain, and thereby strengthen the memories in the brain by sensitizing it even more. I do not believe in catharsis through reliving stuff. I just let it fade... and overwrite it with good and joyful experiences. But hat is how I deal with it, and everyone is different.

Been sexually abused as a child, so I know what pain means.

[Indoctrinated]

I used to fear my emotions... From early childhood I knew they were powerful and got me in trouble. At 7 I decided to have my feelings locked up in a little box I could only open upon learning to be an adult, with control over my life.

It worked.

As I grew older I begun to feel some sort of emptiness deep inside. Like I could do anything I wanted but I just didn't have the inner strength to achieve things. That feeling kept growing inside me consuming every piece of me... Eventually it seemed not only my virtues were gone but also my skills were being held back. That was depression.

Let's skip some ugly facts that happened then...

By the age of 29 I recovered some lost memories from early childhood (it felt not only I acted like I had gender dysphoria but also had been diagnosed accordingly) and then accepted myself as a transgender.

Right now, at the age of 31, I'm on HRT and aware of being intersex. Cried a bit, been sad often, but depression as I know is no more. I'm finding my way to happiness and I laughed and played more in 3 months of HRT than in the last 5 years... Though I feel rather insecure for not telling my mother I'm sure things are getting better every day. A strange feeling that I can stand anything thrown at me is warming my heart.

[stephaniec]

for me it's hard because I've been hurt way too much . I haven't let anyone in that close for a very long time. the pain of the past has crippled me for so long. I have a good therapist , so maybe I can heal before I pass. sorry to have no answers, we share a similar boat.

[LordKAT]

If you ever figure that out, let me know. I refuse.

[Ferretty]

Eep, I'm still young I guess, my emotions still flow freely, but at the same time time I doubt I could lock them up. The thing is with me an occasional crying really helps me and I feel a thousand times better afterward, so I guess I've convinced myself that the benefits outweigh the consequences...

[Eva Marie]

I had a narcissistic mother and an emotionally absent father and it didn't take me long to figure out to close off my emotions and show nothing that could be turned around and used against me in the future. My mom was quite spiteful in the way she twisted my words around and used them against me.

The fact that I am trans only closed me off more when the abuse in school began. I became an emotional brick with trust issues.

Later when I got married I opened up a little and got what I said used against me so the emotional door got slammed shut once again. I married someone that had the same twisted logic to use what I said against me that my mom had.

Now I have severe trust issues and I am always on guard. HRT has forced the emotional door back open, but I am very wary of who I open up to.

I wish I was a more open and trusting person but the damage has been done.

[Kova V]

I had an issue with turning my emotions off and not turning them on again. This was the first thing my therapist had me work on. It's pretty hard to open yourself up when you've trained yourself not to feel. I swear I cried every other day when I started paying attention to my feelings and make myself vulnerable. I also found that little something to drink helps to ballence the emotion and crassness I need to help me get through an emotional conversations.

It's not something I recommend for a fix, but it helped my pry open that part of myself I maticulously honed to be the person I'm not. So in short, liquid courage, in moderation of course. You don't even need a buz, just one to loosen your bonnet.