Misgendering Self in Thoughts?

[JynxRosalie]

AS many of you who read my posts have probably figured out, I think a LOT. And one thing I've noticed is this back and forth with pronoun usage in my own head. Because I still have to present as male to my family, and can only present as female online, I often find myself using inconsistent pronouns. Sometimes I'll naturally refer to myself as she or her. But other times, especially when thinking about how other people will see me, I default to him and he. I figure its because of the whole dual identity thing going on at the moment, but now I'm curious. Has anyone else had this experience of pronoun confusion in their own heads?

[BenKenobi]

I do this to myself as well even though i am nearly full time presenting.

[Ms Grace]

It happens. The brain is pretty adaptable but when you're trying to undo many years of built in personal language it takes some time to reprogram. I once misgendered myself when telling a story about myself. I felt pretty silly. But it also made me realise that if I'm going to do that to myself then I need to cut other people a bit of slack if they slip up too.

[Serverlan]

Do you mean self gendering in that you visualise yourself as male or female, or using the terms "he" and "she" in your inner dialogue?

I only ask this, as I have never referred to myself in the third person when thinking about myself. How does that  actually work?

[jetchick]

I find that the more I'm surrounded by people in my life who reflect back to me the woman that I am, the less frequently I find myself thinking about myself in old terms.  I'd suggest that you don't sweat it, as long as you're being supportive of yourself.

[zog]

Oh yeah, constantly. To the point where I say to nice people who are supportive but misgender me by accident to not worry since nobody can gender me wrong than I do myself. Certain sayings and thought structures are just so engrained.

This has started to change pretty rapidly recently, probably fuelled by getting gendered correctly more and more in recent times and sometimes I even find myself forgetting the little mental asterisk I used to have after my identity as a woman and a lesbian saying that I wasn't somehow a "proper" one. But it took a pretty long time to get to this point and I still do misgender myself in my thoughts fairly often.

[JynxRosalie]

It's good to know I'm not the only one that does this. I don't think it was anything that really concerned me, it was more of a curiosity thing.

Also Serverlan, I'm referencing when you consider what other people would say about you in your thoughts. Basically speaking about yourself from the second or third person from another person's perspective.

[JoanneB]

Like MsGrace said it takes a LOT of work to reprogram yourself. I live primarily as male, had a few years of being able to live part-time. I was slowly getting there mostly gendering myself correctly in my head. Doing it out loud, talking to myself during walks or alone, helped in making it stick. These days presenting female outside the home is essentially nonexistent, and am always misgendering myself. Which also does not help with the bouts of extreme dysphoria and resulting depression death spiral.

It takes practice, practice, practice. You need to actively work at it to overcome a lifetime of training

[Serverlan]

Also Serverlan, I'm referencing... second or third person from another person's perspective.

Interesting. I honestly never do that. In fact, thinking about my inner narrative dialogue, I can say with confidence that I don't gender myself at all.

[suzifrommd]

Has anyone else had this experience of pronoun confusion in their own heads?

Been living full-time as a woman for more than two years, but I'm still male in my head.

[Valwen]

I have known about my gender identity for about 20 years and for at least the last 10 in my head I mostly managed to avoid gendering myself at all, though the last few months as I started transisioning I have been forcing myself to use female pronounds and they are getting moderatlly natural. Out loud i have a few times misgendered myself when using very common phrases but only once recently when I was in a very very dark place emotionally did I mentally gender myself male, it was shocking enough that I noticed it and realized how bad my head space was at that time.

like everything its all about practice. and friends help, every time someone says she or her or serena around me it makes it a tiny bit easier to accept myself as myself.

Serena

[JynxRosalie]

I usually tend to avoid gendering myself in my head if I can, but I have a lot of things to consider about transitioning in the future, and when I think about those things, I tend to think of what people will say about me. I don't find it anxiety inducing as of yet, it just catches me off guard when I happen to do it. It does make me feel much better that I am not the only one that does this.

[HoneyStrums]

when we think of how another might see us, we auto matically use the pronoun we think they will use.

This is more an acceptence of their perspective, then a change in our own.

Another situation, I reffer to myself differently is when, I talk about pre-out memories. This also has a habbit of changing the pronoun I use for another persons perspective too.

eg, Ill be sharing an old MEMORY the includes my sister, and ill say somthing like, and then she was like "I cnt belive he just did that"

But later, since she has gotten used to the new pronoun, ill say and she was like "I cant believe she just did that"