Distorted Self-Image Post-Transition

[Carrie Liz]

I've been full-time for almost a year and a half now, and yet I'm still dealing with a self-image in my head that hasn't caught up with what I really look like.

Basically, I'm just looking to know if anyone else struggles with this, and to see if maybe anyone has advice on it.



To elaborate on what this means...

Basically, for some reason, when I picture in my head what I look like doing the task that I'm currently doing, the self-image I see up there is significantly more masculine than what I actually look like in real life.

Whenever I take a video of myself and then look back on it several months later, I always look completely female to myself in that video. And yet when I try form an image in my head of what I look like at any given present moment, it looks more masculine than that, to the point that I don't feel like a woman at all, I'm still afraid that the overall bigness of my body, or my lumbering guyish posture, or my big shoulders make me look guyish and masculine.

The thing is, I don't want my self-image to look like this. Seeing myself this way, constantly being afraid that I look like that, causes me significant amounts of distress. It tends to start chain reactions where I feel inadequate and worry to death that I'm not passing and not female or feminine at all, and I'll have to look in the mirror and remind myself that I don't actually look like that in order to calm myself down.

I'm constantly afraid that I'm just too big and lumbering to pass, feeling huge, feeling like my upper body is really big, but then when my mom takes a picture of me next to my uncle or some of the other guys in my life, I don't look like that at all, my chest cavity looks downright tiny by comparison. But my self-image never corrects, it always still sees itself as distortedly big.

I spend a LOT of time looking in mirrors reminding myself that I really do look like a girl specifically because I still can't seem to internalize what I actually look like no matter how much I look in the mirror and no matter how many videos I take. The self in my head is always more masculine than that, and I'm always wishing that there was some way I could correct it to matching my actual physical appearance.

Any advice?

Again, this is causing me a significant amount of distress.

Is this something that will go away with time as I get more used to seeing my new self? Have other people dealt with this mismatched self-image problem lingering after transition? If so, how did you solve it? Or is it something more serious like a mental condition?



(And this is rather important to fix, because I likely have SRS coming up in about 9 months, and I'd rather not be having freakouts where my distorted self-image makes me feel like I don't deserve a vulva, that I'm too physically masculine to have one, even though it's VERY clear that this fear doesn't match my physical reality, seeing as how straight guys have been asking me out recently.)

[suzifrommd]

I have exactly this issue. I feel partially like a male and assume other people see a male as well. I have been told that it isn't true, but it feels that way.

I've come to the conclusion it's part of my gender identity. I am non-binary, and I'll never see myself completely as a member of the female gender (no matter how much I wish I could). I'm letting that be OK. I'm more than two years happily full time and it hasn't changed, so there's no reason to believe it will.

I'd rather not be having freakouts where my distorted self-image makes me feel like I don't deserve a vulva, that I'm too physically masculine to have one, even though it's VERY clear that this fear doesn't match my physical reality, seeing as how straight guys have been asking me out recently.)

Well I had SRS more than a year ago. I still often look down and think "what am I doing with this thing. It doesn't belong there." Then I have a moment of pure euphoria that I am finally shaped the way I've always wanted to be, even if it doesn't feel quite right. I also often get the giggles because I feel like I've put one over on the medical folks - got away with SRS when I wasn't completely female.

I strongly believe that no one "deserves" female parts. If that's what puts you at peace with your body (and it has in a big way) then it's right for you, regardless of your exact gender identity.

Does this help at all?

[Sammy]

I cant understand how complete strangers instantly gender me as female no matter what wear or how messy my hair is, because whenever I check my image in the mirror, I pick up all those features which in conjunction should scream "feminised male".

[Stella Sophia]

I cant understand how complete strangers instantly gender me as female no matter what wear or how messy my hair is, because whenever I check my image in the mirror, I pick up all those features which in conjunction should scream "feminised male".

Yeah I know I am a baby in terms of transitioning but I know what you mean. Why is it I will have perfect makeup and all female mannerisms down and my voice perfect yet a mile away I am clocked.

Then its like I am complete boy mode with stubble and I get mam'd. WTF?!

OP I know I don't have nearly as much experience as you being on HRT but I think its just about having self confidence, or at least that's what I am discovering.

[stephaniec]

I think it's just the accumulation of the memories in all the brain cells at the points of time you were presenting male. I have the same problem. I presented male for 60 years and been transitioning for 2 years , that is one heck of a lot of memory  cell storage in the brain that is still there and will always be there unless you have a lobotomy.

[Carrie Liz]

that is one heck of a lot of memory  cell storage in the brain that is still there and will always be there unless you have a lobotomy.

Frankly, I often do wish there was some way to forget that I was ever male socially in the first place. My life would be full of a lot less trauma if I could just see myself as having been born a woman and having it just be an innate state of being rather than being burdened with all of those painful memories of hating my body, being teased, and dealing with what basically amounts to PTSD where I'm scared of having my femininity denied from me again.

[Carrie Liz]

And suzi, sometimes I do wonder if I'm non-binary, because I am very tomboyish, and really don't seem to care about looking feminine, but at the same time, I seem to care VERY deeply about looking female, so it's confusing. And this internal conflict of feeling like I don't look female or worrying that I don't have a female body, when it happens it makes me feel horrible, but it still doesn't make it stop, that guyish self-image is always there. So I don't know. Do you feel distressed by that self-image mismatch? I mean, if seeing a body that's masculine in any way would cause me distress, if I want to be female completely and will accept nothing else in order to feel good about myself, even if I can't seem to internalize that that's what I actually am because my self-perception is off, what does that say really about whether I'm binary or non-binary? I don't really know.

Nonetheless, you've been a big help in quelling the fears that I've had, because it's really good to know that even if I never do internalize that feeling that I actually am a woman, even if I do permanently just feel like some in-between-genders person even after getting a vagina, that doesn't mean I'll regret it or think it was the wrong decision.

I do feel the same way that you seem to describe yourself as feeling a lot of the time... that even though I'm often seeing someone unfeminine and guyish in my head, whenever I look in the mirror and do just see someone who looks like a woman, it's always a very pleasant surprise that makes me smile.

[stephaniec]

I wish I could totally erase my entire grade school experience and replace it with the proper one, that real drives me bonkers. I keep going back mentally and sit in my desk with the proper uniform and hair style.

[Ms Grace]

I only have this in very small bursts. And it is diminishing. The most striking moment was when I was shopping for clothes, I got distracted by something on my phone and when I got back to what I was doing I had a brief moment of panic and disorientation when I realised I was in the women's section and thought "I'm in the wrong section"!! By and large, what I feel isn't like what you're describing, I guess I never felt I was all that masculine in the first place.

The one thing I've found that has really helped me merge my self image with my external image is working in an environment where I am totally accepted as female, it gives me daily affirmation and feedback which says "we see and accept you as a female". The great thing about being in a new workplace where no one new me previously as male is that there is no hesitation at the use of pronouns and my name or (as sometimes the case) no misgenderings or use of my old name. Although I was accepted at my former workplace, some colleagues had known me for 15 years and so they slipped up. The new job has really changed that.

Another thing, how do you refer to yourself in your head? If you're talking to yourself do you use female nouns? It makes a huge difference.

Other than that it will probably just take time.

[Carrie Liz]

I'm already in a workplace where only one single person out of like 200 knew me before, I'm always gendered and named properly by people (with only two exceptions in the last year, where people said "he, oops I mean she,") and yes, when I'm referring to myself both in my head as well as while talking to other people, it's ALWAYS with female pronouns and my female name. Hearing my old name actually feels weird now, because it's just not a name I associate with me anymore.

By every stretch of the imagination I've accepted myself and am seeing myself as a woman.

The thing is, though, even though I have accepted myself as a woman, I can't get past this mental self-image of seeing myself as this lumbering hulking unpassable masculine she-beast. Which, again, is not what I really am. But no matter how many times I try to tell myself that I'm not like that, no matter how often mirrors show it to me, those negative self-images always pop back up as my "default" unless I'm actively trying to quell them by pulling up a concrete memory where I didn't look like that. It's been frustratingly persistent even though I haven't actually looked like that lumbering unfeminine she-beast for several months now, if not a year or more. And every single morning for some reason my mind always resets to this default guyish feeling, and I have to remember and think about the fact that I'm a woman before it goes away.

[Ms Grace]

Sounds to me like you may need to try some mental/physical exercises which rewrites your internal dialogue. Not sure what those might be, but perhaps some conscious visualisation exercises/meditations where you picture yourself as light, graceful and beautiful...

[suzifrommd]

Do you feel distressed by that self-image mismatch?

No, actually it feels oddly pleasant. That I have a special secret, that I know and feel something that other women generally don't. There's also a feeling of pride and accomplishment that it has been extra hard for me to discover who I want to be and then become her, given that I didn't start knowing who I was or how I could get there. I do feel a flash of envy when women here at Susan's talk about how they always knew, felt like they were in the wrong body, etc., but I generally believe envy is a destructive emotion so I work to accept myself as I am.

I mean, if seeing a body that's masculine in any way would cause me distress, if I want to be female completely and will accept nothing else in order to feel good about myself, even if I can't seem to internalize that that's what I actually am because my self-perception is off, what does that say really about whether I'm binary or non-binary?

My gender therapist won't even let me talk about whether I'm binary or not. Her feeling is that I can wear myself out trying to put a label on who I am when that's really unimportant. What's important is how I want to live, which has been far more certain.

[michelle82]

I think maybe some time spent finding some acceptance for yourself is important. You mentioned that you wished you could erase your memory, but unfortunately nothing will change the fact that you were born male. We all need to find peace and realize that we as trans people are beautiful and accept who we are. Sometimes I feel being trans is a gift even though most of the time it feels like a curse. But there is something special about being trans and it's very beautiful in its own right. Try changing your perspective a bit.

The truth is I also have the same thought process as you, and I've only been fulltime for over a month. I have a lot of people validating my appearance which helps, but I'm really making an effort to believe it. But I also remind myself that there is beauty in our uniqueness

[Summer]

Ow this is the story of my life I'm forever fixated thinking about how big my shoulders are , body , hands plus been 6ft1 etc  and not thinking I look like a lady at all . Then when someone genders me incorrectly it just magnifies in my head and I feel horrible . As for advice sorry Hun can't help you with that one.


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[Carrie Liz]

I know this topic is old at this point, but, well, I got an answer to what the problem is.

It's not distorted self-image.

It's anxiety.


Basically, when I originally wrote this post, I constantly had images of an unpassable unfixably-masculine me going through my head, and at the time I attributed these things to needing to fix that distorted self-image.

Now that I've talked with my therapist, I realize that the only reason these distorted negative self-images are coming into my head in the first place is because of the anxiety. Because my brain is constantly worried about possible worst-case scenarios, and my mind runs away with me like that. So the images that are coming into my head are hypothetical worst-case scenarios... they're me transfixing on all of the times that I was treated badly, all the times I looked in the mirror and saw a man earlier in transition, all the times I tried and failed, and I'm overthinking my way into making myself be afraid that I still look like that, and that the worst-case scenario might actually happen, when in reality it's just me thinking myself into an oblivion.

55% of transgender people have anxiety. http://research.cristanwilliams.com/2012/04/22/meta-analysis-social-anxiety-levels-in-mtf-transgender-people/ I recognize this poisonous mindset all the time now on here... and regrettably, it's in almost EVERY single one of my posts about my own issues. It's okay. It's common. It's just something that happens when you spend so long being ashamed of your own identity.

And the sad truth is, anxiety is something that can't be dealt with through simply becoming passable or even trying to convince yourself that you're passable. Because if you have anxiety, no matter how passable you are, you're always going to be second-guessing yourself, worried that there's SOME way that people know, checking and obsessing over EVERY single conversation you have with people wondering "do they know?", trying to mind-read people, and often drawing very wrong conclusions from those assumed thought processes of others that you're worried about.

So yeah... that was the answer for me. The answer wasn't to combat that negative self-image, fixing it by replacing the bad images with good images of what I "really" look like. Because I could never convince myself. The anxiety of "but what if I'm wrong and I really don't look like that good image?" "But what if all the times I've been properly gendered are just because I'm lucky?" and "people are just humoring me" ALWAYS sabotaged such attempts. Rather, the answer was to simply ignore the anxious thoughts completely, and not allow myself to worry about it in the first place. Live life. Do what you want to do and what makes you happy. When worry interferes with that and keeps you constantly doubting yourself, and you're excluding yourself from public spaces and social opportunities solely because of irrational fears over what others are thinking about you... it's a disorder.

If you feel these same feelings that I feel, and this same level of constant worry, I encourage you to talk about it with a therapist. They can help you find coping strategies.

[allisonsteph]

I struggle with this as well. I have been full time for 2 years this month, and have been on HRT for 19 months, but most of the time the mental picture in my head is the old me. This despite not being mis-gendered in a face to face encounter in well over a year. I recently ran into an old friend that I've known for almost 30 years but hadn't seen sine 2008 and he didn't recognize me at all. I think things are turning though. For most of my life I have daydreamed about being a famous guitar player in a rock band. It is only very recently (within the last two months) that I can picture myself as I appear now, rather than what I used to look like in those daydreams.

[Beth Andrea]

Tagged for future reference to give Carrie Liz a +1... Anxiety is a state of mind which one may have regardless of passability.


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[Venus]

I haven't even begun my transition yet - I have my first therapy session scheduled for next week - but I don't think I have this problem. My self-image is already female and has been for some time now. If anything it really throws me off when I see myself in a mirror and I don't match how I actually see myself.

I've been a girl online for 17 years now and I have practically no social life and very few interactions to speak of off of the computer. I guess that's probably why it's so easy for me.